A professor at Ohio State opted to take “anti-racist learning” after writing an article talking about his love of college football.
Ohio State University professor Matthew Mayhew wrote an article for Inside Higher Ed touting the virtues of college football, and saying that bringing back college football could help diminish the “great isolation, division, and uncertainty” we are experiencing in this dismal year.
Mayhew, a Higher Education professor at OSU, insisted that America’s universities should get back to “essentializing college football.”
“Essentializing college football might help get us through these uncharacteristically difficult times of great isolation, division, and uncertainty. Indeed, college football holds a special bipartisan place in the American heart,” Mayhew wrote. “At a time when colleges and universities have been placed under extreme scrutiny, many people are questioning the very value and purpose of higher education. College football reminds many Americans of the community values that underscore higher education and, by extension America itself.”
Yet, with this simple premise — that football should be brought back full force to make us all feel better — Mayhew was accused of “racism” and “white supremacy.”
In a groveling apology letter, Mayhew says that he has “learned” how racist he is from the backlash to his football article.
“I have learned that I placed the onus of responsibility for democratic healing on Black communities whose very lives are in danger every single day and that this notion of ‘democratic healing’ is especially problematic since the Black community can’t benefit from ideals they can’t access,” he continues. “I have learned that words like ‘distraction’ and ‘cheer’ erase the present painful moments within the nation and especially the Black community.
“I am sorry for the hurt, sadness, frustration, fatigue, exhaustion, and pain this article has caused anyone, but specifically Black students in the higher education community and beyond,” he writes. “I am struggling to find the words to communicate the deep ache for the damage I have done.’
Mayhew went on to assure enraged leftist students that he is now undergoing a course of indoctrination into “anti-racist learning.”
“I am designing a plan for change, for turning the ‘I am sorry’ to ‘I will change’—for moving Black Lives Matter from a motto to a pathway from ignorance and toward authentic advocacy,” he piously exclaimed.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.