A professor at a New York City criminal justice college has been suspended after tweeting “it’s a privilege to teach future dead cops.”
A professor at a New York City criminal justice college has been suspended after tweeting "it’s a privilege to teach future dead cops.”
The tweet posted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice adjunct economics professor Michael Isaacson was shocking and abhorrent, college president Karol Mason said in a statement Friday evening. Isaacson was put on administrative leave out of concern for the safety of students, faculty and staff. The college said he would remain on leave until it finishes an internal review.
“While John Jay strongly supports and affirms the right of free speech and independent views and expressions by our faculty, students and staff, the statements made by the adjunct are the antithesis of what John Jay College represents,” she said.
The tweet, sent on Aug. 23 under the handle @vulgareconomics, stated "Some of y’all might think it sucks being an anti-fascist teaching at John Jay College but I think it’s a privilege to teach future dead cops" and brought immediate condemnation from across the social network.
It even drew the ire of the NYPD’s unions, Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O’Neill — a John Jay graduate.
“As a 2x grad there, I know Michael Isaacson's reprehensible values don't represent @JohnJayCollege, #NYC, #NYPD or families of murdered cops,” O’Neill wrote.
Mason also added that faculty at the college received threats after Isaacson's tweet and students told administrators they were worried about their safety.
"I want to state clearly that I was shocked by these statements. They are abhorrent," she said. "This adjunct expressed personal views that are not consistent with our college’s well known and firm values and principles and my own personal standards and principles."
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Isaacson, using another Twitter account, wrote Friday morning that he doesn’t believe in the institution of policing, saying it "operates at the behest of a state that increasingly represents the weapons and prison industry rather than the public they’re supposed to serve."
"I illuminate this fact in my classes in the hopes that my students are able to choose a career path that does not put them in the position of having to act as an agent of that institution," he said.
NBC reached out to Isaacson seeking comment after his suspension. In a statement to the Daily News on Friday, he said his biggest regret was "putting my sudents and the John Jay faculty at risk."
