Leftist Wayne State professor suspended after writing that speakers invited by conservative students should be killed rather than shouted down

A professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan has been suspended after a social media post in which he appeared to advocate for violence against those with opposing points of view was brought to light.

While his identity has not been revealed by the school, it has been widely reported that the professor in question is Steven Shaviro, who taught in the English department.



According to the Detroit Free Press, sources confirmed that the post which led to Shaviro's firing was, in fact, the one making rounds on Twitter earlier this week. 

In the post, Shaviro discussed the state of free speech on campus, and called on the far-left to take matters into their own hands to silence right-wing speakers for good. 

"So here is what I think about free speech on campus," Shaviro said. "Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down."

He went on to suggest that when right-wing groups invite speakers to campus, they are only doing so to "provoke an incident that discredits the left, and gives more publicity and validation to these reprehensible views than they could otherwise attain."

"The protesters get blamed instead of the bigoted speaker," he lamented; "the university administration finds a perfect excuse to side publicly with the racists or phobes; the national and international press has a field day saying that bigots are the ones being oppressed, rather than the people those bigots actually hate being the victims of oppression."

Shaviro claimed that "every time protestors shout down a racist or transphobic speaker, they are indulging their own moral sense of validity at the expense of actually strengthening the very bigots against whom they are protesting."

He concluded by praising Sholem Schwarzbard, who "assassinated the anti-Semitic butcher Symon Petliura, rather than trying to shout him down," calling him an "exemplary figure" and reminding everyone that he was eventually found not guilty.

Upon being made aware of the post, Wayne State University president Roy Wilson called Shaviro's statements "at best, morally reprehensible and, at worst, criminal."

"We have on many occasions defended the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution," he said, "but we feel this post far exceeds the bounds of reasonable or protected speech."

Wilson revealed that along with suspending Shaviro with pay, the post was brought to the attention of law enforcement.