There has been a massive increase in Turning Point chapters and membership following the assassination of founder Charlie Kirk. Students who felt chilled in their ability to express their faith or values on campus stepped forward after the murder. That does not sit well with some faculty. One example is Derek Lopez, a teacher’s assistant and graduate student at Illinois State University, who was shown trashing a TPUSA table and mocking the shocked students. He was later arrested.
Lopez, 27, is shown on camera standing near the table, taunting the students and saying, “Well, you know, Jesus did it, so you know I gotta do it, right?” He then tosses the table and says, “Thanks, guys, have a great day.” He is then shown tearing down a flyer on a nearby bulletin board.
Lopez was presumably referring to Matthew 21:12 where Jesus turns over the tables of the money lenders in the Temple. In the passage, Jesus says “It is written. My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.”
It is a telling choice. For years, conservative values on campus have been viewed as virtually sacrilegious in a culture of increasing academic orthodoxy. This week we discussed how a leading academic journal ran a long column against intellectual diversity.
Lopez brings a new menacing meaning to the school slogan “gladly we learn and teach.” We have seen faculty engage in such violence and property destruction for years, particularly targeting TPUSA and other conservative groups.
Years ago, many of us were shocked by the conduct of University of Missouri communications professor Melissa Click, who directed a mob against a student journalist covering a Black Lives Matter event. Yet, Click was hired by Gonzaga University. Since that time, we have seen a steady stream of professors joining students in shouting down, committing property damage, participating in riots, verbally attacking students, or even taking violent action in protests.
At the University of California, Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young, who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and received overwhelming support from the students and faculty. She was later honored as a model for women advocates.
At Hunter College in New York, Professor Shellyne Rodríguez was shown trashing a pro-life display of students.
She was captured on a videotape telling the students that “you’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.”
Unlike the professor, the students remained calm and respectful. One even said “sorry” to the accusation that being pro-life was triggering for her students.
Rodríguez continued to rave, stating, “No you’re not — because you can’t even have a f–king baby. So you don’t even know what that is. Get this s–t the f–k out of here.” In an Instagram post, she is then shown trashing the table.
Hunter College, however, did not consider this unhinged attack to be sufficient to terminate Rodríguez.
It was only after she later chased reporters with a machete that the college fired Rodríguez. Another college then hired her.
Another example comes from the State University of New York at Albany, where sociology professor Renee Overdyke shut down a pro-life display and then resisted arrest. One student is heard screaming, “She’s a [expletive] professor.” That, of course, is the point.
In Wisconsin, a department chair was shown destroying a table of conservative students.
Once again, what is most striking about these individuals is the sense of license to engage in such violence conduct. Higher education has long created a sense of orthodoxy and intolerance on campuses.
The good news is that this individual was reportedly arrested. Presumably, Illinois State University will terminate his teaching position and expel him. There must be clear rules about such conduct in higher education. This type of political violence is anathema to an institution of higher learning.
It is sad that Lopez never embraced the diversity of thought and values that is so essential to a university. However, make no mistake about it, his warped concept of free speech is neither unique nor universally condemned on our campuses.
The problem, however, is not these attacks on displays, but the systemic purging of conservative and libertarian faculty from campuses where departments now largely run from the left to the far left. This academic echo chamber fuels even greater intolerance and the sense of license shown by individuals like Lopez.
Update: he’s been fired as a teaching assistant. Will expulsion be next?
https://www.foxnews.com/us/university-fires-turning-point-usa-table-flipper-from-teaching-assistant-role-after-campus-outburst
Wait until you see the list of Jan 6th Trump followers who were fired. It’s really long. One got killed in a shootout with police shortly after the pardon. Great job.
This Lopez person is correct. Jesus did do it. And he had no right to; he committed a crime and deserved punishment. If I were a policeman and had seen him do it I would have had no hesitation in arresting him.
By biblical accounts Jesus was God personified on earth as man. God’s Temples had been distorted by the Jewish money changers as a place of commerce rather than worship. So if Jesus overturned the money changers tables in HIS own Temple of worship, how did he break the law? Sounds more like an eviction to me, what Statute did Jesus break 2000 years ago? BTW I am pretty sure Jesus received punishment and gave his life on earth for ALL of mankind’s sins.
Jesus was NOT God, and the Temple was NOT his. He never even claimed to be God; that idea was made up many years after his death, and would have horrified him. And no, he didn’t “give his life”. He was executed by the Romans as a potential rebel, and it had nothing to do with anyone’s sins but his own.
Maybe in the Swillhouse version of the Bible …
The actual Bible, which does not include your made-up phony sequel featuring your false god.
Without discussing religion and limiting myself to history:
Jesus, a Jew, saw what many prophets and righteous people had seen before him: not commerce, but corruption. Condemning such abuses has always been normal for Jews; hen and now.
When thinking of the money changers, remember that offerings once brought as grain or livestock were later converted into money or animals purchased near the Temple. The road to the Temple was lined with shops and money changers who made these transactions possible.
Meyer: Millhouse is not a biblical scholar, to put it nicely.
So what do you think of Epstein and the former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak? A pedophile sex trafficker and an accused rapist and abuser of young women at the highest level of Israeli governance being used as sex slaves?
Epstein never had any connection to the Israeli government.
Ehud Barak has many many flaws, and I think he belongs in prison for treason and sedition, but unproven accusations are just that.
No one had seen “corruption” there, and he didn’t see it either. It was a free market, therefore corruption was just about impossible. Jesus was NOT God, the Temple did NOT belong to him, and he had no right to disrupt the legitimate commercial activity that was taking place. Hatred of free markets is as old as commerce itself. Socialism is merely a new skin on an old hatred.
Millhouse, the road into Jerusalem was lined with shops and stalls, free-market style. That wasn’t corruption. It was an area for trade; pilgrims buying animals or exchanging coins. The problem was inside, the Temple itself, in the Court of the Gentiles. That court was meant for prayer, but the priests moved the same merchants inside, rented them space, and profited from it. That place should have remained holy. The sacred became business.
What Jesus was said to have done, driving out the sellers and overturning tables, fit the long line of Hebrew prophets who condemned greed in holy places. Six hundred years earlier, Jeremiah 7:11 said, “Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”. Jesus quoted that verse word for word. He wasn’t rebuking Judaism; he was standing within it, repeating its prophets. His protest was against corruption, not the faith itself.
None of us was there, so none of us can say exactly how it looked, but corruption in the Temple was real (More historical information comes from Josephus and the Mishnah), and his reaction was the same moral cry heard many times before in Israel’s own history.
I understand your position as a uniform.
However, the Jewish leaders had already violated God’s Law by making the Temple a place of commerce.
So, yes, you could have arrested Jesus.
And eventually, the leaders did, remember?
They convicted him by claiming he was blasphemous because he called himself the son of God.
A single point of light attracts all who hate light.
No, they had NOT violated God’s law. God has no objection to commerce. People visiting the Temple and wishing to bring sacrifices had to buy them first. So the Temple bought livestock in bulk and sold them. You would buy a coupon from the Temple treasurer, and then go to the barn and turn it in for the appropriate animals. But if you were coming from your home country and all you had was your local currency, or all you had was large denominations, you first had to change your money, so it made sense to have currency exchanges set up in the outer Temple courtyard, just as we have them throughout our cities where tourists are likely to need their services. Jesus had no right to disrupt this.