XPost: alt.education, alt.politics.republicans, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   ??Some students at Rutgers University petitioned the school to fire a   
   history professor, saying he calls for violence against conservatives. The   
   professor has since received threats, including some with his home   
   address, and he will relocate his family for a few months.   
      
   Mark Bray, assistant professor of history at Rutgers, studies the history   
   of modern Spain and global movements against fascism, from the past to the   
   present. In 2017, he published “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” which   
   documents the philosophy and tactics of anti-fascist movements in the U.S.   
   and around the world. In the introduction, he writes that it is an   
   “unabashedly partisan call to arms that aims to equip a new generation of   
   anti-fascists with the history and theory necessary to defeat the   
   resurgent Far Right.”   
      
   He started teaching at Rutgers in 2019.   
      
   Last month, after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk,   
   President Donald Trump signed an executive order that designated the   
   antifa movement as a “domestic terrorist organization,” despite antifa   
   being more of a loosely affiliated movement than an actual group, and   
   there being no legal mechanism for a president to designate domestic   
   terrorist groups.   
      
   After that, some Rutgers students in the local chapter of Turning Point   
   USA, the conservative organization Kirk founded, went through Bray’s   
   books, and said that Bray not only documents antifascist tactics, he   
   endorses them.   
      
   Michael Joseph, a senior at Rutgers and member and former president of the   
   Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA, said he feels unsafe with Bray on   
   campus.   
      
   “He writes in his book word for word that collective self-defense, direct   
   action, is justified and an ethical and competent tactic against fascism.   
   And he writes in another book that Trump and MAGA are fascists. Like … one   
   plus one … as simple as that,” Joseph said.   
      
   He said he denounces anyone who harasses or threatens Bray, though he has   
   reservations about whether that actually happened.   
      
   “He claims that he faced a lot of harassment and … threats. The real   
   reason is because Fox News reported him as a terrorist, as Dr. Antifa, and   
   because the Trump administration announced that they’re going to crack   
   down on antifa as a terrorist organization, he’s just merely afraid that   
   he will get caught up in some sort of federal prosecution,” Joseph said.   
   “I just wish he would just denounce his old views … or just for him to not   
   work in a university where he advocates political violence.”   
      
   He said that though Bray will leave the U.S., it doesn’t solve the bigger   
   issue.   
      
   Joseph said that Bray is not the only faculty member he objects to. As an   
   example, he pointed to another lecturer who he said “cheered” the death of   
   Kirk.   
      
   He also said that there are frequently people who protest Rutgers Turning   
   Point USA events and scream death threats to his face, and that those   
   people should all be expelled.   
      
   Bray said he has interviewed people in the antifascist movement, but has   
   never been a part of it himself, and he’s not a threat to anybody who   
   disagrees with him.   
      
   “I have conservative students in my class. They love me. I love to hear   
   what they have to say. We have good debates and arguments and   
   conversations. It’s no problem whatsoever. I’m not there to indoctrinate.   
   I’m there to teach,” he said.   
      
   Bray said that what he is experiencing now is part of a broader   
   conservative effort to shut down discourse on college campuses.   
      
   “They’re trying to systematically destroy academic freedom, destroy the   
   university system or rework it in their own image,” he said. “They portray   
   themselves as victims: ‘Oh, the poor conservatives don’t have any space to   
   articulate their ideas.’ Couldn’t be farther from the truth. There are all   
   sorts of opportunities to do this. It’s just that they perceive the   
   presence of countervailing opinions as a threat to what they promote.”   
      
   As to Joseph denouncing the threats against Bray, he said, “it’s a little   
   late for that.”   
      
   Bray said that he and other professors on Turning Point USA’s “watchlist”   
   have received threats for years.   
      
   The faculty union at Rutgers supports Bray, condemning the campaign   
   against him as an attack on academic freedom and an effort to suppress   
   speech that does not conform to far-right politics.   
      
   In a statement, a spokesperson for Rutgers said they do not comment on   
   specific personnel and student conduct, but that the school “is committed   
   to providing a secure environment — to learn, teach, work, and research,   
   where all members of our community can share their opinions without fear   
   of intimidation or harassment. Rutgers is committed to upholding the   
   rights of students and faculty to free speech and academic freedom as   
   fundamental to our community.”   
      
   The effort to get a professor fired based on what he writes about and   
   teaches is “corrosive to a free speech culture,” said Zach Greenberg, a   
   First Amendment lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in   
   Education, an advocacy and legal defense organization that defends free   
   speech. He said that while actual violence is a crime, the First Amendment   
   allows people to abstractly call for or even justify violence.   
      
   “Professors obviously can’t commit violence or assault. They can’t issue   
   true threats, serious intent to commit unlawful violence. That would cross   
   the line,” Greenberg said. “But we have the right to discuss violence and   
   call for violence, even justify violence, per our crucial fundamental   
   right to discuss political ideas and viewpoints. And that has to include   
   discussions of antifa and terrorism and the tactics they use because these   
   are important public ideas.”   
      
   He added that even if Bray were to say in class that he endorses the   
   tactics of antifa, he is within his rights to do so, as long as it is   
   relevant to what he is teaching.   
      
   He gave another example: “a history professor can talk about whether it   
   was justified for the United States of America to drop atomic bombs on   
   Japan during World War II. There’s a difference between that and actually   
   dropping the bombs, right? We have to have at least protection for some   
   form of advocacy, justification for violence in order to have the free   
   exchange of ideas on campus.”   
      
   There has since been another petition to disband the Turning Point USA   
   chapter at Rutgers, which has since gotten more signatures than the   
   petition to get Bray fired.   
      
   Greenberg said the dueling petitions represent the pressure that   
   universities will always face to “crack down on speech, whether by firing   
   professors, kicking student groups off-campus,” but they should “resist   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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