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Sad Day for Conservatives: Mike Adams Dead
From the Port City Daily:
WILMINGTON — According to the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, Mike Adams was found dead at his residence today.
Deputies responded to a wellness check at Adams’ home address and found him deceased. NHCSO is investigating the death, but has not released any additional information, and could not confirm cause of death or if foul play was suspected.
The longtime professor of criminology and sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) was set to retire next week as part of a $500,000 settlement.
The settlement came as Adams was facing growing criticism for his social media posts and UNCW, in particular Chancellor Jose V. Sartarelli, was under increasing pressure to terminate his employment. Several petitions with around 85,000 total signatures called for his termination, and letters from his colleagues and fellow criminologists denounced his actions and called for his firing.
Due to Adams’ tenured status, and his previous legal victory over UNCW (which cost the UNC system roughly $700,000), the university opted for a negotiated exit.
Adams had supporters as well as detractors, including those who saw his online behavior as an exercise of his first First Amendment rights. Adams’ classes were also popular with many of his students, earning him generally positive evaluations and several awards for teaching, according to his UNCW curriculum vitae.
My son went to UNCW in the History graduate program. Adams was well known on campus as one of the very few conservative voices, and he drove the Left and eventually the UNCW administration wild. He was set to retire Aug 1.
Published in General
It does seem odd to go to all the trouble of getting that settlement and then not enjoying its fruits. There certainly would be people willing to murder him and make it look like a suicide.
Then the Mark Steyn column cited by @kozak seems to raise the possibility that (assuming it is suicide) isolation due to Wuhan virus / government orders contributed.
I am quite curious as to why you would entertain the idea that there would be people around Wilmington, NC willing and able to murder Mike Adams. He is but a mere tenured professor, albeit one who turned his tenured professorship into a high-profile platform.
That high-profile platform. Does not have to be someone in Wilmington. He has written about some of the vile nasty things said about him. Several people with high-profile media platforms are regularly threatened with death. Most such threats are idle, but once in a while someone tries to carry out an attack. Given the violence we are currently seeing perpetrated by the left, and the encouragements being offered to perpetrate more violence, targeted violence against individuals is within the window of reasonable possibilities.
Mark Steyn is one of the greats. Definitely got the feels from that one.
I’ll try and be careful and note that I really am just wondering aloud. I don’t know how well Mike hid what he was going through. He may have been in a lot of pain and kept up a good face with his colleagues. They may not have known. Though, and I’ll be careful to note I’m not alleging bad faith– I wonder how many of them are asking themselves if they let the demonization of this man go too far.
I won’t name the person since I know them decently well (nice person!) who got a few twitter threads and I think a daily beast article written about them and decision they made in their teaching capacity. I didn’t agree with any of it and wouldn’t have made the decision but that kind of stuff can generate enormous amounts of stress. It hurts people.
Really? You don’t think UNCW if full of lefties? Every one of my sons professors in his graduate history program were Marxists. And, the Triangle area with Duke, and UNC is just up the road. Not a stretch at all to have considered it a possible murder.
We are war.
I read that he was not tenured but had some form of renewable contract in perpetuity.