A joke? That’s how Robby Soave took it.

On the 24th day of December in the year of our Lord, two-thousand and sixteen, a Drexel University professor tweeted, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.”

It sounds like the professor, George Ciccariello-Maher, was probably joking. Indeed, he claims that he was. And Ciccariello-Maher has made similar remarks—with varying levels of seriousness—in the past.

The Drexel prof followed up his twit with more of the same.

In a follow-up tweet, he added, “To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a very good thing indeed.”

Drexel University did not take these twits lightly.

There’s a bigger issue: Drexel. According to the Associated Press, the university was not content to merely condemn the tweet. Drexel is “taking this situation very seriously”—which is a mistake—and has “contacted the professor to meet.”

In response to the school’s “seriousness,” Ciccariello-Maher explained that it was satire.

On Christmas Eve, I sent a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, ‘white genocide.’ For those who haven’t bothered to do their research, ‘white genocide’ is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies (and most recently, against a tweet by State Farm Insurance). It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I’m glad to have mocked it.

He goes on to use the response to his “mocking” twit to double down on his political position and establish himself as the victim.

What I am not glad about is that this satirical tweet became fodder for online white supremacists to systematically harass me and my employer, Drexel University. Beginning with Breitbart.com — formerly the domain of special counselor to the president-elect, Steve Bannon — and running through the depths of Reddit discussion boards, a coordinated smear campaign was orchestrated to send mass tweets and emails to myself, my employer and my colleagues. I have received hundreds of death threats.

At Slate, Matthew Dessem totally accepts Ciccariello-Maher’s contention:

In context, it seems clear that he was tweaking white supremacists for their repurposing of the term “white genocide,” which is disingenuously invoked nowadays to pretend that uncontroversial things like interracial dating are as threatening as the slaughter that took place in Haiti in 1804. But Ciccariello-Maher’s tweets were as good a reason for a witch hunt as any, and what better time to hunt witches than Christmas?

Whether the twit was meant as a joke, a satirical play on alt-right craziness, or this is a post-hoc rationalization to dig himself out of a hole isn’t clear. Before anyone leaps to what they think he meant, consider that you may not be capable of seeing things through Ciccariello-Maher’s eyes, or sharing his sensibilities toward these issues. He’s a bit radical in his point of view.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a writer, radical political theorist, and currently Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has taught radical theory and politics at Drexel, U.C. Berkeley, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. He holds a B.A. in Government and Economics from St. Lawrence University, a B.A. Hons. and M.A. in Social and Political Sciences from St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley.

What he meant, when viewed through the prism of his politics, might very easily seem deadly serious to other eyes. The problem is that it might be serious. The next problem is that the willingness to laugh it off and twist it into the sort of thing that “seems clear” to SJWs is flagrantly hypocritical, given that they would never accept the same premise if it went the other way.

And the final problem is, regardless of whether it was satire or serious, what about his right to express his views?

Drexel should not discourage a professor from expressing his mind on Twitter—if faculty members must worry that any stray thought can land them in hot water, then the university is failing to cultivate an environment of maximally free speech. Even if Ciccariello-Maher isn’t formally disciplined, the experience of being called before the administration to answer for his tweet-crimes is a form of silencing.

University administrators everywhere should resolve to engage in fewer acts of petty censorship in 2017. As for everyone else:

May your days be merry, and bright

And may all your genocides be white

Robby Soave goes all free speech here, turning this into something of a litmus test for whether one is truly a defender of the First Amendment or merely a fair-weather friend. Is it that simple?

Clearly, Ciccariello-Maher has the right to express himself, whether seriously or as satire. The twit, regardless of whether you take offense or chuckle, is protected speech. But there are  additional concerns here beyond the free speech issue.

Bear in mind that the professor who made this twit is also given the keys to a classroom, the authority to teach students and the ability to speak as a faculty member of a school. As he teaches “radical political theory,” it would seem that this message, no matter which way it’s interpreted, falls within the parameters of academic freedom.

But what if it turns out that Cicariello-Maher truly wants to kill white people? What if he shows up in class with a gun and starts killing students? Would Drexel have cause, regardless of whether one buys into the satire or serious view of the twit, to be concerned? On a practical level, obviously, given that colleges go nuts over profs who fail the political correctness litmus test, so if words are too traumatic to allow, guns should be as well. After all, guns cause real harm.

While the visceral reaction to Cicariello-Maher’s twit, that it facially promotes white genocide and, well, that’s over the top by pretty much any metric, is that this goes way too far to be acceptable from anyone, especially a university professor. It would almost certainly be the case had his words been “black genocide,” regardless of motive, under the unsafe feelings of students exception to reality.

But Robby Soave is right. It isn’t to say that Drexel shouldn’t make sure that its prof isn’t totally batshit crazy, bent on murder based on skin color, but once that has been established, that he poses no physical harm to anyone, he’s allowed to think, and express, whatever he wants.

And before you react, “but this is different,” bear in mind that Cicariello-Maher teaches “radical political theory.” If you don’t like radical political twits, particularly when they express views that are anathema to normal people or unsatirical to folks who maintain a firm grasp on reality, then Drexel should be more circumspect in its course offerings. What did they expect a prof like Cicariello-Maher to say?