(CNN)A Drexel University professor who received death threats after posting several controversial tweets said Thursday he is resigning because the year-long harassment has made his situation “unsustainable.”
The professor said the threats began last December after he posted on Twitter: “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He said the tweet was a joke, a “satirical jab at a certain paranoid racist fantasy and that white genocide does not exist.”
Ciccariello-Maher drew more outrage in March after tweeting that he was “trying not to vomit” watching someone give up their first-class seat for a uniformed soldier. He said he was upset about airstrikes in Iraq that killed civilians and that his post was misrepresented by “right-wing media.”
I don’t want people to be purged from their jobs for their views, but at some point employers have a right to competent employees. I don’t condone threats at all, but hope folks think first, Tweet second. These situations are often self-inflicted.
Twitter has the unique ability to take one’s words far beyond the walls of the comfort zone. You imagine you’re among friends, talking with like-minded individuals about areas of mutual interest, like what the paranoid alt-right morons are thinking. Then suddenly your comments about white genocide and U.S. soldiers are shared far and wide. So far in fact that your uninformed and self-loathing views are communicated to people who don’t understand, you guys.
I actually don’t know where in that last paragraph I became sarcastic. My sarcasm is even subtle to me.
Perhaps the university will hire someone with more centrist views, or greater self-control.
Again. Subtle.
The Artisan Craft Blog -- Dave Alexander & Company with David Edgren and Gus Bailey 
Did any of the people who want to ban hate speech complain about this guy at all?
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I’m apparently possessed by a squirrel. I just don’t have the attention span required to sustain a year-long campaign of opposition over a dumb tweet or two, no matter how contemptible.
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Most things can be broken down into costs and benefits, this too.
Likewise, the actual cost of a year long harassment campaign via twitter is probably only an hour or two of work. One minute per tweet, 60-120 times per year, or once every 3-6 days..
We all know there exist people who’d spend 5-10 hours trying to get someone they really hate fired.
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“What? I was just kidding! Oh, poor me! I’m totally a victim!”
Here he is supporting censoring Charles Murray on campus, among other asininities. He’s an idiot.
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