Brandeis Student Journalist: ‘Selective Outrage’ on Campus

A Brandeis student who reported on the anti-police tirade of one of the school’s student leaders says the ensuing attacks he has endured have led him to the conclusion that the university’s actions have invited a culture of “selective outrage,” in which the expressed prejudices of the left are protected, while opposing views are portrayed as hate speech and quashed through intimidation.

On December 20, Daniel Mael, a Brandeis University senior and a contributor to the conservative Truth Revolt and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, reported on a tweet sent out by student leader Khadijah Lynch, a Brandeis junior and an undergraduate department representative in the African and Afro-American Studies Department.

Though Lynch’s Twitter account is now “protected,” on the day New York City police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were murdered, she reportedly tweeted out, “I have no sympathy for the NYPD officers who were murdered today . . . LMAO, all I just really don’t have sympathy for the cops who were shot. I hate this racist, f***ing country.”

In a piece published in Time on Thursday, where Mael wrote about the response to his report, he said, “As a student journalist who frequently writes about the culture wars on campus, I knew her comments were newsworthy.”

“Here was a student leader at a well-known American university publicly condoning cold-blooded murder,” he added. “So I wrote a short blog post highlighting Lynch’s public comments. These pieces usually generate a local response, but this post went viral.”

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Since his report, Mael states he himself has been the recipient of threats as well as demands from fellow Brandeis student Michael Piccione that the school’s administrators punish him for reporting on student leader Lynch’s tweet.

As reported in Campus Reform, Piccione, whom Mael does not know personally, distributed on December 22 a mass email to Brandeis students, titled “Holding Daniel Mael accountable,” in which Piccione accused Mael of provoking hate, placing student safety in jeopardy, and violating the school’s policies.

“[Mael] must be aware of the impact that publishing such articles could have on other people’s safety, and it is important that he be held accountable for his actions,” Piccione reportedly said in his email to Brandeis students.

On the same day, a change.org petition written by Shane Scott appeared in which Scott wrote that Lynch “spoke her mind on issues regarding the execution of two Brooklyn police officers,” and referred to the reaction to Mael’s reporting of Lynch’s tweet as “public vilification that ensued due to the misguided, diluted and unscrupulous representation of her character” by Mael.

The petition continues:

The deliberate targeting and misrepresentation of Khadijah’s thoughts as well as the misuse of her personal photos have catalyzed a series of hate speech that puts her life and safety in danger. This is Libel. This is Defamation of Character. This is Cyber bullying. This should not be condoned. It is clear, that the intentions of the author were not to spurt a healthy conversation welcoming all sides, but rather to publicly defame Khadijah.

Following the launch of this petition, another titled “Ensure Daniel Mael’s Safety and Free Speech Rights” was initiated as well.

Two days after the petition against him was published, Jamele Adams, Brandeis Dean of Students, notified Mael that the school was issuing a “no contact order” against him in which he was ordered not to have any contact with Piccione. The same order was reportedly issued to Piccione.

“That contact ban has since been lifted,” Mael wrote in Time, but added his concern, “I could potentially face trouble in Brandeis’s student judicial system, as ‘[a]ny alleged violation(s) of these conditions should be reported to the Dean of Students Office.’”

Mael also reported that the Brandeis Asian-American Student Association stood “in solidarity with” Lynch. He stated as well that when he met with Brandeis public safety officials to discuss the threats made against him, “I was told that I should consider changing my dorm room, and that it is a reasonable expectation that my car would be vandalized. They also recommended that I purchase mace at the local Walmart.”

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