Let’s kill all the Jew-loving journalists — and all the cops while we’re at it.
Of course I don’t mean either of those two things. I mean, who says that kind of stuff anyway?
Start with UC Davis professors.
Recently Jemma DeCristo, a faculty member, tweeted: “One group of ppl we have easy access to in the US is all these zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation[.] They have houses w addresses, kids in school[.] They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.”
Subtle! Especially with the images of a knife, ax and blood droplets along with her tweet.
Even if you set aside the overt anti-Semitism, which is hard, her grammar and lack of intellectualism would suggest this person is a poor fit for University of California faculty.
It should terrify everyone that this person teaches kids, especially Jewish ones.
To its credit, the university has at least temporarily removed her faculty page and Chancellor Gary S. May condemned the tweets and announced an investigation for “harassment, discrimination and faculty conduct.”
But May also defended DeCristo’s First Amendment rights (which are not unlimited), pointing to a broader question of where the line is for faculty members.
We know advocating for the death of police is not out of bounds, since a few years ago a student journalist reported that UC Davis professor Joshua Clover had tweeted: “I am thankful that every living cop will one day be dead, some by their own hand, some by others, too many of old age #letsnotmakemore.”
The news report also found an interview where Clover answered a generic question about the problem with society by saying: “People think that cops need to be reformed. They need to be killed.”
Though May condemned Clover’s comments, no investigation was ever launched, with the First Amendment again making an appearance.
Maybe the First Amendment protects these professors, maybe it doesn’t. But what’s interesting is that neither led to the kind of backlash that right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk drew when he appeared on campus.
Kirk has made deplorable comments in the past, but not any more deplorable than the comments of DeCristo and Clover. Regardless, Kirk’s campus appearances drew violent protests from students.
As you can guess, May also condemned Kirk, but allowed the appearance to proceed (because of the First Amendment).
Clover, who still works at the university, argued in the student newspaper that Kirk should not be welcomed on campus, going so far as to call Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, a group of “Hitler enjoyers.”
Ironically, Clover has made no comment I can find on his colleague, DeCristo.
Clover questioned whether the First Amendment actually protected Kirk’s appearance (it does) and argued that even so May should cast it aside if he “cared about the well-being of the community.”
“Are we truly to imagine then that Gary May would, for example, sign off on a recruitment event led by someone who called for ethnic cleansing or openly eugenicist violence? Surely he would not. And if he did, he should be removed from his position,” Clover wrote.
Calling for killing cops and Jews seems pretty close to calling for “ethnic cleansing” and “eugenicist violence” and I would think this has some effect on the “well-being of the community.
It’s also strange that Clover only sees the First Amendment as “ethically repugnant” when it comes to shutting down a speaker he doesn’t like but not when it protects employees who call for genocide.
And while reprehensible language is reprehensible no matter the speaker, it seems to me that it’s far worse for professors with hateful ideologies, who have regular access to students and hold positions of power over them, than to have one speaker come for a few hours.
