A white professor at Drexel University tweeted that his Christmas wish is for a “white genocide.” Despite the backlash, he refuses to apologize and claims that he is being smeared by “violent racists.”
Associate Professor George Ciccariello-Maher of politics and global studies (shown), a self-proclaimed communist, felt Christmas Eve was the opportune time to spout his hatred of white people on Twitter, despite being white: “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” He followed that tweet with another equally disturbing one on Christmas Day, writing that the massacre of white people in the 1804 Haitian Revolution in which thousands of white people were killed was “a good thing indeed.”
The public backlash was immediate, compelling Drexel University to release a statement addressing the tweets.
“While the University recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate, Professor Ciccariello-Maher’s comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University,” the statement said. “The University is taking this situation very seriously. We contacted Ciccariello-Maher today to arrange a meeting to discuss this matter in detail.”
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Ciccariello-Maher has since made his Twitter page private.
The professor attempted to pass off his disturbing comments as jokes, employing a condescending elitist tone in his explanation. “On Christmas Eve, I sent a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, ‘white genocide,’” he told Philly.com in an e-mail. “For those who haven’t bothered to do their research, ‘white genocide’ is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies … It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I’m glad to have mocked it.”
“White isn’t a race,” he claimed.
But according to the Daily Caller, Ciccariello-Maher not only believes that white is a race, but has made bizarre and violent statements in the past about the white race. The paper reports, “On Feb 3, 2013, the Drexel professor said that ‘Yacub made a lot of white folks.’ According to Nation of Islam theology, Yacub is a black scientist who created the white race to be a ‘race of devils.’”
Likewise, in June of 2015, Ciccariello-Maher tweeted, “Abolish the White Race.”
Still, he claims that the people to have taken his Christmas tweets seriously are those who are themselves racists. “This satirical tweet became fodder for online white supremacists to systematically harass me,” he told The Inquirer. “I teach regularly on the history of genocidal practices like colonialism and slavery — genocides carried out by the very same kind of violent racists who are smearing me today.”
Ciccariello-Maher even opined that Drexel’s statement about his comments is “worrying.” “While Drexel has been nothing but supportive in the past, this statement is worrying. While upholding my right to free expression, the statement refers to my (satirical) tweets as ‘utterly reprehensible,’” he wrote. “White supremacy is on the rise, and we must fight it by any means. In that fight, universities will need to choose whether they are on the side of free expression and academic debate, or on the side of the racist mob.”
“This statement — despite a tepid defense of free speech — sends a chilling message and sets a frightening precedent,” he said.
Yet, for leftists, free speech at higher education institutions appears to be a fluid concept depending on the content of that speech.
For example, when Babson College students Edward Tomasso and Parker Rand-Ricciardi celebrated Donald Trump’s election by driving in a vehicle waving a Trump flag onto the campus of the all-female Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton’s alma mater, they were accused of racism, faced disciplinary action, and were investigated by campus officials.
Despite the lack of evidence that the two students conducted themselves inappropriately, Babson president Kerry Healey apologized to the Wellesley College community, claiming that the students’ behavior was “at a minimum, insensitive, unacceptable, and contrary to our core values.”
Similarly, earlier this year, Marquette University moved to suspend and fire Professor John McAdams for supporting a student who was belittled by a teaching assistant in 2014 for attempting to defend marriage as an institution between a man and woman. Junior faculty member Cheryl Abbate accused the student, who secretly recorded the exchange, of racism when he defended man-woman marriage and said the topic was somehow inappropriate for her ethics class. She said, “You can have whatever opinions you want but I can tell you right now, in this class homophobic comments, racist comments, and sexist comments will not be tolerated.” She even suggested he drop the class.
In response to Abbate’s reaction to the student, Professor McAdams wrote on his blog that she was “using a tactic typical among liberals now. Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed ‘offensive’ and need to be shut up.”
Unfortunately, McAdam’s defense of the student landed him in hot water. The school announced that a “diverse” faculty committee recommended to the university president that McAdams be suspended without pay from April 1 through the fall of 2016 and that he lose his job unless he admits “guilt” and apologizes “within the next two weeks.” Specifically, it demanded that McAdams acknowledge that his November 9, 2014 blog post “was reckless and incompatible with the mission and values of Marquette University” and that he expresses “deep regret for the harm suffered by our former graduate student and instructor, Ms. Abbate.”
In yet another example of leftist intolerance of conservative free speech, DePaul University banned conservative pundit Ben Shapiro from speaking on campus. But that was not enough. Students at the University of Wisconsin petitioned to revoke the charter of the Young Americans for Freedom for having the audacity to invite Shapiro to speak on campus. The petition by the “Student Coalition for Progress” read, “Shapiro has used his following and nationally syndicated media presence to deny the realities of systematic and institutional violences against Black and Brown people, sexual assault survivors, Muslims, LGBTQIA+ people, people with low income, people with differing abilities, undocumented immigrants, and anyone that is systematically targeted along identity lines.”
But Professor Ciccariello-Maher believes that his “all I want for Christmas is white genocide” tweet is not only protected free speech but that it did not warrant the critical statement issued by his employer (Drexel).
