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Rising Fordham University senior Austin Tong made two posts to his social media account which intimidated no one and expressed no racial bias.
One, posted on June 4, showed him holding a rifle, a perfectly legal thing to do. The caption read: “Don’t tread on me. #198964.” That hashtag refers to June 4, 1989 — the date of the peak of the Tiananmen Square protests.
On June 3, meanwhile, he’d posted a picture of David Dorn, a black retired St. Louis police captain who was killed as he responded to an armed robbery at a pawn shop during a riot associated with Black Lives Matter protests in the city.
“Y’all a bunch of hypocrites,” Tong wrote.
For expressing those opinions and making a political statement with a firearm, Tong was found in violation of “Regulations relating to Bias and/or Hate Crimes” and “Threats/Intimidation,” according to a Tuesday letter from Keith Eldredge, Fordham University’s dean of students, that Tong posted to Instagram.
Welcome to America, where private universities now feel free to impose what Tong rightly pegged as “Soviet-style interrogation and punishment” over wholly inoffensive political speech.
“As an immigrant, a big beauty of America to me is the right it gives its citizens to bear arms, not only to protect themselves but also to keep the government in check.”
Those are correct answers in the context of truth and logic. When it comes to academia, however, one is racked with an involuntary cringe after considering how those thoughts were received in Fordham’s Office of Multicultural Affairs.
“Coming to this country as an immigrant, one would think that America is a nation of law and free speech. Yet that is no longer the case,” Tong wrote Fordham officials this week in an open letter posted to his Instagram account.
“I was forcibly silenced, faced verbal and assaulting harassment from mobs, and subjected to Soviet-style interrogation and punishment by a Jesuit university that claims in its own code of conduct, that it protects ‘freedom of expression and the open exchange of ideas.’”
Fordham, meanwhile, tried to reframe the issue as one of “hate speech” in a terse statement issued by Christopher Rodgers, dean of students at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.
“Fordham University neither condones nor allows hate speech. After researching the background, symbolism and context of the University took steps to address the situation with the students involved,” the statement said.