ALEX BUCKNAM
Asst. News Editor
Warning: This article contains mention of pedophilia.
Dr. Stephen Kershnar, the philosophy professor who was banned from SUNY Fredonia’s campus and is currently suing the university, has been issued a retrenchment letter.
According to a Buffalo News article published on April 14, Kershnar’s appointment at SUNY Fredonia will end Aug. 31, 2026.
As stated in a United University Professions email sent out on Sept. 19, 2024, a retrenchment letter is, “the termination of the employment of any academic or professional employee during any appointment, other than a temporary appointment which may be terminated at any time, as a result of financial exigency, reallocation of resources, reorganization of degree or curriculum offerings or requirements.”
The university president’s office declined to comment on the letter’s details and said they could not provide any comments on ongoing litigation.
Kershnar started teaching courses at SUNY Fredonia in 1998 and became a full professor in 2005, with his last semester teaching courses in fall 2021.
Kershnar has been banned from campus since Feb. 2022 after making controversial comments about adult-minor sexual relationships on a philosophy podcast, “Brain in a Vat.”
During the podcast, Kershnar said, “Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. Imagine that she’s a willing participant. A very standard, very widely held view is that there’s something deeply wrong about this, and it’s wrong independent of being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that it is in fact wrong.”
Throughout the rest of the podcast, Kershnar discussed reasons people believe adult-child sexual relationships are wrong and argued that those reasons are unconvincing.
The original podcast video was taken down by YouTube, but “Brain in a Vat” made a response to their video being taken down and Kershnar being banned from campus.
The podcast episode was met with outrage because of Kershnar’s comments, with one user saying, “He essentially outed himself as the creep.” The comment continued, “Now everyone knows how he really feels. Now he can deal with the well[-]deserved consequences.”
The story was also picked up by major media organizations such as Fox News and the New York Times.
After the podcast, in Feb. 2022, SUNY Fredonia President Stephen Kolison reassigned Kershnar to a position that does not require him to be on campus or interact with students.
Kershnar remains on the university payroll. According to SeeThroughNY, he was paid $108,424 in 2024.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) Faculty Legal Defense Fund retained their counsel on Kershnar after he was banned from the university. FIRE wrote to the university stating Kershnar’s viewpoints are protected by the First Amendment.
On June 12, 2023, FIRE filed a lawsuit against Kolison and Executive Vice President Michael Kelly. Kelly resigned from his position in April 2024.
The podcast was not the first time Kershnar expressed his opinion on the argument of adult-child sexual relationships being wrong. In 2015, he published a book titled Pedophilia and Adult-Child Sex. A brief overview of the book on Google states, “This sex intuitively strikes many people as sick, disgusting and wrong. The problem is that it is not clear whether these judgments are justified and whether they are aesthetic or moral.”
In a statement to The Buffalo News about the retrenchment, the university said, “As part of SUNY Fredonia’s Roadmap to Financial Sustainability, the university conducted a thorough review of academic programs to ensure our offerings are best aligned with student interest and drive long-term institutional sustainability.”
The university stated that the retrenchment was because the philosophy department will soon no longer exist, since both the major and minor have been cut from the university’s curriculum.
One of Kershnar’s attorneys, Adam Steinbaugh, told The Buffalo News that Kershnar could still teach classes before the retrenchment takes effect.
“There are still classes he can teach,” Steinbaugh said. “SUNY Fredonia is instead spending additional money to hire other people to teach those classes while it pays Kershnar to conduct research.”
Steinbaugh also questioned whether the retrenchment was just a tactic to fully remove Kershnar from the university. “Out of all the jobs at risk due to restructuring, he’s third in line?” Steinbaugh said.
Steinbaugh was referring to other faculty members who have also received retrenchment letters from the university, including Michele Bernatz, who chose to retire instead, Peter Tucker and Stephen Komp. This would make Kershnar the third professor to lose their job because of a retrenchment letter.
As of April 25, the lawsuit between Kershnar and the university is ongoing.
Sources: