So a show of grace is in order? Seems reasonable. Everyone has had a worst day, most of us would hope we get a second chance, an opportunity for redemption. Not to get all Jesusy and shit but it just seems like the "Christian" thing to do.JKLivin wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2024 2:14 pm Personally, I’m sympathetic to his situation. It looked like he was riffing in class and got carried away. It happens. To his credit, he walked it back immediately and tried to do damage control.
Unfortunately, we live in the social media age, and the blowback for him and for the institution will be enormous. Were we not a month out from a Presidential election, it might be a tempest in a teapot. But, given the circumstances, that’s unlikely.
If I recall correctly, he is also just a lecturer, so he is unprotected by tenure or even faculty status. Were I his department Chair, I’d advocate for him, suggesting a formal apology, some training on classroom comportment, and a suspension for the last half of the semester with a return to full duty in January.
I doubt any of that will happen. I think he is probably done at KU, and, given his age, perhaps in academia. I say that with no joy or satisfaction. It is a shame and I wish it were not so.
But Moran and Marshall decided the best thing to do was make sure it goes viral and make sure the trolls knew who he was so this incident would be amplified to a national stage and the guy is now vilified. Maybe he deserves it. But most of us hope our worst day flies under the radar and we get to lick our wounds in private and work shit out.
But that is not how the Christian Conservatives, Moran and Marshall decided to play this. Instead of quietly asking the Chancellor to look into their concerns and wait for judgement, they publicly threw him to the wolves. It just seems unethical and cruel, but cruelty seems to be the order of the day in this political cycle.
And my guess is the same as yours, his career is over. He will likely have to move out of State to escape the harassment. Hell the poor bastard may end up living in his parent's basement to hide from it all. I say this cuz it happened to a friend once after he lost his professional licensure, lost his house and he never got out of their basement. Sounds like you looked up his "ratemyprofessor" link and the shit storm was immediate and it probably will be his "permanent record" so to speak. These days it is easy to find and follow people once you know their names and the trolls enjoy destroying people once unleashed. His career and life as he knows it may be over.
We don't know context yet, but all indications are that he is responding to a narrative that is amplified daily, that Kamala is a low IQ dumb woman, dumb as a rock. You might have heard stuff like this. Trump seems to put out some version multiple times a day and his social media people amplify and multiply and then it trickles down to every day folks that repeat it as gospel. I don't think I have ever seen Kamala's IQ scores listed anywhere, or her grades. She received a law degree and passed the Bar Exam on her second try. Full disclosure it took me three trips to Jeff City to pass the PE Exam. I think most engineers have to take it at least twice. Harris taking the Bar Exam twice seems like no big deal unless you have never had to take a professional registration exam. School is easy by comparison.
What part would you say this narrative about Harris plays in angry reactions like the professor's to what is most likely a false narrative about someone's intellect? What part does angry rhetoric like "bloodbath" and "2nd amendment solution" play in angry counter responses? No one has to respond in kind, we all have some level of self control. But repeated often enough, bad things start to happen. Almost like it wasn't just a rhetorical flourish (a call to arms?), if you had already seen bad results from the behavior.
