Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher has caused a firestorm of controversy by tweeting how “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He then followed up with a taunting clarification that “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed.” Drexel has said that it respects the professor’s right to free speech but has called him into for a meeting. Ciccariello-Maher maintains that he was using satire to taunt white supremacists.
The university denounced the comments as “utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University.”
Ciccariello-Maher said that racists need to get a sense of humor and that “It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I’m glad to have mocked it.” The question raised by some academics is whether the reversal of the satirical tweet — calling for the genocide of blacks — would be treated as a matter of free speech or discipline by the university.
As we have previously discussed (including the recent story involving an Oregon professor), there remains an uncertain line in what language is protected for teachers in their private lives. The incident also raises what some faculty have complained is a double or at least uncertain standard. We have previously discussed controversies at the University of California and Boston University, where there have been criticism of a double standard, even in the face of criminal conduct. There were also such incident at the University of London involving Bahar Mustafa as well as one involving a University of Pennsylvania professor.
As is well known on this blog, I tend to favor free speech rights in all of these cases. In my view, this view does seem to be satire — bad satire but satire all the same. However, the standard remains entirely uncertain for academics as to whether their conduct or comments outside of school will be the basis for discipline. As a private institution, Drexel falls under a different standard than schools like the University of Oregon. Yet, free speech demands a bright line to avoid a chilling effect on those who want to challenge the status quo or popular views. Academics often write to challenge students and the public in exploring the edges of norms and beliefs.
What do you think?
If we are being made a minority in all Western countries, is it really a joke? It’s quite likely that Professor Mahar is right and white genocide is happening world wide.
There is no white genocide.
“There is no white genocide.”
Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘white genocide’.
There are some explainers on the internet who claim that the professor’s ‘three dimensional chess’ satire referred to fears by some of the alt right that the white race is threatened by interbreeding between whites and blacks.
Apparently the joke is that the professor in referring to ‘white genocide’ was expressing the wish that people meet, fall in love, and have babies.
That interpretation of the professor’s ‘three dimensional chess’ satire sounds pretty reasonable till we consider the professor’s clarification: “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed.”
So which is it? Is the professor wishing that whites and blacks fall in love or is the professor wishing that blacks hack white people to pieces?
With ‘three dimensional chess’ satire like the professor’s I am surprised that anyone claims to know that the professor meant or that anyone feels safe.
The professor produces a witless emotional outburst and then engages in improvisations to save face. No need to bother about what he ‘means’. He’s a dick.
I note that the WAPO in the article “Professor keeps job after ‘white genocide’ tweet, but conservative media continues to go after liberal targets” and Salon in the article “White supremacist Christmas!”
both managed to discusses the Drexel twitter incident without once mentioning the follow up tweet: “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a very good thing indeed.”
It seems to me that it is impossible to evaluate this incident without considering the follow-up tweet.
Even the strongest argument that the tweets are “three dimensional chess” satire has to somehow incorporate and explain the clarification: “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a very good thing indeed.”
To fail to mention the clarification by the professor turns the supposed news article into propaganda.
I am sick and tired of the Shrillery Clinton defense of “I didn’t intend to _______________ (fill in the offense).” And this case has ZERO to do with free speech.
All you have to do is ask yourself what Drexel University would have done if Ciccariello-Maher had tweeted “All I Want for Christmas is Black Genocide” or “All I Want for Christmas is Muslim Genocide.”
Of course you know the answer. Ciccariello-Maher would have been immediately fired and there would scarcely be any discussion about the matter.
In short, this is simply an issue of Leftist double standards and Leftist hypocrisy and nothing more. If a group is on the enemy list of the Leftists, then the Leftists can say or write or do anything they want without consequences. And if you so much as state or suggest anything that could possibly offend the friends of the Leftists, why then the Stalinist vengeance will be brought down upon you: “To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed – there is nothing sweeter in the world.” That’s the Leftist way of destroying civilization.
Sorry, please delete the blog. TKS.
Indeed, that is purely asinine. When you get into such nonsense–quite sophomoric for a professor–you are interfering with your one (hopefully_ rational thoughts.
https://thetruthoncommonsense.com
Classic case of :
“Poe’s law is an Internet adage that states that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers or viewers as a sincere expression of the parodied views.”
Poe’s law – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
Yup, he was Poed.
Wow. Such current thought.
You can google and wiki at the same time, say nothing and feel so smart.
“Let me tell you something about white folks at their worst: when they get scared people are trying to kill them just because of who they are … they don’t tear up their own neighborhoods or burn down their own communities. They come to the neighborhoods of the people who threaten them and burn THEIR communities down and kill THEM. They have burned down whole CONTINENTS. If you don’t believe me, just ask the Indians.
If you manage to make this all about race and some American Hitler decides to put y’all on railroad cars leading to some camp, me and my white-a$$ed friends will have to be the ones out blowing up the train tracks to keep that from happening. And, I’ll tell you, I’d really rather stay home than get shot at because somebody was stupid enough to buy into some racist’s idea of how to view the world.
This ain’t about black or white; it’s about good versus evil and ALL lives matter. And, you forget that at your own peril.”
– Michael Brian Vanderboegh, Pinson, Alabama, http://www.sipseystreetirregulars-blogspot-com, 06/12/2015.
They come to the neighborhoods of the people who threaten them and burn THEIR communities down and kill THEM.
Um, no. The riots in Detroit in 1967 were perpetrated by residents of the neighborhoods in question. There are few metropolitan centers wherein the haut bourgeois have cared to work for vigorous policing of slum neighborhoods. They just move away from the problem.
The commenters here form a Ship of Fools…
“The commenters here form a Ship of Fools…”
That is on a good day, and that diversity of view is the main reason we come.
Unfortunately, some days it goes down hill from there.
LOL. Bravo!!
BFM,
You come here so that your elucidations sound half-way smart.
Kicking the can is all you do, while wrapping the action in swaths of verbal pretense.
“BFM, … You come here so that your elucidations sound half-way smart. … Kicking the can is all you do, while wrapping the action in swaths of verbal pretense.”
As much as I enjoy being the center of attention, this blog has never made me the topic of conversation. I am simply not the issue.
Ad hominem attack is the clearest possible proof that the attacker has nothing relevant to say on the topic under discussion.
“BFM, … You come here so that your elucidations sound half-way smart. … Kicking the can is all you do, while wrapping the action in swaths of verbal pretense.”
The issues is not whether I am smart. The issue is whether you can refute the arguments I have fairly presented for everyones review and consideration.
C’mon BFM; you love your long sentences meaning nothing; rewording others thoughts, wrapped in paper of your own.
That’s all I’m talking about.
Chill and keep going; it’s just obvious and I thought you might want to know this.
”
“BFM, … You come here so that your elucidations sound half-way smart. … Kicking the can is all you do, while wrapping the action in swaths of verbal pretense.” The issues is not whether I am smart. The issue is whether you can refute the arguments I have fairly presented for everyones review and consideration. …. C’mon BFM; you love your long sentences meaning nothing; rewording others thoughts, wrapped in paper of your own. ….. That’s all I’m talking about. …. Chill and keep going; it’s just obvious and I thought you might want to know this.”
So do you have any thing to say on “White genocide”, “three dimensional chess satire”, academic freedom, freedom of speech, or any of several other topics discussed on this thread?
Anything? Anything at all? Do you have anything of interest to contribute?
Ship of Fools:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_fools
It’s satire like Mein Kampf is satire. Like that book, it’s a calculated coulé designed to provoke. He’s an admitted radical and he “clarified” his call to arms by specifying exactly which group of whites he wants to be massacred. That’s not Jonathan Swift; that’s Stalin. Language is a malleable dagger to a Marxist.
Well said, Mespo. That’s the way I see it.
Am I the only one who notices this guys Hitler/porn mustache? He should be fired for that.
More porn than Hitler-esque.
Completely irrelevant. But then only someone who obsesses over irrelevancies rather than substance bothers to take notice of such things.
HELP! HELP! I’m being stalked by a vapid, humorless, ideological, skeptical, faux scientist. I sense he’s an old timer w/ a grudge. But, if there is a honky genocide, maybe he’ll volunteer to take one for the team.
I am no more ideological than are you. Have no idea what constitutes an old timer to you. But whether I am an old timer or not is yet another irrelevancy, since pointing out a person’s age has no bearing on the truth of a person’s remarks. Never claimed to be a scientist so the faux scientist charge is simply wrong, though I am a retired science teacher. I practice scientific skepticism as a critical thinking tool, hence the pseudonym. Saying I am humorless on the basis of one data point says something not at all flattering about your rationality and judgement-forming capabilities. No, I will not volunteer to take one for the team in the event of any genocide, honky or otherwise, though no one was seriously advocating for white genocide, hence the reason the professor’s remark was satire (albeit a rather bad attempt at satire). As for vapid, you’re entitled to your opinion. I suspect, however, that the vapid remark is just a case of projection since you so seldom offer anything here that is stimulating or challenging.
I want to rent a theatre near the Drexel tool school and show the movie Blazing Saddles. There are some funny scenes in there which would infringe on civil rights. Like when the Black guy is new to town and asks: Where da Whtie Women At?” Or maybe send free copies of the book Huckleberry Finn to the students and let them read all those epithets. And maybe send the teachers to Nigeria to meet up with Boko Haram. That school needs drill sargeants.
Drexel has a School of Pharmacy. I know 2 people who went to school there to become pharmacists. Being able to count pills is an important skill in our society. We need clear headed professors training pill counters, so I think we should start the purge of white people w/ this sh!tbird.
You’ve confused pharmacists with pharmacy technicians. Pharmacy programs commonly require 90 credits of subject-specific study (not to mention distribution credits and preparatory credits) and a 1-year internship. Pharmacists work in hospitals and in corporate R & D as well as retail.
No doubt, you and Step on toads are one in the same.
The same use of italics, the same smug righteous indignation for provenance of facts and the same complete arrogance that says what only a former agency employee can.
Let me guess you used to work for the “Department of Defense”?
Pharmacists still have a life apart from putting pills in bottles.
the same smug righteous indignation for provenance of facts
Whatever. Get back to me when you’ve figured out what this sentence fragment means.
Thanks for putting a smile on my face.
It’s you that needs to figure out what that “fragment” means.
I’m pretty sure you do.
“One AND the same”, not One IN the same.
Thanks, Professor Foxtrot!
Desperate, I’m a ball buster and I call my pharmacy friends and relatives, pill counters and CPA friends bean counters. That said, while getting a BS from a pharmacy school is rigorous, if you sit down to some vino w/ a retail pharmacist they will admit much of what they do is simply count pills. En vino veritas. What they will also tell you is in the past decade or two being a pharmacist is as dangerous as a convenience/liquor store clerk. A woman I know got robbed twice working @ a Walgreen’s. It wasn’t in a particularly bad neighborhood, either. She had to get out of retail and found a job @ a hospital.
Pharmacy school is a difficult, high-stress physical science education with lots of math, chemistry and physics courses, but I think you’re right that pharmacists end up counting pills for WalMart or CVS with lots of overtime for that six-figure income.
Steve, WalMart, CVS, Walgreen, etc. are notorious for treating their employees like crap. A neighbor kid I know went to the UW School of Pharmacy and worked for a chain right out of school. He hated it. So, he opened a pharmacy in a nearby small town and found a niche. He has expanded into a small chain of ~10-12 stores, all in small towns in southern/central Wisconsin. He focuses on towns that aren’t big enough for the big chains. It is heartening to see that dynamic in today’s culture. He’s a good guy. Treats his employees and customers right.
Is not the word or name “Drexel” the name of a company which makes drills? Any relation?
PC time
Always hard to tell when its going to be PC time at the hard right corral or if it’s another day of PC is sooo Dem.
In any event, chipping away at Freedom of Speech causes avalanches.
The appropriate response to abuses of the First Amendment is more freedom of speech -Turley (paraphrased).
Social ostracism is almost always more powerful and more surgical, and usually but not always more just, than making more laws. And the internet is an excellent place for it to take its course.
.
Sorry,
Social ostracism is almost always more-> Social ostracism is often more[…]Hypocritical horsehockey.
The concept of “The appropriate response to abuses of the First Amendment is more freedom of speech” only ever applies to anti-white anti-Christian anti-American cant.
But violate PC, and the left will try to crush you.
Just ask the law professor in blackface how that ‘more speech’ rule works in real life.
For now, no quarter. Violate the rules and get fired.
There’s no free speech for me, so none for you either.
Make them live by their own rules, as their hero Alinsky advised.
Hypocritical horsehockey.
Uh-huh. We have just come from several months of Trump supporters (correctly) accusing the Dems of needing their smelling salts every time Trump spoke because he, Trump, couldn’t give a fart about PC, and now we have the same people needing their own smelling salts and saying this jerk’s rant is not appropriate speech.
Call him a jerk and be done with it. The world will keep turning.
Problem: labor law in our time and conventions of higher education have given people like this an unearned role in sorting the labor market. TAKE. THEIR, PRIVILEGES. AWAY.
You’re slipping Toads! Lynching would be so much simpler!
Simpler, but that’s not my object. Here’s a program.
1. Hiring an promotion in the civil service is to undertaken through timely examinations. For confidential employees, school teachers, and the academic and student affairs apparat, you can erect a guild pool making use of examinations and then allow discretionary hiring from the guild pool. (NB, civil servants needn’t have tenure. Termination at will, with some whistle-blower protections, should be the rule – more or less). NB: the content of civil service examinations should not be subject to judicial review; they’ve abused the privilege.
2. A federal law governing interstate contracts for educational services (and by interstate, I mean interstate – the school is domiciled in one state and the aspirant client in another). Such a law would limit degree programs in academics and the arts contracted for across jurisdictional lines to 1, 2, 3, and 4 year programs and require that if the school offers a two year degree, it must offer the one year degree; and that if the school offers the 3 year degree, it must offer the 1 year degree and 2 year degree or eschew the lower division; and that if the school offers the 4 year degree, it must offer the 3 year degree. Doctoral degrees would consist of a dissertation composed atop the 4 year degree. All academic degrees and concentrations offered would have to be nominated according to a controlled vocabulary specified in the statute.
3. A similar federal law regulating interstate contracts for vocational subjects offer degrees on a plan similar to academic degree programs, offer certificates of less than 1 academic year, offer certificates of < 1 calendar year, or offer 1 or 2 calendar year degrees. Programs of classroom study exceeding 3 academic years or 2 calendar years would be limited to medicine and a few peri-medical occupations (optometry, physical therapy, dentisitry, podiatry, chiropractic). The standard program for medicine and allied trades would be a preparatory certificate, followed by a degree from a professional school, followed by an internship and residency. Veterinary medicine would look about the same. Again, all degrees and certificats offered across state lines would have to respect a controlled vocabulary.
4. A similar law regulating legal training. Set the standard program at preparatory certificates which could be completed in 18 months, a bog-standard law degree of one calendar year, and a clerkship of two years or longer. Supplementary legal training would be in the form of certificates in subdisciplines of law, a judge’s degree requiring 9 months of study, and a legal scholar’s degree requiring about 2 additional years.
5. Required disclosure to aspirants to admission to dissertation programs. The school would have to publish a fact sheet indicating the current employment (where verifiable) of every person admitted to the program in the previous 40 years, and the amount of time they’ve spent in academic employment (pro-rating part time and seasonal contracts).
6. Repeal federal employment discrimination law. Employers recruiting across state lines would be required to publish an annual report on their demographic stock and flow, but that would be it. Some species of workplace harassment might be defined as torts. Employment of certain sorts of persons (illegal aliens, juveniles under 14, and people who’ve had a full disability award) would continue to be proscribed. Retaliation would remain a tort. Otherwise, allow employers to hire, fire, promote, and demote per their discretion.
7. Make grants of tenure unenforceable in federal courts, and offers of tenure across state lines unlawful.
8. Follow up state statutes to have intra-state contracts for educational services conform to interstate ones.
9. Amendments to state corporation law which would require (with few exceptions) a standard model of corporate organization for educational institutions at all levels. The institution would start out with a foundational (self-regenerating) board. After 20 years, the votes on the board would be partitioned between the self-regenerating component of the board and members elected by alumni, intitally at a 6-1 ratio. Every few years, a self-regenerator vote would give way and a new alumni trustee elected until the board was entirely composed of elected trustees 60 years from the school’s foundation. Aspirants to the board would register their candidacy with a state board of elections and the ballots with a prospectus mailed out from the state board to registered voters who received a diploma from the school in question. All trustees would be elected at the same time on a quadrennial cycle. Community college boards would be elected by the general electorate in the college’s geographic catchment. State college and university boards would be elected much the same way as private college boards, bar that the foundational members would be appointed by the governor for fixed terms.
10. An end to federal grants to higher education, an end to federal grants to students, an end to subsidized student loans, and a reduction to the workable minimum the special protection offered to creditors who’ve offered student loans.
11. An end to appropriations to state colleges and universities from the states general fund. Instead, the schools would be financed by voucher redemptions. A special state fund would be constructed from a surtax on incomes which would have an exemption encoded within it which would exclude the least affluent 60%. Students would be awarded 5 years worth of vouchers according to a composite score constructed of their high school transcript and college boards or according to their performance on a general baccalaureate exam. They could claim their voucher by paying a fee (which might be financed with bank loans) derived from their family’s history as taxpayers in state (positing that a family with 14 years residency would pay nothing, 7 years residency would pay half face value, and no history full face value). The student’s would submit one application to the state office with a card ranking their preferences among the state’s schools. They’d be admitted according to a queueing procedure in which student’s with the highest composite scores receive priority.
12. Restructuring of programs in social work, teacher-traning, and library administration dictated by state law. Social work would be dismantled as an independent profession and replaced with programs in public and philanthropic administration, clinical psychology and counseling, and specialized police investigations. The MLS degree would be replaced with brief certificate programs in museum and library administration. Teacher training faculties would be limited to that, with other functions discontinued or transferred to faculties in public policy, public and philanthropic administration, or professional psychology. Teaching certificates would be specialized with a baccalaureate examination and a type-specific set of prerequisites required for admissions. They’d consist of 4-12 classroom courses (depending on type) followed by an internship and stipended apprenticeship, and take 2-3 years to complete.
This should see a radical reduction in the demand for higher education services, a reduction in the importance of educational credentials, &c.
PC, otherwise known as being polite or diplomatic where I come from, has been around a long time, KCFleming. Violate PC with Andrew Jackson and he wouldn’t back down until you were dead after a duel and he had the lead in him to prove it.
Care to call someone’s wife a bigamist or someone a poltroon, coward and equivocator? While it may be true, it isn’t very polite. Consider Jackson’s wife, Rachel, who was still married to Capt. Lewis Robards when she married Old Hickory, and Charles Dickinson’s lack of PC toward the couple:
“The controversy surrounding their marriage remained a sore point for Jackson, who deeply resented attacks on his wife’s honor. By May 1806, Charles Dickinson had published an attack on Jackson in the local newspaper, and it resulted in a written challenge from Jackson to a duel. Since Dickinson was considered an expert shot, Jackson determined it would be best to let Dickinson turn and fire first, hoping that his aim might be spoiled in his quickness; Jackson would wait and take careful aim at Dickinson. Dickinson did fire first, hitting Jackson in the chest. The bullet that struck Jackson was so close to his heart that it was never safely removed. Under the rules of dueling, Dickinson had to remain still as Jackson took aim and shot and killed him. Jackson’s behavior in the duel outraged men of honor in Tennessee, who called it a brutal, cold-blooded killing and saddled Jackson with a reputation as a violent, vengeful man. As a result, he became a social outcast.”
Social outcast or not, Dickinson’s mouth put him six feet.
PC, otherwise known as being polite or diplomatic where I come from, has been around a long time,
My grandmother was polite and diplomatic in manner and degree you could never approach. It would never have occurred to her that someone should be fired from a civil service job for appearing at a cocktail party dressed as Eddie Cantor.
Context counts here. It would be interesting to see who took the tweets seriously.
At least the professor is standing behind the comment as political sarcasm. Here’s a good example of the opposite:
“She has to go to jail.”
— Trump, on Clinton, before election
“Nah, forget it. That plays great before the election, now we don’t care.”
— Trump, on Clinton, after election
At least the professor is standing behind the comment as political sarcasm.
Pick a decent cause every once in a while. You dine on s*** sandwiches.
It was possibly satire, until the “To clarify…” follow up tweet.
Why should taxpayers subsidize institutions that hire lunatics like this?
Why is Drexel U tolerating behavior that creates a hostile environment for white students?
Why is Drexel U tolerating behavior that creates a hostile environment for white students?
The faculty and administration fancies they’re goodwhites and their students are badwhites. Their self-image is built around contempt for their clientele. Other occupations where this is so include the mental health trade, the media (to a degree), electoral politics (to a degree), and the legal profession (in some measure).
KCFleming — Why do you assume that taxpayers are subsidizing this university? Isn’t Drexell a private institution? Did you even research whether Drexel is subsidized in any amount by the taxpayer before you wrote that statement? If so, perhaps you’d be considerate enough to provide the evidence.
Taxpayers are providing effective subsidies. For it to be otherwise,
1. Drexel would have to refuse all federal research grants on behalf of its faculty
2. Drexel would have to refuse to admit students who received Pell grants and the like.
3. Drexel would have to refuse to admit students who contracted for federally-guaranteed student loans.
There are almost no schools whose refusal is so comprehensive. As private colleges go, Grove City might be close.
I think the comment was satire. It requires some background knowledge and is pretty highbrow. That said, it’s an extremely bad taste. And I think we have to be wary of a double standard. There’s no way he could get away with a satirical joke of the same nature about blacks or gays. White men are the victim of a lot of reverse discrimination these days. The so-called protected classes are given too much leeway. I think this professor needs to be punished. There are limits to what speech is acceptable. For instance, sexual harassment involving speech is not acceptable. And the university punishing him may also be considered an exercise of free speech, if your interpretation of free speech is such that even jokes this crude count as protected speech.