When it is OK to wish some people were dead, and who are those people exactly?

Jeffrey Harrison was on the University of Florida Law School faculty for many years, until he took emeritus status in 2020. I got to know him a bit about dozen years ago, because we both wrote about the economics of legal education, and we corresponded on the topic and related matters.

The day Charlie Kirk was murdered, Harrison posted on his Facebook page (the whole account has since been deleted) that there had been a lot of commentary about Kirk, who “was an evil person spouting all kinds of hateful messages.”

“I did not want him to die,” Harrison added. “I reserve that wish for Trump.” Harrison noted that Gestapo members and concentration camp guards had children, but that didn’t make them heroes, nor people to be admired, and the same could be said about Kirk.

The right wing scream machine got ahold of this and raised a ruckus, and the very next day the University of Florida revoked Harrison’s emeritus status. This had various bad consequences for him, in terms of access to law school and university resources — emeritus status usually includes things like office space, administrative support, and the like, and many faculty members continue their scholarly projects after retiring with the help of their emeritus status, and/or teach classes etc. — plus of course it’s a tremendous slap in the face to someone who had dedicated his academic career to the institution.

And what did the law school’s dean have to say about this grotesque attack on academic freedom?

[Prof. Derek] Bambauer said he contacted interim Dean Merritt McAlister for clarity on the situation, who confirmed the decision to revoke Harrison’s status did not involve the college.

“This was a university-level action,” Bambauer said. “The law school does not have control over decisions about removing emeritus status.”

Technically, the law school doesn’t have control over issues such as whether the university will continue to have a law school, so this is the sort of technicality that shouldn’t cut any ice with the law school’s administration or its to this point remarkably, aside from Bambauer, silent faculty. And by “remarkably” I mean “totally predictably.”

BTW here’s the central administration’s sole explanation of its decision:

“The University of Florida has been made aware of a retired faculty member who issued a post on social media that is raising concerns,” UF wrote in an X post. “In accordance with the university’s policies and regulations, UF has rescinded this individual’s emeritus status.”

The shadow docket: not just for the SCOTUS!

It would be nice if we could get some guidance, given the increasing willingness of university administrators to dispense with even the equivalent of a drumhead court martial if some right winger is pretending that his feelings got hurt, regarding which persons it’s OK to wish were dead. I’m not talking here of course of anything that could even in the most tenuous way be considered incitement to violent action: rather here we are referencing things like New Year’s — shana tova everybody! — petitions to the Heavens that it would be a good thing if somebody were to shuffle off their mortal coil sooner rather than later.

Is Alex Jones OK? How about Putin? All of the Hamas leadership? Bibi? Rupert Murdoch? Stephen Miller? The guy who wrote We Built This City? Ok that last one’s a joke. You know, people used to be able to take a joke in this country, before all the political correctness and Cartesian dualism.

Seriously, this is a bad situation and it’s getting worse.