University professors across the country have publicly expressed support for the rioters who have been terrorizing communities since graphic video of the May 25 death of George Floyd in police custody was published.
Floyd was a middle-aged black man who died after then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a white man, pressed his knee into the suspect’s neck for almost nine minutes as he lay handcuffed on the ground. With its racial overtones, video of the incident quickly went viral and became a recruiting tool for left-wing agitators.
Protests, rioting, and looting followed after news of Floyd’s death swept the country. As The Epoch Times has reported, a phalanx of leftist groups, including Antifa and Democratic Socialists of America, has been involved in generating civil unrest amid a depressed economy and as most Americans have been locked down as part of the effort to contain the spread of the CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.
Academics have made public statements in recent days showing solidarity with the violent mobs that have attacked police and destroyed property while they cause mayhem.
Northwestern University journalism professor Steven Thrasher hailed rioters for burning down a police station in Minneapolis, telling NPR it was “a very proportionate response to what’s happening.”
Thrasher asserted without proof that “the violence is being done by the police themselves.” He said the “rebellion” was justified “because the police are the ones that are enforcing an extremely unfair social order. They lynched George Floyd in broad daylight on video.”
Kitty Eisele, a journalist and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, lamented that rioters hadn’t attacked the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital, as the Washington Free Beacon reports.
“Shame they aren’t noticing the Trump Hotel which costs more and has a more problematic clientele,” she wrote on Twitter. The hotel, a few blocks from the White House, is frequented by Trump administration officials and political allies.
Syracuse University assistant professor of political science Jenn M. Jackson wrote on Twitter that the police are part of a racist system.
“[Cops] are employed in an institution meant to eradicate Blackness. The philosophical principles of being a police officer are racist and anti-Black. They are required to do terrible things.”
Anthropology professor Sarah Parcak of University of Alabama–Birmingham, wrote a Twitter thread on “how to pull down an obelisk safely.” The procedures “might come in handy” for anyone trying to topple “racist monuments.”
Antifa sympathizer and Rutgers professor Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” railed against President Donald Trump in The Washington Post for identifying Antifa as a source of the current unrest.
“Trump’s reckless accusations lack evidence … But they also intentionally misrepresent the anti-fascist movement in the interest of delegitimizing militant protest and deflecting attention away from the white supremacy and police brutality that the protests oppose.”
Conservative activist and scholar Tina Trent, a former candidate for the Georgia General Assembly, told The Epoch Times that although the killing of Floyd was disturbing, these academics are operating on false assumptions about the racial makeup of crimes.
“Black males make up almost 50 percent of cop killers,” she said in an interview.
“Cops have a lot more to fear from blacks than blacks have to fear from cops. The vast majority of black people murdered are murdered by other blacks. Professors who carry on about cop-on-black murders are not only intellectually dishonest but they’re speaking for a narrative that results in increased deaths for the very cohort that they pretend to protect.”
These academics don’t care about what happens to communities, Trent said. “None of this affects them personally.”
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared June 4, 2020, in The Epoch Times.