JonathanTurley.org | March 25, 2024
This week, parents of students at the University of California at Berkeley took the extreme step of hiring private security to protect their children at the school after years of complaints over rising crime and anti-police policies. The university, however, is focused this week on another threat that has led students to object that they no longer feel safe on campus: the dating advice offered by Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Professor Jonathan Shewchuk in response to a query from a student.
Professor Shewchuk is known as a bit of a quirky character at the school, as illustrated by his long maintaining that he identifies as a “Smith & Wesson 460XVR .45 caliber revolver.” He has also suggested pronouns for himself that are a bit unconventional: “death/deathem/deathself.”
None of that has endeared the tenured professor with the far left faculty and students at Berkeley.
Recently, however, this all came to a head after a student asked for advice on both the inability to find a date in the Bay Area and the fears of finding work in computer science. On the dating question, Shewchuk pointed the student to prospects “out of the Bay Area.” He explained that “you’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco.’
That comment was immediately declared offensive and “blatantly misogynistic.” CS 189 student Rebecca Dang was interviewed and reportedly said that she felt unsafe on campus due to the advice.
The university quickly condemned the comment as “threatening” to students and women. UC Berkeley spokesperson Roqua Montez declared “We want to be absolutely clear that the offensive content of the original post goes against the values and Principles of Community we adhere to at UC Berkeley. The comment was hurtful and threatening to students – particularly women – in his class and beyond.”
Shewchuk removed the posting and apologized to the school. He has previously won teaching awards at the school. However, many want him fired as a threat to students.
Junior Noemi Chulo has reportedly begun the process of drafting grievances on behalf of Academic Student Employees through the local UAW 4811 against UC Berkeley, as creating a hostile work environment by employing Shewchuk.
Shewchuk’s own teaching assistant Lydia Ignatova denounced him as furthering discrimination against women and nonbinary people in EECS.
I can certainly see why the comment was offensive to many. However, the call to fire the professor stands in sharp contrast to how controversial comments on the left are often handled in higher education, including in the California system.
Radical professors are often lionized on campuses. At the University of California Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young, who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.
We have also seen professors advocating “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters, and other outrageous statements. University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis defended the murder of a conservative protester and said he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. The university later elevated Loomis to director of graduate studies of history.
Berkeley has a long history of treating liberal and conservative speakers and academics differently in such controversies. The blog is replete with examples of the intolerance and bias at Berkeley. It has lost major court rulings due to its unconstitutional treatment of conservative speakers. Nevertheless, student groups at Berkeley have pledged to block pro-Israel speakers for years as threatening to many on campus. Even liberal speakers with pro-Israeli views have been cancelled at Berkeley.
We previously discussed how a Berkeley physicist resigned after faculty and students opposed a presentation by a UChicago physicist due to his questioning the impact of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. The school has long employed faculty with radical left ideologies, including professors like Professor Zeus Leonardo who has discussed the need “to abolish whiteness.” That is not viewed as making white students feel unsafe. Conservative sites have previously criticized Leonardo for inflammatory statements, including a guest lecture at George Washington University where I teach. At GWU, Leonardo argued that children are born “human” and then are “bullied” into becoming white: “They were born human. Little by little, they have to be abused into becoming white humans. This abuse is sometimes physical … such as being bullied into whiteness. But also it’s psychological and cultural.”
The students on the campus newspaper have defended for violent resistance against the right. That is particularly threatening after conservatives were attacked on campus. Faculty has joined in declaring that some views are not protected on campus in seeking limits on free speech.
None of this means that comments from conservative or libertarian faculty are not worthy of criticism, but the response to such comments appears far more pronounced in controversies involving conservative, libertarian, or contrarian faculty.
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