Michigan college professor suspended for saying some conservative campus speakers should be killed

A college professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, Steven Shaviro, was suspended without pay after posting on Facebook that it would be better for students to kill their political opponents rather than just protest against them. 

"I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down," Shaviro said on Facebook, according to Fox News.

"When right-wing groups invite such speakers to campus, it is precisely because they want to provoke an incident that discredits the left, and gives more publicity and validation to these reprehensible views than they could otherwise attain," he wrote.

"The protesters get blamed instead of the bigoted speaker; the university administration finds a perfect excuse to side publicly with the racists or phobes; the national and international press has a field day saying that bigots are the ones being oppressed, rather than the people those bigots actually hate being the victims of oppression," the post continued.

Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson condemned the post in an email to the students and said that the university notified the police. 

"We have on many occasions defended the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but we feel this post far exceeds the bounds of reasonable or protected speech. It is, at best, morally reprehensible and, at worst, criminal," Wilson said in the email. 

"We have referred this to law enforcement agencies for further review and investigation. Pending their review, we have suspended the professor with pay, effective immediately," the statement continued.