An NYU professor who launched a twitter war against the growing trend of universities coddling students with “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” has been pushed out of his own classroom for his “incivility.” According to a report from the New York Post, Liberal Studies professor Michael Rectenwald was forced to go on paid leave for the rest of the semester after his undercover twitter account, “Deplorable NYU Prof”, was linked back to him.
Liberal studies prof Michael Rectenwald, 57, said he was forced Wednesday to go on paid leave for the rest of the semester.
“They are actually pushing me out the door for having a different perspective,” the academic told The Post.
Rectenwald launched an undercover Twitter account called Deplorable NYU Prof on Sept. 12 to argue against campus trends like “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings” and other aspects of academia’s growing PC culture.
He chose to be anonymous, he explained in one of his first tweets, because he was afraid “the PC Gestapo would ruin me” if he put his name behind his conservative ideas on the famously liberal campus.
“I remember once on my Facebook I posted a story about a kid who changed his pronoun to ‘His Majesty’ because I thought it was funny,” he told The Post. “Then I got viciously attacked by 400 people. This whole milieu is nauseating. I grew tired of it, so I made the account.”
Below is a small sample of Rectenwald’s tweets:
The identity politics left: they need a safe space that is at once a hall of mirrors and a rubber room.
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) October 11, 2016
What if Trump triggers a few hundred thousand liberal totalitarians to jump out of their dorm windows? one can only hope. #TriggerWarning
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 27, 2016
OK, academia has officially gone completely ape shit. This is merely mental illness posing as “politics”: https://t.co/1K1l7wSvom
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 27, 2016
I’m a NYU prof who’s seen academe become a sham bc of identity pol & liberal totalitarianism. I’ll tell all soon. https://t.co/7Tyulse0a7
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 16, 2016
I’m a real full-time NYU prof who has inside stories that will blow yr mind. When I reach 500 followers the flood gates open. Pls help. Thx.
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 15, 2016
.@kercard @TrumpetingTrump Yes, there are 1.5 administrators for every professor at NYU -gotta’ monitor everyone for possible ‘bias’ issues!
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 13, 2016
It wasn’t long before Rectenwald’s tweet storm drew the attention of NYU’s student newspaper, the Washington Square Times, which reached out to him over twitter for an interview. Unfortunately, that interview, which was published last week, proved to be his undoing. Within 2 days of his identity being revealed publicly, NYU’s “Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group” had published a letter in the same newspaper finding Rectenwald “guilty of illogic and incivility.” Later in that same day Rectenwald was forced to go on paid leave by administrators who claimed that “a couple people had expressed concern about his mental health.”
But Rectenwald says he began getting “dirty looks” in his department and on Wednesday figured out why: A 12-person committee calling itself the Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group, including two deans, published a letter to the editor in the same paper.
“As long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas,” they wrote.
“We seek to create a dynamic community that values full participation. Such efforts are not the ‘destruction of academic integrity’ Professor Rectenwald suggests, but rather what make possible our program’s approach to global studies,” they argued.
Rectenwald likened the attack to “a Salem witch trial. They took my views personally. I never even mentioned them and I never even said NYU liberal studies program. I was talking about academia at large.”
The same day that letter was published, Rectenwald was summoned to a meeting with his department dean and an HR representative, he says.
“They claimed they were worried about me and a couple people had expressed concern about my mental health,” Rectenwald told The Post.
The leave has “absolutely zero to do with his Twitter account or his opinions on issues of the day,” said NYU spokesman Matt Nagel, refusing to elaborate on the reason.
“I’m afraid my academic career is over,” he said. “Academic freedom: It’s great, as long as you don’t use it.”
Is it any wonder that the liberal elite continues to run amok at our establishments of higher learning…anyone who dares express a non-conforming opinion is promptly found “guilty of illogic and incivility” and declared mentally incompetent.
via http://ift.tt/2dVLOrN Tyler Durden