Students at Brooklyn College are calling for the firing of Mitchell Langbert, a long-time associate professor of business, for his inflammatory blog post regarding Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Langbert wrote a blog post apparently normalizing sexual assault as a right of passage.
“If someone did not commit sexual assault in high school, then he is not a member of the male sex.”
He went on to say, “The Democrats have discovered that 15-year-olds play spin-the-bottle, and they have jumped on a series of supposed spin-the-bottle crimes during (Supreme Court nominee Brett) Kavanaugh’s minority, which they characterize as rape, although no one complained or reported any crime for 40 years.”
Langbert is not just pardoning boys who sexually assault he thinks it should be a requirement to serve the country. In his post Langbert also wrote: “In the future, having committed sexual assault in high school ought to be a prerequisite for all appointments, judicial and political. Those who did not play spin-the-bottle when they were 15 should not be in public life.”
Langbert who called Democrats a party of “tutu-wearing pansies and totalitarian sissies” claims he was attempting to be satirical but “I guess I’m just no Jonathan Swift,” he said referring to the 18th century Irish author.
After all of the backlash, on Wednesday, Langbert added on to his blog post stating that it was meant to be satire.
“My piece was in a sense a protest to the constraints on speech and how it’s stacked against conservatives and used to banish conservatives from higher education,” the self-described libertarian said.
Former Brooklyn College student Joan Martinez said she was disturbed by the post. She saw Wednesday’s edit, but wasn’t buying it.
“As someone who’s studied satire, it was simply inappropriate,” Martinez told CNN.
Students and alumni alike are coming out in droves to try to force their school to let the 64-year-old go.
“To have someone in a position of power espousing sexual assault is not a joke. It’s something that needs to be taken seriously,” said Corrinne Greene of the Young Professionals of America campus group.
The Brooklyn College provost Anne Lopes denounced Langbert’s position calling it “abhorrent and counter to the values of the school community.” Unfortunately, she said the school cannot fire Langbert due to the First Amendment, which “protects even speech that many experience as offensive, such as the faculty member’s post.”
