Rutgers student government demands university come to defense of fleeing ANTIFA professor
The Rutgers student government introduced a resolution to urge the university’s president to defend Dr. Mark Bray, an ANTIFA-aligned professor.
This comes after Bray faced a firing petition and a series of threats.
The student government at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey introduced a resolution in early October urging the university’s president to defend Dr. Mark Bray, a professor aligned with ANTIFA.
According to a report from Fox News Digital, the resolution “in Support of professor Mark Bray’s Academic Freedom and Free Expression” asks Rutgers president William F. Tate IV to publicly restate the university’s commitment to academic freedom and free expression.
The resolution also calls upon Tate to “make clear to the Rutgers community and the public that disagreement with the political content of faculty scholarship and speech, absent violations of law or University policy, does not constitute grounds for discipline or institutional distancing.”
It also requests that Rutgers provide Dr. Bray with appropriate “legal, safety, and logistical support as needed.”
The student government will consider the resolution later this week.
Dr. Bray, also nicknamed ‘Dr. Antifa,’ fled to Europe earlier this week after a student-led petition demanded his dismissal and a series of threats were directed at his home.
The Change.org petition organized by Rutgers students has received over 1,800 signatures in support of firing Bray.
The petition’s description says that Bray has called for militant action against conservative figures and “With the current trend of left-wing terrorism, having a prominent leader of the antifa movement on campus is a threat to conservative students.”
According to Bray’s profile on the Rutgers website, he has led courses on antifascism, communism, anarchism, and terrorism within the department of history.
He also authored publications such as Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street.
In an Aug. 16, 2017 Washington Post article titled, “Who are the Antifa?” Bray stated, “Antifascists argue that after the horrors of chattel slavery and the Holocaust, physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.”
[RELATED: CUNY offers course on ‘Global Antifa’ to discuss ‘antifascism’ and ‘racial capitalism’]
Dartmouth College, where Bray was a visiting scholar when the article was published in 2017, released a statement disavowing his remarks, emphasizing that his statements supporting violent protest “do not represent the views of Dartmouth.”
Campus Reform has reached out to Rutgers University and Mark Bray for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
