On Christmas Eve, George Ciccariello-Maher, a professor at Drexel University whose excellent work on Venezuela and political theory you may know, tweeted, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” The next day, he followed up with this: “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed.” The Right quickly rallied, dive-bombing Ciccariello-Maher with death threats and his employer with all manner of denunciations. Drexel responded in the way we’ve come to expect from nervous administrators. After pronouncing the tweets “reprehensible,” it declared, “The University is taking this situation very seriously. We contacted Ciccariello-Maher today to arrange a meeting to discuss this matter in detail.”

Folks, we’ve been here before. Over the years, it has become a pillar of our organizing that no one should be punished by his or her employer for political speech off the job. This is a cornerstone of academic freedom, but many of us believe it should be extended to all forms of employment.

I’ve been absolutely consistent on this principle over the years, even when it has involved employees expressing views I find abhorrent. I defended Glenn Reynolds, a right-wing professor at the University of Tennessee Law School, against calls that he be fired after he tweeted that car drivers should “run down” protesters blocking traffic in Charlotte, North Carolina over a fatal police shooting there. I defended a nurse — also in Philadelphia, as it happens — who was fired for posting awful racist comments on her Facebook page. (I am not equating or comparing George’s tweets with those of Reynolds or the Facebook posts of that nurse: I’m merely noting my bona fides here, sadly, because I have to.) The principle, as I say, is simple: no one should be fired — and suffer all the consequences of what that means in a country like the United States — for their political speech, particularly when it’s off the job.