Professor plays victim after publishing ‘#LetThemF**KingDie’ post about white people

The post, which was published by Professor Johnny Eric Williams after the shooting at a Congressional baseball practice in Northern Virginia on June 14, read: “It is past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be ‘white’ will not do, put end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system. #LetThemF–ingDie.” The hashtag was in reference to a Medium article Williams posted that discussed the officers who saved the lives of GOP congressmen during the shooting by contending, “Saving the life of those that would kill you is the opposite of virtuous. Let. Them. Fucking. Die.”

Williams posted again to say, “The time is now to confront these inhuman a-holes and end this now.”

Shortly thereafter, Trinity closed its doors for the day “due to threats received to campus.” The college president issued a statement last week announcing that the incident is under review.

In a followup post on Wednesday night, Williams defended his words as a “provocative move to get readers to pay attention to my reasoned, reasonable, and yes angry argument.”

Williams further argued that media coverage of his behavior was part of a larger conspiracy to intimidate academics from expressing their viewpoints. “The publicity it is receiving also seems to be an organized warning to all others who want to speak out,” the professor wrote. “This seems to be a national drive of intimidation of professors which all colleges and universities should be concerned about.”

Williams shifted responsibility for “mean” use of social media onto his “detractors” as well, concluding, “We all know that its anonymity and lack of face to face accountability makes meanness and ad hominem attacks easy to do. I did not and do not use it in that way. My detractors have.”

In an article for the Huffington Post, University of Connecticut sociology professor Matthew Hughey cast Williams as the victim, blaming the backlash on “white crisis” rather than the inflammatory language.

With his use of the hashtag, Williams essentially endorsed the argument that it would have been more virtuous for black Capitol Police officers to let a gunman murder Republican members of Congress because they are “bigots.”

That a sociology professor at an elite liberal arts college would say such a thing should surprise no one. Insulated in campus bubbles, academics have steadily descended deeper into the rabbit hole of radical theory. Trafficking in polemical language like this not entirely abnormal in Ivory Towers where professors work themselves into radical theoretical lathers, but academics are not accustomed to the consequences that come when their rhetoric is ripped out of the campus environment and exposed to the public.

How are the white students enrolled in Williams’ sociology courses — some of whom are Republicans like the congressmen whose alleged bigotry meant they should have been left to die according to his Facebook post — supposed to feel next semester?

Furthermore, Williams is so entrenched in the culture of radical academia that he can’t even see his error, choosing instead to argue that he’s the victim of an “organized” censorship effort. That Hughey, another professor of sociology, easily justified Williams’ post and attributed backlash to a larger “white crisis” speaks to how widespread these attitudes are in higher education.

Across the country, campus progressives advocate for the censorship of conservative speech on the grounds that words uttered in support of thought with which they disagree put their physical safety at risk and can constitute acts of violence. If speaking out against the use of transgender pronouns is an act of violence that need be censored, progressives should be troubled by Williams’ language as well. But given Hughey’s defense, I suspect that’s not the case. As they see it, those who are oppressed by power structures — the patriarchy, white supremacy — are justified in pursuing these means to an end.

The article Williams linked to would be more appropriate as a text used to discuss the glaring ethical flaws of such an argument with students, rather than something for him to brazenly endorse in a Facebook rant. Given the severity of his statement, and his refusal to admit error, it seems Trinity doesn’t have much of a choice in considering Williams’ future employment.

But does the school see it that way? When we know the answer to that question, we’ll have a better idea of where higher education draws the line — if they draw one at all.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.