Leftist profs glee over assassination of health care CEO: 'I'm not sad about it'
Following the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, some academics and college professors have taken to social media to celebrate the incident.
Following the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, some academics and college professors have taken to social media to celebrate the incident.
Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down.... wait, I’m sorry - today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.
— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) December 4, 2024
”Today, we mourn the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down.... wait, I’m sorry - today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires,” Columbia’s Anthony Zenkus posted to X on Wednesday.
A senior lecturer in Columbia’s School of Social Work, Zenkus is also an “activist on issues of racial justice, income inequality, and climate justice,” his university biography states. “He was trained by Vice President Al Gore as a presenter in his Climate Reality Project, and has been an organizer with Occupy Wall Street, the fight for a $15 minimum wage, and an ally in the Movement for Black Lives.”
In comments provided to Campus Reform, Zenkus stated that, “I have clearly said in public posts on X that any killing is wrong.”
”The problem is that although the murder of one man will be treated as a crime- as it should be - the killing of tens of thousands of Americans each year by a healthcare system built on greed and indifference is not treated as such,” Zenkus added. “When private insurers’ profits depend on dentying [sic] care that people have actually paid for, its time to have a national conversation about replacing this system with one that is centered on the needs of working Americans, not wealthy CEOs and shareholders.”
Associate Professor Yolanda Wilson of Saint Louis University responded to Thompson’s killing online by writing that the “chickens come home to roost.”
So, while I’m not rejoicing about the UHC CEO being shot dead in the street, I’m not sad about it, either. People deserve better than the US health insurance industry, and chickens come home to roost. 7/7
— profyolonda.bsky.social (@ProfYolonda) December 5, 2024
”So, while I’m not rejoicing about the UHC CEO being shot dead in the street, I’m not sad about it, either,” she posted that same day. “People deserve better than the US health insurance industry, and chickens come home to roost.”
Wilson works in the Department of Health Care Ethics, and teaches courses on subjects like bioethics, race, “Feminist Philosophy,” “Law and Morality,” and “Race Theory.”
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A father of two children, Thompson was a 1997 graduate of the University of Iowa and was married to his wife, Paulette. The suspected shooter is believed to have entered New York City on a Greyhound bus from Atlanta on Nov. 24, The New York Post reports.