Midwestern State University in Texas Professor Nathan Jun has triggered a free speech fight in Texas after a series of unhinged, hateful statements on social media. Wearing an Antifa teeshirt on social media, Jun has lashed out at police, capitalists, and politicians. His views are extreme and offensive. They are also, in my view, entirely protected. Much like the banning of Louis Farrakhan discussed yesterday, Jun is the test of our true commitment to free speech. By supporting this right to speak, we support the right of everyone, including the vast majority who view Jun’s comments as deeply unsettling and obnoxious.
I recently testified in the Senate on Antifa and its growing popularity on our campuses with both faculty and students, including my own campus. Antifa is an openly violent and vehemently anti-free speech movement — views that should make it anathema for any intellectual or academic.
Jun however is the very face of Antifa: intolerant, intimidating, and rageful. Even among extremists within Antifa, Jun is a standout. He has called for the abolishing of police and thrilled supporters in calling for the killing of officers. Last month, KFDX noted comments by Jun, including “I want the entire world to burn until the last cop is strangled with the intestines of the last capitalist, who is strangled in turn with the intestines of the last politician.”
The line was clearly a paraphrasing of the famous statement by Denis Diderot that “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
Hundreds have supported Jun including a graduate student association that suggested that the opposition to his comments were the result of anti-semitism and attacks on “otherism”:
“[Dr. Jun] is not a terrorist or anything of the kind. He is of Polish Jewish descent, and the grandson of Holocaust survivors. Given Dr. Jun’s background, we cannot help but see the anti-Semitic overtones of an angry conservative mob in a region politically dominated by evangelical Christianity, singling out Dr. Jun as an enemy ‘other.'”
Putting aside his hatred for police and capitalists, what is interesting about this statement is Jun’s desire to have a system without politicians. He stated “I do long to live in a world in which we no longer have cops, which we no longer have capitalists and which we no longer have politicians. Because those are my political beliefs and I own them and I make no apologies for those beliefs.”
Of course a system without politicians would mean a country without democratic processes. That would seem to be a call for authoritarian rule or the “withering away” of the State under Marxism. Friedrich Engels stated in Anti-Dühring:
The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away.
Again, such views should be entirely protected. ndeed I view them as welcomed on a campus where the diversity of ideas is the very foundation for learning. Unfortunately, Jun’s apparent embrace of Antifa puts him at odds with such diversity of thought. We have been discussing the comprehensive effort, from classrooms to newsrooms, to enforce a new orthodoxy in public discourse. Antifa furthers this movement by adding a menacing element of violence. It often seeks to trigger violent confrontations, particularly with the police. It is all part of achieving what Antifa calls “no platforming,” or denying people with opposing views the ability to be heard.
Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray, the author of a book entitled “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” is one of the chief enablers of these protesters. Bray speaks positively of the effort to supplant traditional views of free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He defines anti-fascists as “illiberal” who reject the notion that far right views deserve to “coexist” with opposing views.
Jun’s unhinged ravings come right out of the “Antifa Handbook.” Yet, while supporting the most prominent anti-free speech movement in the United States, Jun has denounced the university for failing to support his right to free speech while seeking money on GoFundMe:
“Throughout all of this, my employer exhibited an utterly callous disregard for my safety and well-being, making no effort whatsoever to defend me (either privately or publicly) or to protect my rights more generally. Instead, the president of the university administration eventually broke her prolonged radio silence by sending me a terse email alleging that I had ‘violated the university’s academic freedom and responsibility policy’ and implicitly threatening me with reprisal if I continued to speak out publicly on issues of race and racism.”
Jun has objected that people are calling for his own death after he called for the death of every single police officer.
Putting aside his glaring hypocrisy over free speech, Jun is indeed protected by both free speech and academic freedom. To its credit, the Foundation for Individual Rights for Education (FIRE) has helped him and sent a letter to Midwestern University President Suzanne Shipley to defend his right to speak.
This month in a Facebook post on October 1, Shipley called Nun’s post “abhorrent and disgusting,” as well as “antithetical to our institutional values.” She added:
“That being said, please know this: we have conferred with and are being capably advised by the office of the Attorney General of the State of Texas. We are committed to monitoring this situation with their guidance and will take decisive action if a line is crossed beyond that of speech protected by the First Amendment. Additionally, no students will be required to enroll in or complete Professor Jun’s courses. Alternatives will be provided even now if the student requests them.”
So long as Jun is speaking outside of the school as a private person, I do not see the line being crossed. I only wish that Jun showed the same tolerance for opposing views. Instead he has openly supported Antifa which has engaged in violence against speakers and fellow academics as part of its “no platforming” agenda. However, we cannot let his hateful and hypocritical statements deter us from protecting the values that Antifa seeks to destroy. Ironically, his case could be important to support free speech against people like himself. He can then continue to spew his intolerant ideas and thrill supporters with his violent ideations. Jun is the price we pay for free speech.
I think it’s safe to say that Jun is a very unhappy person as a result of his deep seeded psychosis.
Bingo! RHODES. Bingo!
Jun just made the best argument against tenure that could have been made.
I cannot imagine being stuck with an employee who made my customers fearful of their lives.
Nathan Jun should not be censored or arrested for his screed. That’s what free speech means, protection from persecution from the government. I don’t think social media should censor in any way.
As a business owner, an employee’s public behavior and statements reflect upon the business. If their private speech makes your customers fearful, or makes you liable for a lawsuit, then you should fire that employee. For instance, what if an employee at a carpet cleaner company said that he did not believe in private property ownership. If you see something you like, you should take it. Would you send him unattended into a wealthy client’s home? How many clients would hire your company if he proclaimed not only his opinions, but mentioned his connection with your company?
As a parent, I would be afraid for my child’s safety, sending him to a college who would hire someone with homicidal maniacal fantasies about people with our values. If that’s the sort of person the university believes is qualified to teach students, then I’ll spend my hard earned money elsewhere.
Until and unless parents vote with their feet, these universities will continue to be abusive Democrat SJW madrassas rather than institutions of higher learning. The reputation of Ivy League and many of the rest of them should be in the toilet by now. They should be sending out coupons to try to boost enrollment.
Stop wasting your money. Spend your savings on universities with a good, solid reputation for higher learning, excellent, marketable degrees, and no abuse of conservatives on campus. Students are supposed to be there to learn a career path, not become little Oktoberists for Lenin.
Karen, you’re mostly right. Unfortunately the employee works for a public university which cannot do what a private business can do. A private business can fire an employee for their speech, but a government organization such as a state university cannot. That’s the distinction.
“I do long to live in a world in which we no longer have cops, which we no longer have capitalists and which we no longer have politicians. Because those are my political beliefs and I own them and I make no apologies for those beliefs.”
Interesting. Socialist dictatorships absolutely have cops. And politicians. Capitalism means the freedom to sell your own labor or ideas. So without capitalism, you’d be forced into some sort of slavery, or you’d be subsistence hunting without even the right to barter for hides for winter. After all, bartering is a form of capitalism.
No law enforcement means the rule of the club. I wonder if roving gangs would be considered their own form of law enforcement?
In the meantime, we’d all better watch the Purge to prepare for the new Leftist world, in case Democrats win the election. The Green New Deal would absolutely crash the economy, destroy jobs, travel, and business. Reparations is a racist fine on skin color, and indicates out of all the different people on planet Earth, blacks, alone, cannot be expected to take care of themselves. There is, of course, no talk about how blacks still own slaves in Africa today. Amazingly, someone could survive the Holodomor or the Jewish Holocaust, or the Irish potato famine, but their descendants had better pay up to black people. This Balkanizes everyone based on skin color and ancestral grievance. Defund the police – look at the streets burning and all the rioting and looting, while people gleefully yell, “reparations!” as they run out with Gucci. Look at the prisons emptying. The push to decriminalize drugs has made the homeless addict crisis explode. Decades pass and we still can’t seem to figure out that people who are so mentally ill that they end up on the streets need residential care, even if it requires an involuntary commitment. Instead, the Left considers it humane to enable people to pass out in the bushes.
If people vote for the party of lawlessness, crime, and policies that destroy the economy, they are really going to miss those low unemployment numbers. All the work, the jobs, the booming economy. The Middle East peace deals that did not require pallets of cash given to a terrorist nation that still begins each day chanting for our death. Money can’t buy love, Obama. But it apparently can buy votes.
As soon as the people figure out they can vote themselves money from the treasury, a country is doomed.
if “I want the entire world to burn until the last cop is strangled with the intestines of the last capitalist, who is strangled in turn with the intestines of the last politician” is free speech as Prof Turley say’s it is, then I want Jun to first be knee capped then shot so he bleeds to rather slowly to death!
And that is my free speech statement.
Thank you Prof. Turley for supporting my free speech!
If a cop shoots this idiot can the cop claim self defense?
Anti-fa will soon stand for Aunty Facsist, Uncle Fascist, Brother Fascist, etc. Animal Farm stuff.
It’s amusing. Arts and sciences faculties who haven’t granted tenure to a single identifiable Republican in the last thirty years will accept this individual into their graduate programs and tolerate his issues until his dissertation is signed, will give him the references which allow him to be hired, will hire him, and will grant him tenure.
Why do we allocate to these people the social function of sorting the labor market?
Art Deco x,
Party affiliation has no relevance on this. How do you know that a republican hasn’t been granted tenure in the arts and sciences faculties? What’s your proof that it is true?
Party affiliation has no relevance on this.
It’s a marker of people’s cultural affiliations. You’re either a dimwit or a poseur. Which is it?
How do you know that a republican hasn’t been granted tenure in the arts and sciences faculties? What’s your proof that it is true?
From being alive. From pushing sixty. From having wasted my best years working for such institutions. From not having lived under a rock.
My favorite example was from a private college heavily dependent on their alumni and one notably more tolerant than a similar college 20 miles away Over the period running from 1986 to 2011, they’d granted tenure to over 100 arts and sciences faculty. An irritated alumni organization went to the two local boards of elections and pulled the buff cards of the entire faculty. Of those 100-odd faculty, six were enrolled Republicans (in those predominantly Republican counties). Of the six, one was a flag-waving multi-culti leftoid who had indubitably checked the wrong box on the form or enrolled as a Republican as an ironic prank; one was a supercilious social psychologist whose general-audience writings suggested much the same (he’s since died); one was an open-borders libertarian nestled in the econ department; one was a biologist who was the most diffident soul you could imagine, someone guaranteed to cause no trouble; one was a specialist in early music and also a quiet conflict averse man; one was a political theoretician who was subject to repeated rounds of harassment by the administration. NB, faculty up for tenure during the years running from 1997 to 2009 were drawn from the age cohorts (1958 to 1970) who tended to vote Republican as youths. Out of more than 50 faculty granted tenure in arts and sciences during those years, who were the Republicans granted tenure? The two faux Republicans (in psychology and education) and the guy in biology who looked on the verge of tears all the time.
“ Again, such views should be entirely protected. ndeed I view them as welcomed on a campus where the diversity of ideas is the very foundation for learning. Unfortunately, Jun’s apparent embrace of Antifa puts him at odds with such diversity of thought. ”
This guy is what an actual anarchist is. Most conservatives don’t have a full grasp of what anarchism or antifa really is. Just like the fact that they can’t seem to distinguish between Marxism, socialism and it’s many iterations, fascism, and communism. Most often they group all of these as one homogenous entity when they seek to label leftists or liberals.
President Obama was often described as Marxist, socialist, Muslim, communist in one sentence. Smh. Obviously most have no idea what many of the “ists” and “isms” they label others really mean.
But Turley is right. His speech is protected, but not immune from the consequences of practicing it. Just like those on the right who decry being called racists because they say racist things as an affront to their free speech rights. They too can exercise it like this guy has, but they are not protected from the consequences of speaking it as in criticism and blowback.
Speech is protected. Inciting to kill, is not. The distinction must be made, irrespective of which extreme presents it. Using quotes from Diderot does not disguise the intent. Free speech protects our society, however, our society is responsible for that very freedom. The fabric of the extreme right and extreme left is more susceptible to these clear incitements than the vast majority of Americans. Every American must enjoy the freedom of speech but every American must be protected from it when it represents the insanity of advocating the killing of anyone. There are those on both extremes that only need an idiot like this to push them over the edge. There are no absolutes when it comes to freedom. Society created and protects our freedoms and therefore must define and protect its people.
Isaac go read Brandenberg v Ohio if you want some more education into the American law side of your dual Canadian American nationality.
The related cases may shock you for how wide our range of free speech goes even into threats
take a look at Virginia v. Black (2003), that a cross lighting was not a threat but rather protected free speech
Kurtz
A cross lighting is a long way from advising, inciting, exclaiming to kill cops. Lighting a cross on someone’s property is trespass and a disgusting act. When one is part of a group and incites to violence, killing, destruction of property, that person is an accomplice. It is against the law to threaten the life of someone. Doing it through a publication does not allow it to be a free speech protected item. The same is true in Canada as here in the US, and in most countries around the world. The professor could pull a Trump and say he was just being sarcastic but he also could be nailed for stepping outside of the frontiers of the freedom of speech territory. If you yell fire in a crowded theatre and nobody gets hurt, it’s still a crime. If you joke about a bomb on an airplane, a crime. etc. Brandenberg Shmandenberg.
svelaz for once i agree, the antifa are basically anarchists.
socialism and communism are fundamentally different, at least the praxis of communism, because they both call for a government
now for my own opinion:
nutjob anarchists don’t want any laws at all. they are mad dogs, rabid animals
for the good of society they should all be executed by the government as terrorists, for the protection of law order and just society
“decry being called racists because they say racist things as an affront to their free speech rights”
It’s all about context.
For example, when someone is accused of being a racist because they say all lives matter.
Or being called a racist for disagreeing with Obama because he’s half white and half black.
I can go on and on with the list from Chapter 27 of the Buttercup Micro-Aggession Bible.
Free speech extends to death threats? I had always thought the limits were inciting such violence on others.
Brandenberg v Ohio defines a wide latitude. Look that up and it will put you on to other cases, too. Its actually surprising how wide is our range of free speech where threats are concerned,
Dont worry about this small fry loser antifa freak. Go after the university dons, the admins, who run these fake socalled nonprofits, don’t pay their fair share of taxes, including most of all property taxes on their hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate around this country
Mr. Kurtz, why would the university be held accountable? This is obviously the guy’s personal views. Plus this emphasizes Turley’s point that despite the despicable comments he made they are protected and the university really can’t do much about it. A private school could, but not a public one.
i am not tying the university to this despicable anarchist creature. i am saying that universities both public and private need to pay their fair share of taxes and quit masquerading as nonprofits.
they especially need to open their wallets and pay property taxes, this is a despicable racket when it comes to that and i have produced an economic study before that I wont bother to link at the moment since nobody bothered with it last time, but the numbers are considerable
they are parasites on the towns that lick their boots like they are gods
they also profoundly fail in their educational missions, across the board, the whole lot of them
Mr. Kurtz, why would the university be held accountable?
Because their institutional culture provides for him
Peter, this is a common-and-garden state college with 5,300 undergraduates. You have for your undergraduate clientele faculty positions which amount to about 425 fte. It’s not a school which recruits people who are satisfactory prospects for advanced liberal education. It recruits youths who might benefit from additional vocational instruction and to augment the human capital available in the Wichita Falls commuter belt.
1. “Additional human capital” means a business school, a nursing school, and perhaps a number of other things like programs in physical education / kinesiology / exercise science, information technology, clinical laboratory sciences, criminal justice.
2. It may also mean paper-hoop programs generating by occupational licensing and certification requirements (e.g. a multiform teacher training program and a social work program).
3. In the realm of academics and the arts (and recalling that many and perhaps most state colleges were normal schools a generation ago), you’d want subjects commonly taught in high schools (English, history, mathematics, biology, chemistry, studio art, music, Spanish).
4. Philosophy is a niche major which tends to attract people who are at home with conceptual thinking, and such people are typically found at schools with more astringent admissions standards. Liberal education is properly provided for subjects common in high schools and subjects with the most populous constituency (biology, psychology, political science / IR, English, speech communications and rhetoric). You’d only have a philosophy faculty if you were putting together a serious core curriculum. You’d be hard put to find a serious core curriculum anywhere, much less a common-and-garden state college. If you allocate 30% of your faculty positions to manpower to fulfill distribution credits (all of which are earned in academics and the arts) then allocated 35% of the remainder to academics and the arts as opposed to occupational schools, you’d devote about 235 faculty positions to academics and the arts. If these were distributed among disciplines according to undergraduate degree distributions nationally, you’d allocate 2.5 faculty positions to the philosophy department. Except that this isn’t the sort of school where even that many is an optimal allocation.
5. If you had 2.5 positions to allocate, why would you allocate one to Nathan Jun, who is a specialist in political philosophy? You’d allocate them to more foundational subdisciplines (logic, epistemology, metaphysics) or those with more encompassing concerns (ethics), or with those which take into consideration that your philosophy faculty has been dumped in the English department (aesthetics). If you had a political science department, you might hire him as one of your resident political theory specialists (if you could afford such). However, were you to do that, why would you hire someone who trafficked in fringe theory. This man has published dozens of articles promoting anarchism; a more onanistic exercise is hard to imagine.
6. All of which is to say his hiring and retention are not something faculty and administrators concerned with properly husbanding their resources and curating their institution would do. It is an upraised middle finger at the suckers in Texas who granted a charter to that college and have provided the corporate architecture and supplementary funding to keep it alive.
7. How to fix this problem? CLOSE THEM DOWN, pour encouraget les autres.
This is a video of the author Rod Dreher talking about his latest book: Live Not By Lies. I’m about 1/3 the way through the book and it completely describes how soft totalitarianism from the Left is taking over our culture today. He does describe President Trump as an authoritarian, but he acknowledges he limits that authority to our government institutions. Totalitarianism extends to every aspect of life. This is threat we are facing today.
So in our timidity, let us each make a choice: whether to remain consciously a servant of falsehood (of course, it is not out of inclination but to feed one’s family that one raises one’s children in the spirit of lies), or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect from one’s children and contemporaries. And from that day onward he:
– will not sign, write or print in any way a single phrase which in his opinion distorts the truth
– will utter such a phrase neither in private conversation nor in public, neither on his own behalf nor at the prompting of someone else, neither in the role of agitator, teacher, educator, nor as an actor
– will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea in which he can see a distortion of the truth, whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science or music
– will not cite out of context, either orally or in writing, a single quotation to please someone, to feather his own nest, to achieve success in his work, if he does not completely share the idea which is quoted, or if it does not accurately reflect the matter at issue
– will not allow himself to be compelled to attend demonstrations and meetings if they are contrary to his desire
– will immediately walk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or film if he hears a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological nonsense or shameless propaganda
– will not subscribe to or buy a newspaper or magazine in which information is distorted and primary facts are concealed. ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN – Live Not By Lies
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220408537357
Conservatives and Republican politicians would have a hard time with this!
Conservatives and Republican politicians would have a hard time with this!
And in one sentence, you violated bullet points 1 and 2. You’ll be forgiven if you work for the Babylon Bee.
– will not sign, write or print in any way a single phrase which in his opinion distorts the truth.
– will utter such a phrase neither in private conversation nor in public, neither on his own behalf nor at the prompting of someone else, neither in the role of agitator, teacher, educator, nor as an actor
It would be more truthful to state that everyone would have a hard time with this, especially politicians.
A new video of one of the 13 men arrested and charged in an alleged kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer shows the suspect is a Trump-hating anarchist despite media claims the plot was hatched by pro-Trump white supremacists.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/09/white-supremacist-suspect-in-michigan-kidnapping-plot-is-actually-a-trump-hating-anarchist/
You focus on one person and ignore the rest. Several of them are pro-Trump. You think Caserta’s a left-wing anarchist because he ranted against cops and Trump, but he’s a far-Right Boogaloo Boy who praised Kyle Rittenhouse for killing “commies.” They posted about QAnon and white genocide conspiracy theories, followed Ben Shapiro, praised Jordan Peterson.
Very little is known with certainty, but you are certain before the experts are? There are those that do not fit on either side of the aisle. Those that make quick judgements like this forget to apologize later on. The news media has been terribly inaccurate when it comes to political affairs.
Richard Spencer was said to be far right when his most important policies were left wing. Now he appears on the left. That is how much people know about these things. If only one member was anti-Trump that should tell intelligent people to be careful, but not everyone seems to be intelligent enough to recognize these things. You have to worry about your own perceived history.
Wichita Falls Texas is a very conservative place, sooo I am wondering when Jun gets his a$$ kicked in a honky tonk parking lot.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
As Frank Herbert wrote, “When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
Ellen, Frank Herbert understood a lot and that along with his storytelling style is why DUNE is a classic
Go see the movie from Denis Villeneuve, if it ever gets released!
Robert Heinlein understood a lot too. Starship Troopers
I read here that these professors who hate our nation, suggest violence against our police, use our constitution against us and are employed to teach our children to hate are to be tolerated. When any professor who counters these ideas they are forced to “confess” they are wrong and must apologize or lose their jobs. There’s something very wrong with this picture.
Nut case! Glad he’s not the President! We already have a nut case in chief,
Kill The Redcoats!
The controversy serves to publicize the lunacy of the left.
Let the bas…d speak so that everyone can see what the Dems are leading us toward.
Without the controversy, he might be flying below the radar.
If the Trustees of MSU are as disgusted with this so-called professors “unhinged ravings” as we are, they should fire his ass. If he has tenure fire him anyway and let him sue. They should also be looking into MSU’s hiring policies. But, alas, the Trustees probably agree with him. Make sure you have enough ammo everybody, they are coming for you.