Prof: Cops ‘Need To Be Killed’…Police Chief Responds

UC Davis Professor Joshua Clover has said “I am thankful that every living cop will one day be dead, some by their own hand, some by others, too many of old age #letsnotmakemore,” “I mean, it’s easier to shoot cops when their backs are turned, no?” and “People think that cops need to be reformed. They need to be killed,” reported Campus Reform.

Now, I think that most people would agree that saying you’re thankful for cops dying is rude, but not illegal. I’m no legal expert, but saying “they need to be killed” just might cross into incitement to violence and I think you’d be hard-pressed to count that as some kind of scholarly “academic freedom.”

Anyway, California Assemblyman James Gallagher and Ron Lawrence, a local police chief, teamed up to send around 10,000 petitions to the University of California chancellor’s office to try to get Joshua Clover fired.

Now I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist, so while this guy’s comments are outrageous, that’s not actually the most compelling argument for me for why he should be fired. Imagine Joshua advocating for the death of pretty much any other group: women, gay people, Muslims, Jews — he’d be out of that cushy job in a flash. But nowadays there are a few groups like police officers, men (if you remember this HuffPo staffer’s tweet), and whites (if you recall this University of Georgia TA’s remarks about “fighting white people is a skill” and “some white people may have to die”)…it’s somehow acceptable to make these kinds of statements about these groups but not others.