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George Ciccariello-Maher, associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University, has resigned his tenured position.\u00a0 In an\u00a0announcement on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0posted today, Ciccariello-Maher wrote, \u201cafter nearly a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[T]enure is a crucial buffer against those who would use money to dictate the content of higher education,\u201d the announcement said.\u00a0 \u201cWe are all a single outrage campaign away from having no rights at all, as my case and many others make clear.\u00a0 The difference between tenure-track faculty and the untenured adjunct majority \u2014 which has far more to do with luck than merit \u2014 is a difference in degree not in kind.\u00a0 Tenured faculty need to defend the rights of all faculty, at all levels, from attacks by the Right and white supremacists.\u201d<\/p>\n The controversy surrounding Ciccariello-Maher began a bit more than a year ago, when he tweeted: \u201cAll I want for Christmas is white genocide.\u201d\u00a0 The tweet went viral, with many demanding that Drexel fire him.\u00a0 At the time Drexel issued a statement disavowing the tweet, which it called \u201cutterly reprehensible.\u201d\u00a0 Although the university did not accede to demands for Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s dismissal, as\u00a0I wrote on this blog<\/a>\u00a0its response was \u201csimply wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo label these comments as \u2018reprehensible\u2019 or even just \u2018disturbing\u2019,\u201d I wrote, \u201cis both to take sides in an essentially political dispute and to pass judgment on the private views of its instructors.\u00a0 If the university publicly labels one faculty member\u2019s tweet \u2018reprehensible,\u2019 is it not obliged now to comment on other tweets by faculty members? Who will judge where the boundaries between reprehension, neutrality, and approval lie?\u201d<\/p>\n In April, Ciccariello-Maher\u00a0was again in the news\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0when he tweeted about an airline passenger in first class who gave up his seat for a uniformed soldier.\u00a0 \u201cPeople are thanking him. I\u2019m trying not to vomit or yell about Mosul,\u201d he wrote. Ciccariello-Maher said he wasn\u2019t trying to attack that particular solider, but to question how we make symbolic gestures of support for the military without examining the impact of military actions.<\/p>\n Then in October the university\u00a0placed Ciccariello-Maher on leave<\/a>\u00a0after he tweeted about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, noting that the shooter was a wealthy white man and blaming \u201cTrumpism\u201d and the entitlement of white men for the deaths. \u201cWhite people and men are told that they are entitled to everything. This is what happens when they don\u2019t get what they want,\u201d he wrote. And \u201cthe narrative of white victimization has been gradually built over the past 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n The university said at the time that it was suspending Ciccariello-Maher not because of his views, but for his safety and that of his students, given the threats he was receiving.\u00a0 The professor responded in\u00a0an essay<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0The Washington Post,<\/em>\u00a0in which he acknowledged receiving death threats, but argued that Drexel was wrong to suspend him in response to those threats.\u00a0 \u201cBy bowing to pressure from racist internet trolls, Drexel has sent the wrong signal: That you can control a university\u2019s curriculum with anonymous threats of violence,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n The AAUP agreed.\u00a0 In an\u00a0October 12 letter<\/a>\u00a0to the Drexel administration, AAUP Associate Secretary Hans-Joerg Tiede wrote,<\/p>\n Although we appreciate that the stated reason for the action to suspend Professor Ciccariello-Maher is a perceived threat of immediate harm, the administration apparently did not consult with a duly constituted faculty committee prior to imposing the suspension.\u00a0 Further, an e-mail message from you to Professor Ciccariello-Maher that accompanies your October 9 letter states that you \u201chope to have concrete plans by the following week to minimize any disruption\u201d to Professor Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s students, implying that his suspension may extend indefinitely.\u00a0 Indeed, you have yet to provide a firm end date for it.\u00a0 Under AAUP-recommended procedural standards, \u201ca suspension which is not followed by either reinstatement or the opportunity for a hearing is a summary dis-missal in violation of academic due process\u201d (Interpretive Comment No. 9 on the 1940\u00a0Statement).<\/em><\/p>\n In his October 10\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0op-ed, Professor Ciccariello-Maher wrote that, by suspending him, the Drexel administration \u201cbow[ed] to pressure from racist internet trolls\u201d and \u201csent the wrong signal,\u201d namely, that \u201cyou can control a university\u2019s curriculum with anonymous threats of violence.\u201d\u00a0 He further suggested that the suspension threatened his academic freedom and tenured status.\u00a0 We share these concerns, which remain unaddressed absent consultation with an appropriate faculty body, as required under Regulation 5c(1).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Christopher Newfield, Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara, also\u00a0condemned Drexel\u2019s response<\/a>:<\/p>\n In addition to its negative impact on this professor and his students, the suspension makes things worse for campus debates and for campuses themselves.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a quick scorecard, followed by an analysis of the larger context.<\/em><\/p>\n Academic freedom?\u00a0 Drexel managers didn\u2019t defend it.\u00a0 They acted as though it is subject to unilateral administrative limits, which will further encourage internet trolls to call for its restriction.<\/em><\/p>\n Safety?\u00a0 Faculty suspension doesn\u2019t increase anyone\u2019s safety, including Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s.\u00a0 Drexel has now made him look like a more legitimate target by putting him in the wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n Satisfying the volatile right?\u00a0 This will seem to them like a slap on the wrist, which will egg them on.<\/em><\/p>\n Getting closure on the controversy?\u00a0 The suspension of a tenured faculty member made Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s tweets into national news.<\/em><\/p>\n Drexel\u2019s leaders were most likely engaging in risk management and brand management.\u00a0 They failed on both counts.\u00a0 If there is an actual danger to some person or group\u2019s physical safety, then officials should call in the police or other investigators.\u00a0 The blanket banning of a professor from the classroom doesn\u2019t increase campus safety.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Even\u00a0the\u00a0<\/a>National Review<\/em><\/a>\u00a0chimed in<\/a>\u00a0to defend academic freedom.\u00a0 As Theodore Kupfer wrote on that magazine\u2019s website,<\/p>\n Administrative mandarins on campus are motivated by a desire to avoid public-relations problems and keep their fund-raising bureaucracies alive.\u00a0 They care little for free expression.\u00a0 Their justification for placing him on leave (an indefinite suspension that is generally paid) is to protect his own safety.\u00a0 Administrators, however, shouldn\u2019t enjoy the benefit of the doubt, and it\u2019s hard to shake the suspicion that the real culprit is bad PR.\u00a0 Though Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s tenure does not appear to be vulnerable, a tenured professor has still been barred from the classroom \u2014 and tenure exists to protect the expression of controversial positions.<\/em><\/p>\n There are no charges that Ciccariello-Maher has done anything to justify punishment.\u00a0 His words are his own, not plagiarized; Drexel does not claim he mistreated students or absconded with school property.\u00a0 By the lessons of experience, and the lights of reason, his ideas are wrong.\u00a0 Yet tenure protects the right to be wrong, and Drexel awarded him tenure knowing the nature of his convictions.\u00a0 No matter the discomfort of its administration, the school ought not to reverse that decision.. . .<\/em><\/p>\n Conservatives would be ill-advised to celebrate his suspension today.\u00a0 Tomorrow, the condemned might be someone they admire.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But Drexel did not relent and Ciccariello-Maher and his family have continued to be targets of threats and harassment.\u00a0 Now he has had enough.\u00a0 Here is the full text of his statement:<\/p>\n After December 31, 2017 I will no longer work at Drexel University.\u00a0 This is not a decision I take lightly; however, after nearly a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable.\u00a0 Staying at Drexel in the eye of this storm has become detrimental to my own writing, speaking, and organizing.<\/em><\/p>\n In 1956 Frantz Fanon resigned his psychiatric post at a French clinic in colonial Algeria with the observation that, \u201cthere comes a moment when tenacity becomes morbid perseverance.\u201d\u00a0 This rings true for me in the present moment: certain morbidity has set in, and the same racist social structures that Fanon confronted impose their reality on us with a fury that increases by the day.\u00a0 I look forward to deepening my research, my writing, and my political organizing in the service of those movements most capable of confronting the urgent tasks of the present.<\/em><\/p>\n We are at war and academia is a crucial front in that war.\u00a0 This is why the Right is targeting with thinly veiled provocations disguised as free speech.\u00a0 My case and many others show just how cynical such appeals are, and how little the Right cares about academic freedom.\u00a0 They will continue to attack me and many others, but from these attacks new unities spring dialectically forth: an upsurge in new AAUP chapters and the establishment of the Campus Antifascist Network (CAN), among others.<\/em><\/p>\n To faculty: tenure is a crucial buffer against those who would use money to dictate the content of higher education.\u00a0 But in a neoliberal academy such protections are far from absolute.\u00a0 We are all a single outrage campaign away from having no rights at all, as my case and many others make clear.\u00a0 The difference between tenure-track faculty and the untenured adjunct majority \u2014 which has far more to do with luck than merit \u2014 is a difference in degree not in kind.<\/em><\/p>\n Tenured faculty need to defend the rights of all faculty, at all levels, from attacks by the Right and white supremacists.\u00a0 Only then can we build campus solidarities that transcend such artificial boundaries among faculty \u2014 and beyond, to campus workers and students as well \u2014 solidarities that will be the last line of defense in what is today a losing battle for universities.\u00a0 We need to fight to defend our place in academia against assault from the racist Right, but we urgently need to realize that the struggle for academia is part of a far broader fight.<\/em><\/p>\n In the past year the forces of resurgent white supremacy have tasted blood and are howling for more.\u00a0 Given the pressure they will continue to apply, university communities must form a common front against the most reprehensible forces in society and refuse to bow to their pressure, intimidation and threats.\u00a0 Only then will universities stand any chance of survival.<\/em><\/p>\n To my students: you have earned my admiration and the admiration of many by standing up for your rights.\u00a0 I hope and believe that you have learned by putting into practice \u2014 by marching and protesting \u2014 lessons in power that too often remain within the classroom.\u00a0 And I hope and believe that you will take these lessons to whatever is next \u2014 and something will be next.\u00a0 I look forward to continuing to support and work with you informally, whether in reading groups, in the streets, or both.<\/em><\/p>\n In the face of aggression from the racist Right and impending global catastrophe, we must defend our universities, our students, and ourselves by defending the most vulnerable among us and by making our campuses unsafe spaces for white supremacists.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n