The woke mob is targeting a highly respected Duke University medical professor because he had the audacity to refer to upcoming faculty equity training as “Maoist political propaganda.”
According to the Duke Chronicle, on Tuesday, Kris Matthews, chief administrative officer of the Duke School of Medicine Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Department (MGM), sent an email to all department members stating that MGM, in conjunction with the Office for Institutional Equity (OIE), was designing a mandatory training module for all faculty members with the objective of “helping [them] be fair and welcoming of individuals who differ in their background.”
Shortly thereafter, Bryan Cullen, founding director of the school’s Center for Virology, replied to everyone on the email, “My initial reaction is I refuse to engage in left-wing Maoist political propaganda workshops and, as a tenured faculty, that is my choice.”
As if to prove Cullen’s point, several doctoral candidates, perhaps clutching their copies of Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book, began vociferously denouncing their elder. At least one intimated that Cullen should be fired. One presumably also leaked the email chain to the Chronicle.
In a reply to Cullen’s email, Jeffrey Letourneau called the professor’s response “a textbook example of a tenured faculty member whose grasp on human decency is on par with his grasp on the reply-all function.”
In his reply to Cullen, Jonathan Ark told the academic he should attend the training so he would learn how “inappropriate” it is for him to be “posting comics with transphobic undertones.” Ark’s email included a picture of a comic strip allegedly posted on a bulletin board outside Cullen’s office. “The strip,” reported the Chronicle, “depicts a young person attempting to purchase beer from a cashier, saying, ‘I identify as 21! So are you gonna sell me a beer … or are you a hater?’” That, declared Ark, “trivializes self-identification of gender.”
Cullen didn’t take Ark’s attack lying down. “Well freedom of speech is precisely about tolerance for opinions you disagree with, or were you not familiar with that concept?” he shot back. “Certainly, intolerance for opinions outside the realm of wokeness is now a defining characteristic of almost all major universities in the USA.”
Ark told the Chronicle that Cullen has “a history of xenophobic, homophobic and racist behavior.”
Other doctoral candidates didn’t keep their hatred for Cullen within the confines of email. Instead, they went directly to Twitter for all the world (or at least those they allowed) to see.
Alan Rosales posted screenshots of the emails, calling Cullen’s initial response “disgusting” and saying the professor “has repeated history of homophobia & transphobia.”
Gilberto Padilla Mercado likewise tweeted the emails, remarking that Cullen “has expressed reactionary rhetoric for many years now, and is set to retire soon.”
“Yet another reminder that despite someone’s contributions to a field, or the money they might bring in to an institution, academic administrators do themselves and future scientists a great disservice by keeping these types of people around for the long haul,” Mercado added.
Mercado told the Chronicle that he had attended a guest lecture by Cullen in 2018 in which the virologist “reiterated harmful stereotypes about HIV/AIDs,” specifically that “male homosexuals played a critical role in the early spread of HIV in the USA” (an indisputable fact) and that “the promiscuity of African women who then gave British sailors HIV … allowed HIV to spread to Europe” (one of the first documented cases of AIDS in Europe was that of a Norwegian sailor who had been to Africa twice, contracting gonorrhea on one of those trips). But facts, of course, must not be stated if they reflect negatively on woke-favored groups.
Thus far, there is no indication that Duke administrators have any plans to take action against Cullen either for refusing to attend their struggle session or for accurately describing it. Cullen should not take too much comfort in his tenure, however. Princeton University recently fired a tenured classics professor after he publicly challenged the school’s “anti-racism” stance. Duke itself lost a theology professor in 2017 before the university could institute disciplinary proceedings against him for expressing sentiments similar to Cullen’s. Cullen will be fortunate to be allowed to retire on his own timetable.
