Drexel Professor George Ciccariello-Maher Resigns After Receiving Threats Over Controversial Tweets

An outspoken Drexel University professor who received death threats after stirring controversy on Twitter over several current events including October’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, whom Fox News called "perhaps the most consistently controversial figure in higher education this year, has resigned Thursday.

George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of politics and global studies, will “no longer work” at Drexel University after Dec. 31 due to continued threats of violence and death made against him, he said in a lengthy statement posted on social media Thursday.

“This is not a decision I take lightly; however, after nearly a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable,” he said in the statement. “Staying at Drexel in the eye of this storm has become detrimental to my own writing, speaking, and organizing.”

In the lengthy social media post, Ciccariello-Maher went on to provide his opinion on free speech on college campuses, remarking that “we are at war, and academia is a crucial front in that war.”

Ciccariello-Maher, who joined the Drexel community after having taught political theory at U.C. Berkeley, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas, also included messages to the faculty and his students at the university, who he said have “earned [his] admiration and the admiration of many by standing up for [their] rights.”

“In the face of aggression from the racist Right and impending global catastrophe, we must defend our universities, our students, and ourselves by defending the most vulnerable among us and by making our campuses unsafe spaces for white supremacists,” he wrote in the Thursday afternoon post.

Ciccariello-Maher was placed on administrative leave since October after he made controversial comments on social media on Oct. 2, a day after 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of music festivalgoers in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500, which prompted death threats against him.

“White people and men are told that they are entitled to everything,” Ciccariello-Maher wrote Oct. 2 in a tweet. “This is what happens when they don’t get what they want.”

The professor wrote in the op-ed published in the Washington Post that threats started to come in after conservative media outlets highlighted his tweets on the shooting. The university did not fire him then instead placed him on leave in order to ensure campus safety.

Drexel confirmed the professor's resignation on Thursday, citing his decision “to pursue other opportunities.”

“Drexel University has accepted his resignation and recognizes the significant scholarly contributions that Professor Ciccariello-Maher has made to the field of political thought and his service to the Drexel University community as an outstanding classroom teacher,” the university said in a statement. “Drexel University wishes Professor Ciccariello-Maher well in his future pursuits.”

Ciccariello-Maher also came under the scanner with his comments in March that took on the U.S. military, saying it made him want to “vomit or yell” to see an airline passenger give up a first-class seat to a service member.

He had first raised eyebrows and drew severe criticism when he tweeted on Christmas Eve 2016 that all he “wanted” for the holidays was a “white genocide.” He later said the tweet was a joke, explaining it as a “satirical jab at a certain paranoid racist fantasy and that white genocide does not exist.”