WILMINGTON — Students, alumni, faculty, criminologists, and even celebrities are calling for the termination of University of North Carolina at Wilmington Professor Mike Adams.
The push to terminate Adams is a renewed one spurred by his recent online posts and the national shift in tolerance for behaviors seen as racist as police brutality protests continue.
Related: As pressure mounts on multiple fronts, is UNCW’s Mike Adams still untouchable?
UNCW has begrudgingly defended Adams’ rights under both the First Amendment and his tenured status. Further, the University paid heavily after losing to Adams in seven-year court case after it denied him a promotion in 2006. But while UNCW’s attitude has long been it cannot legally restrict or discipline Adams, a group of nearly 270 professors and graduate students representing higher education criminology programs across the country asserts UNCW already has grounds to fire Adams.
Calls to fire Adams
Two online petitions calling for his firing have collectively attracted over 80,000 signatures. Celebrities, including Orlando Jones, Sophia Bush, and Hilarie Burton Morgan who all worked on film projects in the Wilmington area, have called on the university to release him. Monday, nearly 270 criminology professors and graduate students representing higher education institutions across the country signed a letter urging the university to take action against Adams.
The university called Adams’ statements “vile” but claimed they are protected free speech.”No matter how upsetting and distasteful the comments may be, they are expressions of free speech and protected by the First Amendment,” the university shared in a statement earlier this month.
In 2007, Adams sued the university for not awarding him a promotion on the basis of his conservative views. After a seven-year legal battle, a federal jury ruled in his favor. The university appealed the decision but later dropped it, awarding Adams the promotion to full professor, $50,000 in back pay, and $615,000 in legal fees.
As a tenured professor with a contentious legal history with the university, Adams’ online speech is provocative. On May 29, Adams, a white man, tweeted: “This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go.”
Adams has not responded to multiple requests to comment but did defend his recent tweet to WECT, stating it was not a comment on race but rather on government oppression.
Criminologists team up
Though UNCW claims his speech is protected, the network of criminologists disagree. In their Monday letter, the professors and graduate students wrote that the university’s inaction is “no longer acceptable or legally defensible.”
“Adams’ despicable ideals aside, his behavior has shifted towards terroristic threats and ethnic intimidation, both of which are punishable by law,” the criminologists wrote. “Publicly admonishing Adams’ speech while protecting his terroristic behavior is no longer acceptable.”
According to section 603 of the UNC Sysmtemp Code and Policies, a tenured faculty member can be dismissed for misconduct “including violations of professional ethics, mistreatment of students or other employees…criminal, or other illegal, inappropriate or unethical conduct.”
The group asserts Adams’ “terroristic threats and ethnic intimidation” meet this standard. On several occasions, Adams has shared the contact information of students or critics with his social media audience. In 2016, the Daily Wire published Adams’ article “A ‘Queer Muslim’ Jihad?” that focused on one of his former students. “Her claims to be a ‘queer Muslim’ are probably part of an act designed to fit into as many victim categories as humanly possible. Sometimes I wonder whether LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Thespian, ” Adams wrote in the article.
Former UNCW Board of Trustees member Gary Shipman told WECT he believes the university has grounds to discipline Adams based on UNC System Policy that states: “an employee may not use the authority of his or her position to endorse, campaign for, oppose any candidate, political party, partisan political group, referendum or issue.”
UNCW’s own Department of Sociology and Criminology have called for Adams’ firing, writing in an open letter that the professor’s statements are rooted in racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and sexism.
“It is concerning to us that a person in a position to teach aspects of the criminal justice system, is not exposing systemic racism and inequalities, but rather is sustaining and reinforcing them,” the department wrote in a letter signed by 19 faculty members.
Read the criminologists’ full June 15 statement below:
Chancellor Sartarelli and UNCW Board of Trustees,
This is a pivotal moment in our history. The United States is in the midst of two horrific pandemics. One, COVID-19, is a new pandemic that threatens the physical health of our nation, and the other, systemic racism, is a pandemic that has plagued our country for centuries. Systemic racism, which at present is highlighted most distinctly by our criminal legal system, is a plague that has threatened the physical, emotional, and social health of Black and Brown people in every institution in our country, including education, for over 400 years.
Like so many other university Presidents and Chancellors, UNCW Chancellor Sartarelli issued a statement on June 2nd, 2020, pledging that “our campus will not tolerate acts of violence or discrimination….As an institution, we have not just the opportunity but the moral obligation to stand up against acts of hatred and violence.” Those words will continue to go on unheard for as long as the University of North Carolina – Wilmington fails to concretely address the violently racist, sexist, ableist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic behavior of Mike Adams, a Professor of Criminology, who is using the credentials afforded to him by your institution as a platform for spreading hate and inciting violence.
Professor Adams is well known for using Twitter, Facebook, Townhall.com, and the Daily Wire for spreading his racist, sexist, ableist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic messages. On each of these platforms he identifies himself as a Professor, and he affiliates himself with your institution on at least one site.
Professor Adams hides behind the veil of “free speech”, but through his rhetoric on Twitter and his column he has harassed, threatened, and spread hateful speech against students and faculty. In 2016, he wrote a column titled “A ‘Queer Muslim’ Jihad”, about a former UNCW student in which he writes, “her claims to be a ‘queer Muslim’ are probably part of an act designed to fit into as many victim categories as humanly possible. Sometimes I wonder whether LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Thespian.” He has also tweeted “Statistics show that 10 out of 10 aborted black babies are unarmed” as well as “When you write the university asking them to fire me don’t forget to leave a mailing address so I can send you a box of panty liners.”
Adams has even referred to the safety measures taken by the state of North Carolina as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic as him being in a “slave state,” in which he tweets “This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go!” This rhetoric and behavior, especially in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, is unacceptable and sends a message to students that the very ideals taught in his department (i.e. justice and equity) do not exist.
Lastly, his tweet stating “All cultures are not equal. If you eat dogs and infect the world with viruses because your government lies and prosecutes those who tell the truth then your culture is evil. Multiculturalism is nonsense. Some cultures are inferior. That is the reason why we liberated Auschwitz.” Statements such as this send a clear message to international students that they do not belong at UNCW, which are in opposition to the values set forth by the university.
As scholars, students, and practitioners of criminal justice, we fully believe in the ideals of academic freedom and the First Amendment right to free speech and, while his speech is reprehensible, we understand UNCW’s hesitation to take concrete action against him in the past, but inaction is simply no longer acceptable or legally defensible. We agree with former UNCW Board of Trustee member and Attorney Gary Shipman that Professor Adams has gone from toeing the line of free speech to blatantly using his authority of position to promote ideals that are counter to the mission and strategic priorities of your institution.
Adams’ despicable ideals aside, his behavior has shifted towards terroristic threats and ethnic intimidation, both of which are punishable by law. On several occasions Professor Adams has publicly shared the names and contact information of faculty, students, and others who disagree with him. His engagement in these acts of doxing has terrorized his victims, resulting in threats of violence and death from Adams’ supporters, many of which have been reported to the University and local police.
Publicly admonishing Adams’ speech while protecting his terroristic behavior is no longer acceptable. Per section 603 of the UNC System Code and Policies, a tenured faculty member can be dismissed for misconduct “including violations of professional ethics, mistreatment of students or other employees…criminal, or other illegal, inappropriate or unethical conduct.” Terroristic threats and ethnic intimidation clearly fall within these parameters. Adams’ behavior justifies serious disciplinary action, as it is “(i) sufficiently related to a faculty member’s academic responsibilities as to disqualify the individual from effective performance of university duties, or (ii) sufficiently serious as to adversely reflect on the individual’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to be a faculty member.” Especially in this particular historic moment, any criminologist who rejects decades of research that elucidates systemic racism in the criminal legal system, and whose “scholarly” work does nothing to advance our academic understanding of that system, is unable to effectively perform their duties. Moreover, his actions make it clear that his trustworthiness and fitness as a faculty member – especially for students of color, women, and sexual and gender identity minorities – are moot. His unethical behavior, especially his mistreatment of students and other employees must stop NOW.
We, the undersigned, wish to join the thousands of people calling on you to do the right thing and all of the UNCW students, past and present, who are demanding that you champion justice and equality at your institution. It is time that UNCW no longer pays lip service to the ideals of inclusion and anti-racism – it is time for UNCW to demonstrate, through action, a TRUE and sincere commitment to your “moral obligation to stand up against acts of hatred and violence.”
