Nice work if you can get it.

Seems that Georgetown University's charming figurehead, Provost's Distinguished Professor Christine Fair, the one who made headlines with her public call to 'castrate the corpses' of white male Senators who supported Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, following her wish for their 'miserable deaths,' is getting a paid vacation instead of a pink slip.

Here is what Campus Reform had out:

Georgetown University Associate Professor Christine Fair is now on “research leave” after making incendiary statements about Republican politicians on her blog as well as on social media. 

Fair entered the spotlight after Campus Reform reported on her profanity-laden tweets in which she suggested that white GOP senators "deserved miserable deaths while feminists laugh." Fair also publicly attacked Campus Reform correspondents on her blog, Tenacious Hellpussy, after being contacted for a statement.

Now normally, in the real work world, if you embarass your employer with your disgusting public statements, you get some kind of sanction. You get fired. You get privileges docked. The alumni donations dry up, the kids accepting admission don't show up, and the university public relations department gets stuck working overtime after all, and you become a liability. Your worth to them is below your cost. Plenty of such professors have received this fate, as I noted here.

It's understandable, and it's perfectly normal.

But somehow, a weird exception was made at Georgetown with Fair, who instead of getting punished, got rewarded for her grossness and the hit to the reputation of Georgetown that her tweets brought them. She's going overseas. She's getting to do the research of her choice. She's being freed from the hassle of teaching and mentoring mere kids, and being allowed to do her own thing.

Most professors would dream of such opportunities. Well, she got hers, and not because she earned it, except if Georgetown thinks her vile tweets really were earning it. And spare me the caveat that she's probably going to a dump like Pakistan. If you are a professor of that region, going there is your idea of a good vacation abroad because you like the adventure and you have the tools to get around in it. I love such adventure travel myself, and I love it over and above going to conventional places. One other thing: Such travel can be very, very expensive, so don't think Georgetown or whoever is funding her chair isn't shelling out.

Georgetown's response has been incredibly mealy mouthed:

“This has been a challenging moment for our community, as we balance our unwavering commitment to free speech and expression with the need to ensure civil and respectful discourse,” Joel Hellman, Dean of the Walsh School of Foreign Service, wrote in an email to students Friday. 

"We can and do strongly condemn the use of violent imagery, profanity, and insensitive labeling of individuals based on gender, ethnicity or political affiliation in any form of discourse. Such expressions go against our core values," he added.

“Earlier today, I spoke with Professor Fair. To prevent further disruption to her students and out of an abundance of caution for the security of our community, we have mutually agreed for Professor Fair to go on research leave effective immediately. Professor Fair will accelerate previously scheduled international research travel.”

Notice how he tries to say it was previously scheduled, so as to assure it wasn't quite a reward the other profs didn't get.

Notice also how he claims to want to prevent 'further disruption' to her students, as if she herself wasn't the disruption. And oh, what happens when she returns? We all know this isn't the first time she's gone unhinged, and with her unrepentant attitude, it's not going to be the last. Have they talked to her? Apparently, they can't and haven't and are hoping that by packing her off to Pakistan, she will annoy only the natives.

Which again raises the question: Why are they protecting her? I can only speculate what I speculated last time, that she's obviously a valuable property to them, given that they might imagine she will be appointed a Democratic Party administration's National Security Advisor and they want her onboard to be a feather in their cap as well as a source of jobs for their leftwing grads.

That's swamp ethics, and it's obviously superseded Jesuit ethics as well as Georgetown's claimed civility. Sweeping Fair under the rug by packing her off abroad and doing nothing else to fix the problem is no way to maintain a university mission. They chose, and they chose poorly.

Image Credit: New America, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0