Responsibility and free speech – OneNewsNow

An organization continues to call for Texas A&M to fire its president and a professor, and a private university in Pennsylvania is reportedly investigating one of its professors for publicly promoting violence.

Support Aggies, an independent group of former Texas A&M students, says it has audio from a classroom lecture given by philosophy Professor Tommy Curry.

"That's how the situation came about," says 'Tony' from Support Aggies. "When I found out that the professor was promoting violence against white people, I decided to sign the petition at SupportAggies.com and to pledge to withhold any donations to the university."

Professor Curry also made comments about white people on a radio program in 2012, saying, "Today I want to talk about killing white people in context."

He went on to say the Second Amendment was used to arm white people to put down slave revolts and uprisings from indigenous natives.

Professor Curry did not respond to OneNewsNow's email seeking comment. Neither did Texas A&M, although the university's president, Michael K. Young, did issue a statement this month:

"As you may know, a podcast interview by one of our professors that took place approximately four and a half years ago resurfaced this week on social media, seen for the first time by many of us. The interview features disturbing comments about race and violence that stand in stark contrast to Aggie core values most notably those of respect, excellence, leadership and integrity values that we hold true toward all of humanity.

As we know, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of others to offer their personal views, no matter how reprehensible those views may be. It also protects our right to freedom of speech, which I am exercising now."

According to The Eagle, a Texas-based newspaper, Professor Curry claims his remarks in 2012 regarding race have been taken out of context and mischaracterized by the university's president -- who never identified the professor in his statement.

"The professor has acknowledged that it was him on the audio clips, so there is no dispute about that," comments 'Tony' from Support Aggies. "He has claimed that his comments have been edited in such a way that they've been taken out of context, but we have the full transcript and full audio that provides the context, and what people think he's saying on the audio is what he's really saying."

Meanwhile, Professor George Ciccariello-Mahers notorious tweets have finally caught up with him, as Drexel University, where he teaches politics and global studies, is now investigating him.

Last December, Professor Ciccariello-Maher tweeted, "All I want for Christmas is white genocide." And Horace Cooper of Project 21, The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives, tells OneNewsNow the professor more recently tweeted that he wanted to vomit when he saw a passenger give up a first-class seat to a soldier.

"It is good that, in fact, some accountability is happening," Cooper comments regarding the investigation. "It is not good that universities aren't taking the lead to self-police this kind of behavior instead of having to let it build to such a degree that people realize how unacceptable the behavior is."

Cooper adds that when these situations erupt it is not always clear whether the school supports or condemns this kind of behavior.

"50 years ago, if the Faculty Senate had heard about it, they would have taken action, and an apology would have been immediately issued," the Project 21 spokesman submits. "We would have assumed that the university did not condone this behavior."

In a letter to Ciccariello-Maher, a school official wrote that while tweets are protected speech, professors have a "special obligation to act responsibly."

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