Christine Fair, a professor of security studies at Georgetown U.: “I will not discipline my voice, my words, or my body. I will refuse to conform to your rules which are designed to constrain me like a corset for your convenience and comfort.”Wikimedia
A Georgetown University faculty member who tweeted last week that “entitled white men” deserve “miserable deaths while feminists laugh” knew that her critique of the Brett M. Kavanaugh hearings would bring out the haters. And she wasn’t surprised when angry critics demanded that she be fired.
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for less than $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
If you need assistance, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com.
Christine Fair, a professor of security studies at Georgetown U.: “I will not discipline my voice, my words, or my body. I will refuse to conform to your rules which are designed to constrain me like a corset for your convenience and comfort.”Wikimedia
A Georgetown University faculty member who tweeted last week that “entitled white men” deserve “miserable deaths while feminists laugh” knew that her critique of the Brett M. Kavanaugh hearings would bring out the haters. And she wasn’t surprised when angry critics demanded that she be fired.
C. Christine Fair, an associate professor of security studies, said that her goal was to make people — white men, in particular — uncomfortable, and that the outrage she drew proved she had succeeded.
Fair, who has frequently tested the limits of free speech at her Jesuit-affiliated university, said she had been enraged after “watching these men protect his bro-culture privilege to behave the way he did.”
To expect her to “watch what I did on Thursday and use the Queen’s language is preposterous,” she added in an interview with The Chronicle on Tuesday.
Also on Tuesday the university’s president, John J. DeGioia, issued a statement that acknowledged the right to freedom of expression but condemned “violent imagery, profanity, and insensitive labeling” of people based on sex or ethnicity. Her name never appears in the statement.
ADVERTISEMENT
Meanwhile, Fair continued her offensive over the hearings, in which Kavanaugh, accused of sexual misconduct, is being considered for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The comments by Kavanaugh’s supporters on the Senate Judiciary Committee, she said, were “a giant middle finger” to sexual-assault survivors like herself.
The tweet she posted in response linked to an angry statement in support of the nominee by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.
“Look at thus [sic] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement,” she wrote. “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.”
By Monday, after the post was retweeted hundreds of times and was reposted by several conservative news organizations, Fair’s Twitter account was suspended, briefly reinstated, and then suspended again.
ADVERTISEMENT
The president’s statement, issued in response to her tweet, said that while faculty members’ freedom of speech is protected, “this does not mean the university endorses the content of their expression. We can and do strongly condemn the use of violent imagery, profanity, and insensitive labeling of individuals based on gender, ethnicity, or political affiliation in any form of discourse. Such expressions go against our values.”
The statement came after a flood of people called on Georgetown to fire Fair.
@Georgetown You are a Catholic and Jesuit institution of higher learning with strong Christian leanings. The tenure of Dr Carol Christine Fair should bed ended due to the hateful and aggressive remarks she made about violence to white politicians. Does not enhance your image.
@Georgetown A college should be from from hate. Your professor, Christine Fair, should be investigated and potentially removed. Freedom of speech doesn’t apply to only liberals, and students should never be discouraged from participating in views that oppose the left. #remove
What #ChristineFair posted was disgusting. As a professor myself, she should be ashamed. She is an educator. She is a teacher. You, ma’am, have no class. We’re professionals, educating future generations. To use your position in such a way is foul.
Dr. Carol Christine Fair- another old hag sitting in the sidelines trying to feel important. She is a disgrace to our profession and should fired for her hate filled outrageous over the top rhetoric. Shame on Georgetown University if the fail to act
@Georgetown Christine Fair should not be teaching political science while posting / believing someone accused of a crime is guilty without due process. Suggesting men she disagrees with be beheaded and fed to the swine is also extreme. I say fire unfair Fair.
Critics questioned whether someone who takes such extreme, partisan positions can be fair to conservative students. She responded that she draws a line between her personal and professional lives, and doesn’t bring her politics into the classroom, treating conservative students with the same respect as liberal ones.
A Fighter With ‘T-Rex Skin’
Fair, who teaches in Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, conceded to the The Chronicle that her post “is one of those performance-art tweets gone very bad.” Anyone who follows her on social media would realize, Fair said, that she was taking a genre of hate mail she receives every day and turning it on the white Republican men she said were retraumatizing sexual-assault survivors by defending Kavanaugh.
With her recent tweet, “I wasn’t looking for a fight,” Fair insisted. The idea, she said, was that “I want you to walk a mile — not even a mile — a block in our shoes. That’s it. It turns out I did it really effectively because it pissed them off.”
ADVERTISEMENT
She described on her blog how a senior colleague had told her how much more persuasive she’d be if she would “try replacing the f-bombs with arguments.” He missed the point, she said, declaring that she was trying to make people uncomfortable. She went on to describe the sexual abuse she said had begun in her childhood and continued in her adult life.
“I will not discipline my voice, my words, or my body,” she wrote. “I will refuse to conform to your rules which are designed to constrain me like a corset for your convenience and comfort.”
Fair, whose research focuses on political and military affairs in South Asia, once worked as a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. She describes herself as a fighter with “T-Rex skin.”
Critics have accused her of stoking angry rhetoric by repeatedly taunting those who offend her.
ADVERTISEMENT
Last year, for example, she got Richard B. Spencer, the white supremacist whose speeches have roiled college campuses, kicked out of a private gym they both used after she angrily confronted him. She later referred to Spencer on Tumblr as an “evil crustacean” and a “racist, misogynist chicken shit.”
In 2016 a former journalism lecturer at Georgetown, Asra Q. Nomani, accused Fair of cyberbullying her over an opinion piece she had written for The Washington Postabout why Nomani had voted to elect Donald J. Trump as president. Fair didn’t deny that she had called Ms. Nomani a fraud and a “fame-mongering clown show.”
Nomani asked Georgetown to require Fair to attend some kind of training in civil discourse. It is unclear whether that happened because such matters are confidential. The university said that while it didn’t necessarily agree with her views, she had the right to express them.
Fair isn’t the first professor to face an avalanche of criticism for tweets on sensitive political matters. Randa Jarrar, a professor of English at California State University at Fresno, called Barbara Bush, the former first lady who had just died, an “amazing racist” who helped raise “a war criminal,” adding that she was “glad the witch is dead.”
In April, Fresno’s president, Joseph I. Castro, concluded that Jarrar’s online conduct had been “insensitive, inappropriate, and an embarrassment to the university” but that she wouldn’t face discipline. Her comments, made as a private citizen about a public matter, were “protected free speech,” the university concluded after meeting with its lawyers.
ADVERTISEMENT
In Jarrar’s Twitter rant, she described herself as a tenured professor who couldn’t be fired. Fair didn’t refer to her Georgetown affiliation on Twitter, but speaking to The Chronicle, she admitted she knew that losing her job was a possibility.
If Georgetown fires me, I’ll do something else with my life. I’m not going to be silenced.
“If Georgetown fires me, I’ll do something else with my life,” she said. “I’m not going to be silenced.”
The president’s statement said the university was “committed to having our classrooms and interactions with students be free of bias and geared toward respectful dialogue. We take seriously our obligation to provide welcoming spaces for all students to learn.”
He went on to write that if faculty members’ comments were determined to “substantially affect their teaching, research, or university service,” Georgetown would handle the matter based on university procedures outlined in the faculty handbook.
ADVERTISEMENT
By late Tuesday, Georgetown’s Facebook page had been flooded with comments from alumni and parents objecting to what they considered the university’s weak response to Fair’s tweet. “Do you really think Fair drops her hate rhetoric when she walks through the classroom door?” one wrote. “If so, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona you may be interested in.”
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, student success, and job training, as well as free speech and other topics in daily news. Follow her @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.