Former lecturer who tweeted ‘Islamophobic and sexist’ comments thinks he is victim of a witch hunt

A university lecturer has left his job after tweets resurfaced in which he complained about his frustration at having to mark essays about “oppression of women”.

Michael Blackburn, who taught creative writing and English at the University of Lincoln, sparked outrage and complaints from students with tweets railing against feminism and blaming Muslims for terror attacks.

He has now left his position, and written a blog post in which he refers to critics of controversial comments as "witch hunters" and seems to refer to people like himself as victims, saying “you’re banished to the soft gulag of shame, unemployment and the destruction of your reputation and career”.

In 2012, Blackburn tweeted: “Thank God all those papers going on about patriarchy and the oppression of women are out of the way for another year.”

A year later, he wrote: “If the left hadn’t told me the EDL were the real threat I would have carried on thinking it was machete-wielding, Koran-quoting Muslims.”

In August 2017, in the aftermath of the London Bridge terror attack and the Manchester Arena bombing, he tweeted: “I know the media haven’t told us but I suspect these terrors [sic] attacks were carried out by Muslims because of Islam.”

After these tweets were published by The Tab, Blackburn deactivated his Twitter account, but the university defended his comments on the basis of freedom of speech rules, saying: "We recognise individuals’ rights to hold different beliefs and views.”

A spokesperson for the university told The Independent: “We uphold the principle of free speech exercised responsibly within the law in all our activities; the right to think and speak freely and to explore ideas is fundamental to the idea of a university."

But to some, Blackburn’s tweets betray worrying views for a university lecturer. One Twitter user, who rejected the “free speech” argument, referred to them as “Islamophobic and sexist”.

Blackburn was the English admissions tutor for Lincoln University, and managed social media for the department.

Writing for online magazine The Fortnightly Review earlier this month, Blackburn denounced the students who “are so keen to snitch on their classmates and lecturers for wrongthink, wrongspeak or wrongtweet”.

He appeared to equate the outrage against sexist and Islamophobic comments with totalitarianism and police states, writing: “The fact that they unquestioningly act in a mob-like manner, both on and offline, are indications of an absence of independent thought accompanied by an abundance of bovine docility.”

His blog post continues to refer to “hysteria”, “social-justice types” and “witch hunters”, saying: "They’ll batter away on their keyboards, hyperventialte on social media, send off emails to whoever is mummy and daddy in authority, demanding they stop the naughty man or woman from saying upsetting things."

Blackburn’s comments echo a growing concern that universities are censoring free speech by “no-platforming” controversial speakers, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, famous for his far-right, misogynistic and racist views, alt-right figure Steve Bannon, and people accused of expressing transphobic views such as Peter Tatchell and Germaine Greer.

University of Lincoln has confirmed Blackburn has now left his position, but has released no information regarding the circumstances of his departure.