University Investigations Suggest Right-Wing Words More Dangerous than Left-Wing Force

Incidents at Penn State, Georgetown Law reinforce yearslong trend where faculty who attack students escape punishment, while those challenging orthodoxy find themselves under repeated investigation.Politically progressive professors who use physical force to shut down opposing views pose no greater threat — and maybe less — than conservative faculty who express views that challenge campus orthodoxy, years of university actions suggest.

Last week, Pennsylvania State University exonerated an African-American studies professor who tussled with a student protesting COVID-19 mandates. Georgetown University, meanwhile, authorized a law professor investigated for an offensive tweet to assume a faculty post on the narrow grounds that he wasn’t yet an employee at the time of his slip.

Both PSU’s Oliver Baker and Georgetown Law’s Ilya Shapiro were facing termination in monthslong investigations that concluded after students left campus for the summer, but it was the latter who publicly quit Monday to preempt an expected “slow-motion firing” based on the school’s view of its own policies.

Unmasked PSU student Avi Rachlin came to protest a heavily masked faculty rally for vaccine mandates last summer, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, which reviewed visual evidence and interviewed witnesses at the rally and attendees at Baker’s November trial on a “summary charge” of harassment…. (Excerpt from The Virginia Star and Just the News)