ALYSSA BUMP
Editor in Chief
CHLOE KOWALYK
News Editor
Professor-student sex, torture, pedophilia, slavery and sexism are among the views defended by SUNY Fredonia philosophy professor Dr. Stephen Kershnar.
While Kershnar claims to not directly support these views himself, he has published many articles, books and blog posts in which he argues for these controversial views.
Recently, videos of Kershnar discussing adult-child sex resurfaced on Twitter and have gone viral.
In the video reshared by @libsoftiktok, originally from the YouTube channel Brain in a Vat, Kershnar discussed sex between an adult male and a 12 year-old girl. He told viewers to imagine she is a willing participant, rather than a person unable to consent. This goes against the many laws set in place across the U.S. limiting the age of consent to no lower than 16. Kershnar then said, “It’s not obvious to me [adult-child sex] is in fact wrong — I think this is a mistake.” The tweet now has over 10,000 likes.
SUNY Fredonia’s Twitter account, @FredoniaU, released a statement on Feb. 1 at 11:09 p.m. from the university’s president, Dr. Stephen Kolison. The statement reads, “SUNY Fredonia is aware of a video posted online involving one of its professors. The views expressed by the professor are reprehensible and do not represent the values of SUNY Fredonia in any way, shape or form. They are solely the professor’s views. The matter is being reviewed.” The comments on this post have been limited by the SUNY Fredonia Twitter account.
On Feb. 3, Dr. Kolison emailed students, faculty and staff saying Kershnar “is being assigned to duties that do not include his physical presence on campus and will not have contact with students while the investigation is ongoing” which would become “effective immediately and until further notice.” Because of this restraint, Kershnar is unable to provide a comment to The Leader, SUNY Fredonia’s student-run newspaper, despite being reached out to via email.
With the power of social media, Kershnar’s video has blown up. Fox News was one of the first national news services to catch wind of the story. The New York Post, Newsweek, WKBW Channel 7, WGRZ Channel 2, WIVB Channel 4 and many other news sources have covered the story as well.
The story has even gone international, with coverage in Peru, Hungary and Turkey.
One question many people are asking is how Kershnar’s controversial arguments have been able to fly under the radar for over 20 years. But the truth is they haven’t. This exact situation has been a long time coming.
Kershnar was originally appointed to SUNY Fredonia in 1998 and became a full professor in 2005.
Back in 2006, Kershnar and then-president of SUNY Fredonia, Dennis Hefner, faced a disagreement over the student conduct policy. In particular, Kershnar had grievances with limited free speech and harassment policies in the code of conduct. Kershnar took to thefire.org, which stands for Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, to reveal this dispute, and how it was impacting his promotion to full professor. Nevertheless, the school granted Kershnar a promotion after initially turning him down.
Since then, Kershnar became a distinguished teaching professor in 2014. Being a distinguished teaching professor at SUNY Fredonia is no small feat. According to a prior article written about Kershnar’s appointment in 2014 on fredonia.edu, SUNY Board Chairman H. Carl McCall said, “The distinguished designation, SUNY’s highest academic honor, is reserved for the best of the best … Each professor earning the distinction has advanced his/her field while teaching and mentoring students, often collaborating and innovating with colleagues and serving society at large.”
Diving deeper into Kershnar’s publications, this SUNY Fredonia professor has written works titled “For Discrimination Against Women,” “A Liberal Arguement for Slavery” and even a blog post titled, “Professor-Student Sex: Permissible and Erotic.” Many more controversial publications of his can be found on philpeople.org. A book written by Kershnar in 2009 titled, “Sex, Discriminiation, and Violence,” contains many controversial chapters discussing these themes.
In Dec. of 2020, Kershnar appeared on a podcast titled “Unregistered,” hosted by Thaddeus Russell, in which he discusses in detail whether the idea of adult males having sex with children is harmful in itself. In YouTube video “Sexual Taboos | Stephen Kershnar ” by Brain in a Vat, Kershnar said “the notion [adult-child sex is] wrong even with a one-year-old is not quite obvious to me. There are reports in some cultures of grandmothers fellating their baby boys to calm them down when they’re colicky.” The YouTube video was taken down the night of Feb. 3.
The question now becomes how far can Kershnar’s right to freedom of speech protect him? Is there anything SUNY Fredonia can actually do?
On Feb. 3, the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA), a non-profit organization that seeks to protect the first amendment rights of college and university faculty members, sent a letter to SUNY Fredonia in response to Kershnar being under review. Keith Whittington, chair of the AFA’s academic committee, wrote, “There is, quite simply, nothing for the university to review under these circumstances.” He continued, “A member of your faculty under such public scrutiny is likely to be targeted for abuse and threats, and the university’s responsibility is to shelter the faculty member from that harassment and not add to it.”
However, the public feels very differently about this situation. A change.org petition has been created in response to the ongoing situation, calling for Kershnar to be fired. As of the night of Feb. 3, the petition has reached over eleven thousand signatures, nearly quadrupling the number of students enrolled at SUNY Fredonia.
The Leader will be covering this story in more detail in our next print edition, available on newsstands in SUNY Fredonia’s campus and in the village of Fredonia on Feb. 9. Subsequent articles will also be released online.