Eulogy for a Conservative Warrior

Many conservatives were shocked to learn last week that Townhall columnist, pro-life advocate, free speech warrior, and conservative professor Mike S. Adams was found dead at his home in North Carolina.

The author of such politically-incorrect titles as Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative Professor (2004), Feminists Say the Darnedest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts “Womyn” on Campus (2008), and Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don’t Understand (2013), Adams toiled in the front lines of the culture war, fighting for the unborn and against the progressive suppression of free speech. His death is a terrible loss for those causes, for the many Christian and conservative students he mentored on a hostile campus, and for patriots all over the country.

Friends and supporters, myself included, could not help but suspect foul play, because the police report on Mike’s death referred to a “gsw” or “gun shot wound.” We considered Mike a fearless warrior, and he had just opted for early retirement after winning a half-million dollar settlement from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (which a jury found had discriminated against him for his Christian conservative beliefs), so suicide seemed unthinkable. It’s painful to think that a brother-in-arms wrestled with and lost an internal struggle of which we were unaware, but a New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office investigation ultimately concluded that that he did indeed take his own life.

Former National Review writer David French, who had been a close friend of Mike and represented him in his seven-year lawsuit against UNC, posted a very personal eulogy at The Dispatch in which he lamented not only his friend’s passing but also that the mainstream media’s coverage of it was “deeply, gravely unjust.” He noted that such outlets as USA Today, CNN, and Buzzfeed had, in their headlines, defined Mike’s life “by the worst possible characterization of his worst tweets.” BuzzFeed’s was the most repulsive: “A Professor Who Was Known for His Racist, Misogynistic Tweets Was Found Dead in His Home.” And of course, social media teemed with vile, leftist celebration for Adams’ passing.

“It’s the most graceless way possible to describe a man who faced an avalanche of unjust hatred in his life,” French wrote, “who had to fight for years to vindicate his most basic constitutional rights, and who helped mentor thousands of young conservative Christian students who often feel isolated and alone on secular and progressive campuses.”

I did not know Mike personally until this month when I interviewed him for FrontPage Mag. That was barely 10 days before concerned neighbors called 911 to alert police that he had not been seen and his car had not left his driveway for a few days. My communication with him was brief; he was grateful for the opportunity to answer some questions about an academic career that was coming to a close, one that had been marked not only by multiple teaching and service awards but by “controversy,” meaning that his irreverence for the left’s sacred cows, and his very presence on campus as a conservative professor (that rarest of oxymorons), triggered the haters. They responded predictably: by smearing Mike with all the usual labels and targeting him for cancellation from his job.

Confessions of a Conservative College Professor

In the left-dominated world of academia, the tiny minority of conservative professors has to keep its collective head down in order to avoid shunning, discrimination, and the bullying Cancel Culture currently running amok in universities. But Mike S. Adams, until recently a longtime professor in the criminal justice program at University of North Carolina – Wilmington (UNCW), isn’t the sort to muffle his convictions.

The author of such politically-incorrect titles as Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative Professor (2004), Feminists Say the Darnedest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts “Womyn” on Campus (2008), and Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don’t Understand (2013), Adams is also a columnist at TownHall.com who isn’t afraid to call out progressive totalitarianism or push back against the attempted suppression of his free speech.

Adams took UNCW to court for violating his First Amendment rights by denying his promotion to full professor in 2006 in retaliation for his pro-life speeches and TownHall columns. In 2014, a federal jury ruled in Adams’ favor and the court ordered UNCW to promote him and give him seven years back pay. Adams says he “spent most of the money on guns made by Browning, guitars made by Fender, and amps made by Mesa Boogie.”

In 2016, a Change.org petition called for Adams' removal from the school after he published an article titled “A ‘Queer Muslim’ Jihad?” at The Daily Wire. More recently, he triggered progressive outrage with a couple of tweets which the school labeled “vile and inexcusable,” including this zinger: “Don't shut down the universities. Shut down the non essential majors. Like Women's Studies.” The tweets sparked two new Change.org petitions calling for his removal, as well as a condemnation from Wilmington resident and actor Orlando Jones, who tweeted that Adams was “a PROBLEM.” Yes, a problem for the anti-free speech left.

Dr. Adams graciously agreed to answer some questions for FrontPage Mag.

Mark Tapson:           Mike, in the ‘90s you abandoned your atheism and embraced conservatism as well. What brought about your religious and political conversions?

Just Say ‘No’ to the Revolution

As the militantly ignorant shock troops of a new Cultural Revolution rampage across the United States of America in an orgy of statue-toppling, cop-killing, and flag-burning, they continue to be met with a stunning lack of resistance. President Trump’s stirring Independence Day speech aside, the country’s leaders are worse than useless: Democrat politicians support the chaos, and Republican politicians are too feckless to take action. Conservative citizens are too law-abiding to fight fire with fire, and so the mob, stoked by the activist news media and facing no consequences for their anarchy, tears down America unopposed.

Instead of resistance, a wave of self-flagellating public apologies and corporate appeasement has swept through guilt-ridden, white America, which has simply rolled over for the violent revolutionaries of the Black Lives Matter racial extortion racket. One notable recent example of Americans embracing their own humiliation before the rabid mob: the country music band Lady Antebellum has chosen to rename itself “Lady A,” because the band members found themselves “regretful and embarrassed” by the word antebellum and its purported “associations” with the Civil War and slavery. Of course, the band didn’t pick the original name to honor slavery, but simply as a nod to the Southern antebellum-style home “where we took our first photos.” But innocuous explanations aren’t sufficient anymore, because the totalitarian left has booby-trapped the cultural landscape into a minefield of ultra-heightened racial sensitivity.

(For the same reason, and in a bid to revive their relevance, the forgotten country music trio The Dixie Chicks, who were so eager to apologize to foreign audiences for President Bush, pre-emptively dropped “Dixie” from their name. Now they’re just The Chicks. Once they realize how triggering that word is to feminists, presumably they’ll hasten to change their name to just “The.”)

It’s unclear whether anyone actually ever complained to Lady Antebellum about its name, but in any case, the members posted a cringe-inducing statement on Instagram expressing their deep sorrow “for the hurt this has caused and for anyone who has felt unsafe, unseen, or unvalued.” It’s hard for a rational person to fathom how the name of a band can cause hurt and make someone feel unsafe, unseen, and unvalued, but this is the irrational, woke world in which we find ourselves now: a culture whipped into a frenzy by political correctness and identity politics, in which supposedly “marginalized” demographic groups in the freest, least racist, and most prosperous country in history have weaponized their perceived victimhood against their perceived oppressors. It is a culture in which those “oppressors” have been indoctrinated to internalize their own racial guilt so deeply that, like the young woman in this degrading video, they do not hesitate to kneel before, beg forgiveness from, and even kiss the boots of total strangers against whom they have committed no sin.