Professor Watchlist

Craig Willse is an associate faculty member of Social Environmental Arts Practice and Social Justice and Community Organizing at Prescott College in Arizona. Craig led faculty and administrators at George Mason University in protesting the renaming of its law school after Antonin Scalia and regularly engages in Anti-Israel protests.

 

Censorship 

In 2016, following an announcement from George Mason University that they would be renaming their law school after the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Willse, who according to NBC, was then a cultural studies professor at  George Mason, led the protests by George Mason faculty and administration to oppose the decision. Scalia had served on the Supreme Court 30 years and was known for his  “originalism,” or interpretation of the United States Constitution as Scalia believes our founding fathers had intended.

As part of the protest, Willse authors a letter protesting the university’s decision. The letter, which appears on the site, “No Justice for GMU,” details Willse’s opposition to Scalia. He “denounces” the renaming of the law school after Scalia and describes the university’s decision as an “affront” to those targeted by Scalia’s, “racism, sexism, and homophobia.” Willie specifically accuses Scalia’s “constitutional originalism” of being “widely criticized” by historians and scholars, citing left-leaning publications such as Mother Jones, ThinkProgress, and The Huffington Post in doing so.

The same letter accuses Scalia of causing “direct harms” to GMU students, including “students of color, women, and LGBT students.”

The protest was ultimately unsuccessful and the law school was officially renamed the Antonin Scalia Law School later that year.

 

Antisemitic 

Willse accuses Israel of being responsible for police brutality and racist profiling in the United States. In an article for the site, “Deadly Exchange” Willse states that policing is a project of colonial and racial control.

Deadly Exchange is a campaign by the anti-Israel group, Jewish Voice for Peace. The campaign intends to end any collaboration between US and Israeli police forces. According to the official site for “Deadly Exchange,” security cooperation with Israel promotes “racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders.”

In the same article, Willse compares policing with slave patrols in the Jim Crow-era and therefore says policing “fundamentally anti-black.” He states that police cannot be reformed, and his long-term goal is to abolish police and prisons.

As documented by the site, Canary Mission, Willse holds other anti-Israel stances and takes part in protests accusing Israel of being an “apartheid state.” In an article for the site Truthout, Willse describes Israel and the US “as the world’s most racist, repressive and violent police and military forces.”

In the video below, Willse can be seen disrupting a pro-Israel parade in New York. As reported by The Forward, members of the New York Police Department stated that Willse and 4 others “targeted”  the parade on behalf of Jewish Voice for Peace and were arrested for disorderly conduct.

 

To learn more, check out TPUSA Contributor Erin Elmore’s article on Willse at TPUSA Live.

 

 

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Updated Spring, 2021