Crime Prof Suspended for Post Saying It’s ‘Admirable to Kill a Racist, Homophobic, or Transphobic Speaker’ - Academic fedposting from the galaxy brain of Steven Shaviro


By JEFF ZYMERI
March 27, 2023

A Michigan professor was suspended Monday for a post in which he said: “It is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.”

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This came after the shouting down of Judge Kyle Duncan earlier this month at Stanford Law became a national news story. Whereas most have condemned the law students, including Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez [archive], the incident has provoked novel reactions from some observers. Professor Steven Shaviro of the Wayne State Department of English took to Facebook to post his views on free speech. A screenshot of his post can be found at the Volokh Conspiracy [archive].

“Every time protestors shout down a racist or transphobic speaker, they are indulging their own moral sense of validity at the expense of actually strengthening the very bigots against whom they are protesting,” Shaviro wrote. However, the professor did qualify his Sunday post by saying: “I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes.”

When the Wayne State administration learned of the post Monday, they suspended Shaviro with pay.

“We have on many occasions defended the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but we feel this post far exceeds the bounds of reasonable or protected speech. It is, at best, morally reprehensible and, at worst, criminal,” wrote Wayne State president M. Roy Wilson. “We have referred this to law enforcement agencies for further review and investigation.”

In Shaviro’s view, right-wing groups bring speakers on campus to elicit a reaction that discredits the Left.

“The protesters get blamed instead of the bigoted speaker; the university administration finds a perfect excuse to side publicly with the racists or phobes; the national and international press has a field day saying that bigots are the ones being oppressed, rather than the people those bigots actually hate being the victims of oppression,” Shaviro wrote in the Facebook post.

The exemplary historical figure in this regard is Sholem Schwarzbard, who assassinated the anti-Semitic butcher Symon Petliura, rather than trying to shout him down. Remember that Schwarzbard was acquitted by a jury, which found his action justified,” he continued.

Schwarzbad was a Jewish and Russian-born French poet, who in 1926 assassinated Petliura, the former head of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The poet had lost family members in the 1919 pogroms and held Petliura responsible.

Shaviro’s Facebook post has now been deleted.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Shaviro
http://www.shaviro.com/
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/

Almost the entirety of his personal website and blog should be archived, with the exception of some PDFs.

Long story short, he's a nerdy Jewish Marxist academic who reviews films and books. He likes science fiction, is virulently anti-copyright, and he is/was a huge fan of Warren Ellis. He does not like Republicans one bit. If he did any significant post-2015 political sperging, it was probably on Facebook or his Twitter which is locked down rather than his 2003-2023 blog.

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His recent Winter 2023 syllabus was the only one to contain a line like this:
Despite the fact that most of the films we will be discussing this semester were directed by white men, this class includes material related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory.

Anti-Harry Potter-ism

A Note on “Cracker”

Testosterone Worship

Hereditary Succession

Blue Angels

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Meetups

Buffy

A Modest Proposal

Teletubbies

The Apprentice

Thirteen

Nader etc.

Jacki-O

Sympathy for Lynndie England

Ghostface, The Pretty Toney Album

Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004

Induce

The State of Literary Culture

Fahrenheit 9/11

Detroit

Please Don’t Kill Me

Republicans

Multitude

What Drugs is Bush On?

Irrational Exuberance

Nothing (George W. Bush reelected)

Race in the US Elections

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle

Everything But the Burden (What White People Are Taking From Black Culture)

The Passion of the Christ

Insides (about his colon)

Creationism

Cognitive Dissonance

Free Speech (Anti-Muslim cartoons)

V for Vendetta

A McLuhanite Marxism?

k-punk on “Dis-identity Politics” (Response to V for Vendetta post)

Marx’s 188th

Why Porn Now?

Zizek/Hollywood

Sex + Love With Robots

Palin

An Issue That Won’t Go Away (Palin)

More electoral ruminations

A Note on Evil

Crisis (2008 financial crisis)

A Brief History of Celebrity (with special reference to Asia Argento)

Michael Jackson (dead)


Newt / Oulipo (poem about Newt Gingrich)

Work for Hire update (autism about academic copyright)

Sight and Sound greatest films poll

A Brief Remark on Zero Dark Thirty

Accelerationism discussion

More on Accelerationism

Spike Jonze’s HER

Accelerationism Without Accelerationism

Ray Brassier on Nick Land (pre-election Trump mention)

NFTs

Thoughts on transgression in the 21st century (intellectual dark web, Trump, etc.)

Grant Morrison, LUDA (total rejection of gender norms)
 
What do people who cannot actually perform do? They teach.

No surprise here, the overwhelming majority of teachers are professional failures. They are not more clever than the general population, if anything, they are average at best.

This is just further evidence of this, and why spending money on schooling is such a bittersweet feeling. You need it, but you know most of it just useless crap pandering to self important retards.
 
It seems like he keeps coming up to the idea that maybe, if the left didn't always protest and look like fools in doing so, they wouldn't be giving the right what he says they want. He almost gets the idea that the left has agency in how they react to things and don't always have to be deranged retards about everything.

But nope, better to just kill those evil speakers with their wrongthink. The left, especially at universities, is an untameable force, and if the right-wing speakers didn't want to get murdered, they shouldn't have worn that dress out in public.

Sure would be a shame if it turned out he had said anything that could be construed as racist, homophobic or transphobic ever. Surely a man of his intellectual rigour and moral consistency would at least quit his job, if not end his own life, for such crimes.
 
In Shaviro’s view, right-wing groups bring speakers on campus to elicit a reaction that discredits the Left.
"Look what you made me do!"

If you were intellectually honest, or your ideas were sound, you would not need to chimp out at the existence of other opinions.

"Those views are bigoted!" So fucking what? It is not illegal to have bigoted views.
 
In Shaviro’s view, right-wing groups bring speakers on campus to elicit a reaction that discredits the Left.
What a strange thing to say. If he honestly believes that's the goal of the right, then why does he step right into the trap? Why does he validate the very thing he believes they're after? It's not foreign to me that commies have poor reasoning skills, but this is seriously just like when a nigger punches someone for saying niggers are violent and have poor impulse control.
 
However, the professor did qualify his Sunday post by saying: “I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes.”
Aka "don't break the law, but murder is the coolest crime of all"

This limp dick fucker would have had to call a doctor for an erection lasting more than 4 hours if anyone had done what he totally wasn't advocating for.
 
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