Professor Now Whining That She Paid Price for Tweeting Out Support for Hamas Attack

Over the past few years, we have been treated to academics whining that they don’t feel “safe” whenever somebody disagrees with them.

The mere existence of others’ opinions is a threat to their very lives, and using the wrong pronoun is “genocide.”

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But after tweeting this out, at least one professor feels aggrieved that she wasn’t lauded for being poetic.

Now I don’t know about you, but this endorsement of Hamas’ massacre might make a Jew or two feel a bit unsafe on the campus of Wake Forest, although I have little doubt that Mullen would not turn into a mass shooter. But by the standards of the modern campus, this is so far over the line that I am surprised she survived as long as she did on her campus.

As it is, she has resigned, but hardly with grace.

I am a huge supporter of academic freedom, and if she were simply explaining the perspective of some in Hamas and their rationale for why what they did was OK, I think I would be inclined to defend her right to say it under academic freedom. Having taught using Mein Kampf and an essay written by Mussolini in a political ideologies class, I get the importance of confronting different perspectives.

That class was required for all political science majors at Duke when I was a graduate student there, and I didn’t blink at having to teach it. The professor for whom I was a teaching assistant was a Marxist, and I didn’t blink at working with him either, despite despising his politics. It takes all kinds in academia.

But honestly, that is not what Mullen was doing here. She was speaking of her personal approval of Hamas’ actions, not teaching anybody Hamas’ justification.

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Still, Mullen is now pissed off that Wake Forest didn’t rally around her when criticism was directed her way.

Professor Laura Mullen, Kenan Chair of the Humanities, English & Creative Writing at Wake Forest, took to X (Twitter) to write, “So it’s kind of a Duh but if you turn me out of my house plow my olive groves under and confine what’s left of my family to the small impoverished state you run as an open air prison I could be tempted to shoot up your dance party yeah even knowing you will scorch the earth.”

Mullen said the tweet was “raw, direct, [and] poetic, in that it involved imagery.”

The tweet received over 25,000 views and sparked outrage within and beyond the Wake community. Mullen received two angry letters calling for her to be fired directly from parents but was aware of many more that had made their way to upper administration.

Although the University stood by Mullen’s comments as an expression of free speech and did not relieve her from her position, Mullen is deeply unhappy with the way she was treated by the administration.

Mullen told The Report that “[the University statement] is like if you watch animal films and you isolate one gazelle, that’s the one that gets eaten. They kind of threw me to the wolves.”

It’s rather rich that somebody who endorses actual violence against innocents–people attending a dance party–complains that others direct nonviolent criticism her way. Shoot up a party–that’s fine. Criticize a professor–it’s like being devoured by wolves.

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Uh, yeah, OK. I get it. You care about nobody but yourself and demand that others care about nobody but you.

Demand all you want. Mullen deserved every bit of criticism she got.

Notice that Wake didn’t fire or punish her. I am pretty sure they would be within their rights to do so. Lawyers could answer that question.

The administration, though, simply let others speak–a privilege Mullen demanded for herself, but apparently can’t abide in others. This is exactly the same attitude we see every day in the MSM where they demand censorship for others and the ability to spread propaganda unchallenged.

As of last week, Mullen has resigned from Wake Forest for “personal reasons,” which I hope means something like spending a few weeks in deep contemplation of her moral vacuity.

Unfortunately, I doubt that is the case. She is probably licking her wounds and marinating in the injustice of it all.

So it goes.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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