Profs call 'rightwing' reporting a form of 'violence'

A group of education professors recently claimed that Campus Reform “attacks” and commits “violence” against “faculty who represent historically marginalized groups.”

In the most recent issue of the Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11 professors signed onto a joint statement condemning the “violence” perpetrated by news outlets that report on higher education, including The College Fix and Campus Reform.

“The attack on critical scholars within US universities has greatly accelerated with the election, statements, and actions of Donald Trump,” the professors write, later adding that “We know these attacks are only going to grow, and we know we cannot just be in a defensive mode.”

[RELATED: Faculty reject ‘marketplace of ideas,’ demand censorship]

The letter’s lead author is James Scheurich, who teaches urban education at Indiana University, while other signatories include Joyce King, an endowed professor at Georgia State University, and Ira Bogotch, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University.

Scheurich and his co-authors reference several professors that Campus Reform has reported on, such as Z Nicolazzo, who uses zie/hir pronouns and teaches at Northern Illinois University, and Johnny Eric Williams, a professor at Trinity College.

As Campus Reform reported, Williams posted on Facebook that first responders to the congressional baseball practice shooting should have let the victims “f***ing die” because they were white. Nicolazzo, meanwhile, has called for a “redistribution of opportunities” away from “white cisgender heterosexual men,” and recently coined the term “compulsory heterogenderism.”

In their statement, the professors commit to fighting against the “attacks” directed at those professors by “Trump-inspired rightwing individuals and groups,” complaining that “some universities readily give in to these attacks” or “simply provide no support to faculty under attack.”

[RELATED: Faculty urge Dartmouth to retract condemnation of Antifa prof]

“We challenge those rightwing organizations—instead of focusing on mostly untenured junior scholars, the most vulnerable among us—to focus your fervor on us,” the missive concludes. “We commit to standing against violence directed at these targeted scholars and speaking out against the attempts to censor critical work that addresses systemic inequities and power imbalances in education and society.”

The statement was published in a special issue of the Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, titled “Scholars Respond to the Trump Regime: Varieties of Critique, Resistance, and Community.”

Other articles published in this issue include “Who Will Make America Great Again? ‘Black people’ of course…” and another claiming that “Trump is the mask torn off of who we white people are and have been.”

Campus Reform reached out to all 11 professors who signed the statement to ask why they consider reporting a form of “violence,” but none responded.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @Toni_Airaksinen