The New York Times on Monday published a lengthy story about a college professor at the University of Chicago who was forced to cancel a class she had planned after being bombarded with violent threats from supporters of a student on campus who in the past has promoted the work of infamous neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.
The controversy began when Dr. Rebecca Journey announced plans to hold a class called "The Problem of Whiteness" that dealt with how whiteness as a racial and socioeconomic concept had evolved over time.
This quickly drew the attention of a student named Daniel Schmidt, who railed against the class for "anti-white bias" and posted Journey's contact information to his followers.
Journey was quickly inundated with violent threats that grew so intense that she was forced to cancel her class -- a fact that Schmidt celebrated upon hearing the news.
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As the Times notes, Schmidt's views are controversial even among his fellow campus conservatives, as last year he endorsed the presidential campaign of Hitler-praising rapper Kanye West and has openly promoted the work of Fuentes, a Holocaust denier.
Despite this, the University of Chicago has done nothing to get Schmidt to halt his crusade against Dr. Journey, which it believes is protected under the school's free speech policies.
Watson Lubin, a senior at the University of Chicago who has taken Journey's classes, tells the Times that he fears the school is setting a bad precedent where " you can, under the auspices of free speech, more or less intimidate and harass a professor, and sic your incredible following on TikTok and Twitter on them for the purpose of chilling speech."
