UNC Wilmington is in national news, and not for the successes of students and faculty. Rather, we are in a debate over free speech versus hate speech in light of the recent controversy ignited by criminology professor, Dr. Mike Adams.
Dr. Mike Adams, professor of criminology at UNCW and vocal conservative.
For those of you who do not know Dr. Adams, he has had a longstanding history of being controversial and for scaring the univeristy administration, making him rather untouchable. After being denied for a promotion, in 2007 Adams sued the univeristy under the pretense that UNCW was discriminating against him and not giving him the promotion due to his personal beliefs. UNCW ended up settling and giving Adams the promotion as well as $50,000, $615,000 in legal and attorney’s fees and raised his salary to $75,000 by giving him a raise of $9,000, according to the Cammie Bellamy of the StarNews out of Wilmington, NC. The total amount of money the university lost to Adams’ case was approximately $674,000.
Now, Adams is back in the news because of his recent blogging on conservative website Townhall about a 19-year-old student on campus. The student in question, a self-identified queer Muslim named Nada, has been harassed by Adams since her freshman year, in which a group of students and herself protested a pop-up anti abortion poster show at the center of a walkway on campus that showed graphic imagery camparing abortions to lynching during slave times and to the Holocaust. This show was sponsored by a group on campus called Ratio Christi and by Adams.
In his most recent report on Nada entitled “A ‘Queer Muslim’ Jihad?” for Daily Wire, Adams fixates the entire story on Nada and the situation she was in when Secret Service officers approached her after she posted about attending a Trump rally that would be held on UNCW’s campus at Trask Coliseum. Adams questions Nada’s beliefs by remarking: “Her claims to be a ‘queer Muslim’ are probably part of an act designed to fit into as many victim categories as humanly possible. Sometime I wonder whether LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Thespian. So much drama, so few letters in the alphabet.” Adams also commented on Nada’s attempts to seek security from the university and later her wishes to sue the univeristy after she was not helped by stating that, “In a way, [the university] deserve the headache they are getting from this emotionally volatile ‘warrior.’ Teach your students that they have a ‘right to be unoffended’ and unlimited access to ‘safe zones’ and this is what you get.”
But his treatment of students is not relegated only to Nada; many have argued with him over social media and have been ridiculed on his Twitter account, as he refers to them as SWJs or social justice warriors. Some tweets include:
Many students are furious about these actions by Adams, so much so that “a Change.org petition aimed at UNC System President Margaret Spellings was even created to get Adams fired from the university,” according to UNCW’s student run newspaper The Seahawk. These students argue that Adams is using hate speech and creating a hostile learning environment. However, Chancellor Jose V. Sartarelli of UNCW has already stated in two emails to the students and faculty of the university that this is a matter of free speech, and Adams cannot be fired over his first amendment right. Besides this petition, the UNCW Faculty Senate, Creative Writing Department and Adams’ own Criminology Department have all issued statements in opposition to Adams’ actions.
Now, national media organizations have commented on these recent actions. NBC, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue and Buzzfeed are just a few of the large media publications that have commented on this debate. Adams continues to argue that he has a right to say these things under the first amendment and he has supporters on campus, some of whom created a counter petition that supports Adams’ right to free speech.
Either way, our campus has a lot to discuss in the wake of these actions and other hostilities that have rocked our campus this school year so far. During the election, there were reports of chalking wars on campus and there have been reports of microaggressions post-election as well.
For more news on this matter, follow Her Campus UNCW on social media to stay informed.
[Photos Courtesy of Dr. Adams’ Twitter page, the Perpetual View and NBC News]