I know, I know…there are a lot of these, probably many thousands, but most manage to pretend to not be likely to mold vulnerable young minds in to wanting their own fellow citizens dead. Georgetown Professor Jonathan Brown, however is special.
He is a full professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University [above] and the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization. He is clearly the campus cheerleader, one of them anyway, for Islam, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I would personally have Brown frisked for strap-on bombs if he was ever a guest at one of my dinner parties, however. Fortunately, I am as likely to ever be in a position to hold a dinner party as I am to clone a passenger pigeon.
On Twitter/X he wrote last week, among other things, “I’m not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops…I’m surprised this is what these FDD/Hasbara people have been auto-erotically asphyxiating themselves for all these years…Ironically, the main takeaways (in my non-expert opinion, and I’m happy to be corrected) from all this have nothing to do with a US attack: 1) Iran can take a licking; 2) if Israel attacks Iranian cities, it gets fucked up pretty bad. I mean I’ve been shocked at the damage Iranian missiles caused; 3) despite his best efforts, Reza Pahlavi HVAC repair services still only third best in Nova.”
When his post came to light and some harsh criticism began coming his way, Brown quickly made his account private so nobody but fellow Jihadists could see what he’s thinking, and wrote, “I deleted my previous tweet because a lot of people were interpreting it as a call for violence. That’s not what I intended. I have two immediate family members in the US military who’ve served abroad and wouldn’t want any harm to befall American soldiers” Brown later deleted that post too.
Imagine anyone thinking that his published hope for an Iranian strike on a U.S. base was a call for violence! What’s the matter with these people?
Fox News did some journalism and revealed that Brown is married to a journalist for the television network Al Jazeera and that her father was deported to Turkey for supporting and aiding an Iranian terrorist organization.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Should there be any adverse consequences to Brown, or any similarly behaving professor, for his social media outburst?
I do salute Prof. Brown for revealing his values and loyalties for all to see; then again, once he realized that’s what he did, he retreated into a metaphorical social media bunker. Of course, he may have genuinely believed that hoping Iran bombs U.S. bases isn’t a call for violence. On the other hand, as Captain Hook is wont to exclaim, that belief would suggest he’s an idiot, and idiots should not be professors.
I know, I know: freedom of speech, academic freedom. All good things, essential things. ethical principles that must be protected and respected. But why is someone with Brown’s apparent loyalties, biases and anti-American instincts being employed at an American university? Can any adverse foreign entity or movement purchase a chair and fund an institute for the chair-holder to use to advance hostile ideologies with the recipient institution happily trading its integrity and its students education for cash?
Indian-American journalist Asra Romani has similar questions. She apparently knows her answer to the quiz:
Ethics Alarms 
Another John Brown. Great.
And, for added irony, this one seems to be pro-slavery.
Giving aid and comfort to the enemy much? There is a reckoning coming between Western civilization and Islamism. Brown has chosen his side.
As they routinely say freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
I hate that saying. It reminds me of the line by Fat Tony from the Simpsons: “I would like to remind you that accidents will happen… like the killing of you by us.”
-Jut
The answer to bad speech is better speech. Is better speech allowed? On social media platforms, it’s dicey. In University classrooms, it’s even more dicey. Would the good professor allow a dissenting student to provide better speech? Are there still students capable of better speech?
The violence endorsed by these modern-day Jacobins isn’t new but it has certainly become commonplace in the United States which is what disturbs me the most.
Facing a possible death sentence in France because he, of all people, didn’t check all of the boxes on the Revolution’s purity list, Thomas Paine wrote to Georges-Jacques Danton, “I now despair of seeing the great object of European liberty accomplished, and my despair arises not from the combined foreign powers (Note by Me: France was at war with many nations at the time), not from the intrigues of aristocracy and priest craft, but from the tumultuous misconduct with which the internal affairs of the present revolution is conducted…I am distressed to see matters so badly conducted, and so little attention paid to moral principles. It is these things that injure the character of the Revolution and discourage the progress of liberty all over the world.”
Indeed, seeing the outcome of the French Revolution made nations, such as England, Prussia, Austria and even the papal states willing to send armies to stop the violence from spreading to their own countries.
In the case of the good professor, there is no character to injure. Iran has sponsored terrorism for years against Israel – a country that is only trying to exist – and its allies, such as the United States. The moral relativists, as well as those with a perpetual victim mentality (like Whoopi Goldberg who somehow thinks that it’s more dangerous for her to walk out on the streets of the U.S. because she’s black as opposed to just walking out on the streets of Iran in her street clothes), confuse the issue and make Americans dumber.
Of course there should be consequences to his “propaganda”.