Georgetown University stressed the need for “respectable dialogue” following outcry over Professor Christine Fair, issuing a statement to TheWrap disassociating the university from a tweet in which Fair called for the castration and execution of white men.
“Georgetown urges members of our community to engage in robust but respectable dialogue. While we protect speech and expression, we condemn uncivil and disrespectful discourse that is inconsistent with our values,” a representative for the university said.
“The views faculty members expressed in their private capacities are their own and not the views of the university. Our policy does not prohibit speech based on the person presenting ideas or the content of those ideas even when those ideas may be difficult controversial or objectionable,” the school added. “Why faculty members may exercise freedom of speech, we expect their classroom to be free of bias and geared toward thoughtful, respectful dialogue.”
Reached by phone, a spokesperson for the university did not answer whether Fair would face any professional consequences over her remarks.
In the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, Fair, who currently serves as a Distinguished Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, tweeted on Saturday about “this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps.”
“Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes,” she added.
The university’s statement was a revised version of an earlier position issued Monday evening to media outlets, which more or less said the same but did not include the word “condemn.”
On Tuesday, Twitter moved to suspend Fair over the tweet, which ignited a firestorm in conservative media.
“Look at thus [sic] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement,” said Fair in her original tweet criticizing the coverage of sexual misconduct charges against Brett Kavanaugh.
“All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”
Twitter has suspended, and perhaps permanently banned, the account of Georgetown Professor C. Christine Fair, apparently due to this tweet: pic.twitter.com/wN2OvrgRcA
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 2, 2018
Reps to Twitter and Fair did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.