Universities love to portray themselves as havens of open discourse. Lately, however, some have shown themselves to be pusillanimous weaklings in defense of intellectual debate and plain old free speech. Take Drexel University, a Philadelphia institution whose administrators either don’t know much about history, or simply find it more palatable to display themselves as cowards than to stand firm behind a faculty member.

The fuse for Drexel’s crisis of conscience was a Christmas Eve tweet by George Cicciarello-Maher , an associate professor in the politics department. “All I want for Christmas is White Genocide,” Cicciarello-Maher tweeted. The next day, he followed up with a second tweet: “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a very good thing indeed.” Cicciarello-Maher has since taken both tweets offline, along with his entire Twitter feed

The tweets promptly elicited outrage largely from the right wing, including Breitbart.com , which labeled Cicciarello-Maher “a communist professor” and listed, among his intellectual crimes, that his Twitter feed included “anti-Americanism, slams of President Donald Trump , attacks on Jews, as well as pro-Black Lives Matter and pro-communist sloganeering. He also tweeted a picture of a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat set on fire.”

“ Universities will need to choose whether they are on the side of free expression and academic debate, or on the side of the racist mob. — George Ciccariello-Maher, Drexel University f

Evidently stupefied to the point of insensibility by the reaction, and without seeking understanding from their own professor before responding, Drexel administrators folded almost instantaneously. On Christmas Day, they issued a statement calling the tweet “inflammatory.”

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“While the University recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate,” they stated, “Professor Ciccariello-Maher's comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University.” The statement concluded with a transparent threat: “The University is taking this situation very seriously. We contacted Ciccariello-Maher today to arrange a meeting to discuss this matter in detail.”

In academic circles, this is known as trying to have things both ways. One can’t “recognize” the right of free speech yet assert that this particular exercise of free speech does not “in any way reflect the values of the University.”

What’s just as much a matter of concern is the evidence that Drexel’s bosses aren’t up to speed on the historical context of the term “White Genocide.” As a result, they jumped to a conclusion about Ciccariello-Maher’s tweets that was exactly wrong. They plainly thought he was advocating the wholesale slaughter of white people. In fact, he was satirizing a conspiracy theory widespread in the right-wing racist fever swamp. So they ended up labeling an attack on racist conspiracy-mongering “utterly reprehensible.” We can assume that’s not what they meant to do, but they’re responsible for their own ignorance.