A Fresno State instructor’s hateful post on Trump isn’t terrorism | Opinion
Another Fresno State instructor has run afoul of conservatives, this time for social media posts that wish for President Trump to die.
The posts set off predictable reactions on social media, with many calling for part-time anthropolgy lecturer Katherine Shurik to be fired or jailed. Some comments even described Fresno State as a center of “leftist terrorism.”
That’s ridiculous. The professors and students I have gotten to know at Fresno State are level headed, even keeled and hard working. They are not ideologues. Best of all, many of the students are first-generation Bulldogs and plan to return to their home communities to start businesses or work and serve in other ways.
That doesn’t mean some professors don’t have strong opinions that go over the top. As recounted by Bee staff writer Bryant-Jon Anteola, in 2018 Fresno State endured a firestorm of criticism after an English professor expressed her displeasure with former president George Bush and his family within an hour of an official announcement that former First Lady Barbara Bush died at the age of 92.
As offensive as that was, in America we are able to think and say outrageous and offensive things. It happens all the time, both by people with far-left views and those on the far right. That doesn’t make such opinions a crime.
It is a crime to threaten to harm presidents and other executives in the line of succession. But from my reading of Shurik’s posts on Instagram, she did not go that far. Elon Musk was wrong to say she did in his comment on the social media platform X, which he owns.
Katherine Shurik’s postings
In one of Shurik’s posts, a computer-generated image shows Trump lying dead in an open coffin. Surrounding him are former Presidents and First Ladies George W. and Laura Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama. At the far right stands Melania Trump.
“I have a dream for this to happen much sooner rather than later,” Shurik writes. She adds a number of hashtags, including “#DieTrump” and #TrumpDead.”
Another posting by Shurik shows a tombstone with Trump’s birth date. His date of death is shown as “Now would be good.”
Outrageous and offensive? No question. The postings violate the golden rule our mothers taught us: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The postings drew a strong reaction from Fresno County Supervisor Garry Bredefeld, who called Shurik an “unhinged radical.”
“These are the unhinged radicals teaching young kids at schools and universities across the country,” he wrote on X. “They are hate-filled, radical lunatics and have no business teaching anywhere.”
Bredefeld told me his comment was directed at Shurik, not Fresno State faculty at large. “You have tremendous professors at Fresno State, but this is a radical who wants to indoctrinate young and impressionable kids with her radical, lunatic ideology,” Bredefeld, who has the university in his District 2, told me in a phone interview.
My sense is that college students are not as impressionable as Bredefeld thinks. They are open-minded, but not empty of thought. I am pretty sure most anyone seeing Shurik’s postings would figure they are overstated to make a point.
Republican ‘joke’ in bad taste
Conservatives can also be guilty of outrageous commentary. Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin appears on a video on X last weekend talking about how a reporter shot and killed Rep. William Taulbee at the U.S. Capitol in 1890.
“There’s a lot we can say about reporters of the stories they write, but I bet they would write a lot less false stories — as President Trump says, ‘fake news’ — if we could still handle our differences that way,” Mullin said.
Meaning, it would be a good idea to shoot news reporters.
Mullin later told The Oklahoman newspaper that he was joking. Shurik might say she was exaggerating. Both were offensive in their own ways.
The unintended injury in Shurik’s case is to Fresno State. If its reputation gets damaged by this latest controversy, it will be unfortunate. The blame for that won’t just be on a single instructor, but also on those who disparage Fresno State online without thought to its important standing in the San Joaquin Valley.
