Defiance: Blacklisted Portland professor joins New College in Florida

Bruce Gilley of Portland State University, willing to fight
Bruce Gilley of Portland State University

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Bruce Gilley, the Portland State University political scientist professor who was vilified, blacklisted, and threatened with death after writing a paper arguing that western colonialism was not all evil, that it also brought benefits to third world nations, has now taken a job as a scholar in residence at New College in Florida.

Left-leaning scholars have shown active disdain for both Gilley and New College, the latter of which is in the process of being remade from a poorly ranked campus heavily focused on social justice and critical race theory into one that prioritizes a classical liberal education.

“What they are doing there is of global significance, because this is a public university, it’s where the clearest democratic fight is,” Gilley told The College Fix in a telephone interview Friday discussing his new post. In a piece for the American Conservative, Gilley explained further: “New College is the first Reconquista of a publicly-funded venue. …Taking back power from the academic mullahs who have turned higher education in the West into little more than a madrassa system of leftist thought depends on storming the public institutions, not fleeing from them.”

Gilley’s paper on colonialism had made this quite reasonable historical statement:
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Today’s blacklisted American: Previously blacklisted Oregon professor sues university for being further blacklisted because he tweeted “all men are created equal.”

Bruce Gilley
Bruce Gilley of Portland State University

They’re coming for you next: Professor Bruce Gilley of Portland State University in Oregon, who previously had a peer-reviewed paper on colonialism withdrawn from publication because of death threats, has now sued the university because the former communication manager for its Division of Equity and Inclusion blocked him from an internal college Twitter discussion group because he had the nerve to tweet “all men are created equal.”

You can read his lawsuit complaint here [pdf]. Gilley not only sued the university’s Division of Equity and Inclusion, he also sued directly Tova Stabin, the communications manager who blocked him.

What makes the case interesting is that the day after he filed his lawsuit, the university unblocked him and its lawyer sent him an apologetic letter. Here is part of that letter, as quoted in the lawsuit complaint:
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Death threats force journal to remove pro-colonialism paper

The fascists win: Death threats have finally forced the academic journal Third World Quarterly to take down a paper that had expressed some pro-colonialism ideas.

In a “withdrawal notice” posted on the now-blank “Viewpoint” article page, publisher Taylor & Francis said the death threats were “serious and credible” and “linked to the publication of this essay.” It reiterated against contrary claims that the article had “undergone double-blind peer review.”

Gilley [the author] himself had asked for the article’s withdrawal following a coordinated international campaign to ruin his reputation and blacklist him from other journals, and to shame Third World Quarterly into removing it. Fifteen members of its editorial board resigned in protest of its publication.

What had Gilley said that was so terrible?

Research …often finds that at least some if not many or most episodes of Western colonialism were a net benefit…Such works have found evidence for significant social, economic and political gains under colonialism: expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, the generation of historical and cultural knowledge, and national identify formation, to mention just a few dimensions.

He couched this statement with numerous caveats and politically correct expressions of doubt, in the hope the mob would not come after him for stating something that is simply not permitted in today’s modern fascist academic community. I should also note that as a historian who has researched this subject myself, his position is easily documented by numerous papers across the entire field. The colonialism movement of Europe had numerous bad aspects, but numerous benefits as well for the countries colonized.

None of this mattered. Gilley had blasphemed against the leftist anti-western ideology, and had to be destroyed, along with anyone else who even hinted at mild support.