Some hatreds are more worth firing than others

Dean Barnett writes at The Daily Standard about a Fairleigh Dickinson adjunct professor who was a foaming at the mouth, anti-Semitic Nazi:

Until recently, [Jacques] Pluss was an adjunct member of FDU's history department where he was by all accounts a popular and well received instructor in the one class that he taught. As his former student Heather Tierney put it in an email, "He taught well and carried himself well." Tierney's comment reflects a consensus amongst Pluss' students. But some of Pluss's activities outside the classroom were eye-raising. Pluss was--and still is--an officer for the National Socialist Movement. Pluss is a Nazi, a genuine bona-fide Hitler-adoring, Jew-hating Nazi. The National Socialist website that advertises his title as an officer of the Movement features images of Adolf Hitler and swastikas and urges visitors to "come and join the fight!" A phone call to the Movement's office is received by an answering machine whose greeting shrieks, "Wake Up, White America!"

The University was careful to fire him on performance grounds -- an unacceptable number of absences -- but I doubt that these would have mattered so much had he not been a right wing anti-Semite. Mr. Barnett uses the article to make the excellent point that the University used a weasely way of firing Pluss -- who incidentally still collects his paycheck -- rather than calling him on his ideology. I found a bit more interesting the fact that the firing of a right wing anti-Semite is okay, even if you have to weasel your way to it -- but that even a breath of criticism towards virulently left wing anti-Semites is viewed in academe as an unacceptable blow to intellectual freedom. Witness the vile doings at Columbia, and the subsequent whitewash. So, a little word of advice to nascent anti-Semites: if you want to convey your message most effectively, and with the assurance that you'll gain ivory tower support, make sure you dress it up in the language of the left. That's your "e-ticket" to a world of unlimited, socially acceptable anti-Semitism. Hat tip: Little Green Footballs