The brutal stabbing of 19-year-old Mara Daffron by fellow ASU Student Kaci Lenise-Charlie Sloan on September 19th raised questions about censorship and even possibly a coverup after the story languished for eight days before being reported on by the establishment media. According to ASU professor Dr. Owen Anderson, writing on his Substack, “Last week there was a stabbing at ASU West. Have you seen any news about it?” He observed, “It is very hard to find. It took the Dean of the campus 5 days to send out an email about it. Why the cover up? I have some knowledge of what happened and I can take an educated guess.” He promised readers, “I’m going to stay on this for you.”
By the time Anderson had written, the first mentions of the story (notably by AZFamily) were less than a day old and the story had very little traction. In the initial breaking story, AZ Family reported that Sloan had carried out a premeditated attack against Daffron, having decided the night before to go through with it believing that hurting someone would make her problems “go away.” She told police during an interview that she chose between Daffron and another student she identified as “a veteran,” deciding on the young woman because she was “an easier target.”
By September 27th the story was international, and the heroic intervention of another student, Navy Veteran Matthew McCormick, who fought off Sloan and prevented further injury to Daffron, came to light. As reported by the Daily Mail, McCormick told reporters, “As she was going for a third attack, I was able to grab her wrists and apprehend her before further damage could be done.”
“I just did what needed to be done and I think everybody has the capacity to be able to do that,” McCormick told 12News.
He added, “It was a great job by everybody that was in that room; by the EMTs, the paramedics and police. Everybody responded really, really well. 9-1-1 calls were pretty instantaneous and everybody seemed pretty locked in and knew what to do.”
Sloan was arrested and ASU Police recovered the 12-inch blade she repeatedly stabbed Daffron with.
Daffron, recovering at Banner Thunderbird Hospital in Phoenix, told AZ Family, “I’m just scared because I don’t know why the f**k she would stab me.”
Sloan’s ultimate motive remains unclear. Court documents uncovered by 12News revealed that Sloan, “admitted she came to class to hurt somebody and was planning the attack since the night prior,” the documents say. “This planning included placing the knife used in the attack in her backpack to bring to school. The defendant told detectives she knew the victim’s first name but did not know anything else about her. She knew the victim from a prior class and shared a class with her this semester.”
Dr. Anderson noted in an update, “There is national and international coverage now of the stabbing at ASU. I’m still looking for news from ASU itself.” He also offered to begin instruction in jiu jitsu on campus to help students defend themselves in future attacks.
In another post, he theorized that anti-white hatred could be responsible for the attack:
“Any time there is violence and attempted murder on a university campus we expect to see it covered in the news. It is an important way for parents and students to know if a university is a safe place to attend.
But what if universities aren’t safe places to attend? What if students are taught by their humanities professors to hate each other? ASU has required employee training that teaches about the problem of ‘whiteness.’ Why is ASU requiring employees to learn that?”
An ASU spokesperson told Fox News in a statement, “ASU Police continue to investigate a Sept. 19 on-campus stabbing of a student. Kaci Sloan was immediately detained and arrested on suspicion of first-degree attempted murder; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon; interfering with an educational institution; and disorderly conduct. She is being held on a $250,000 cash only bond. ASU and the entire ASU West Valley community are deeply saddened by what happened. ASU West Valley is a close-knit campus of students, faculty and staff. Counseling support is available to all.”
Dr. Owen Anderson, a professor at Arizona State University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, offered an analysis of the philosophy of early communist thinker Friedrich Engels in a video posted to his Substack on July 8. He described it as “a sustained attack on the Christian family.” What resulted from this academic critique of Engels, which directly quotes his widely acknowledged public work, were a series of attacks on the professor and defenses of the communist thinker from what Anderson dubbed “anonymous (usually brand new) accounts,” and “trolls.” One of these commenters, under the screenname “RD,” replied to Dr. Anderson’s initial post claiming, in part, that Engels, “discusses in the same section of the book, that arrangement describes Greek and Roman pagan marriages as well as later Christian ones. Since these predate and do not depend on Christian ideas, he’s not attacking Christianity per se.”
The commenter continued, “As for ‘radical leftists at state universities’ — the vast majority of university professors are in monogamous relationships roughly of the kind Engels describes, with the important caveat that in our time there are far greater legal protections for wives (a fantastic improvement since Engels’ writing). It’s not at all clear that they ‘hate’ this form of the family or ‘teach’ this hatred regularly. In other words, as usual, either you don’t know what you’re talking about or you have disingenuously ripped a statement out of context in order to increase your own sense of victimhood.”
Anderson responded to the commenter that he doesn’t engage with “anonymous trolls” and added rather congenially, “If you’d like to be honest about who you are I’d be happy to discuss these points. You’re mistaken about the purpose of Engels and what it means to hate.”
In response, “RD” accused the professor of being “litigious” and “thin skinned” with ASU and his colleagues citing as evidence “your very public statements on this blog, where you constantly whine about mundane matters to agents of the state.”
He added, “Only a fool would risk having you file a frivolous lawsuit over a blog post. It is enough for me that your readers would double-check your ‘work’ against the evidence of Engels’ own text, where they would very quickly see that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He claimed to disagree with Engels and accused Dr. Anderson of “not reading these texts honestly and accurately, the duty of any intellectual.”
In a subsequent paid post, Dr. Anderson stated in part,
“One of the surprising not surprising things I’ve experienced since calling out bias against Christians at state universities is that those who want to attack me hide behind anonymous (usually brand new) accounts. I know the internet is full of such trolls. That isn’t what surprises me. What surprises me is that these cowards claim to be either professors or know how to defend professors. They want your tax money to teach your children, but they won’t be honest about what they believe.”
He added, “If they can’t be honest about who they are then I don’t engage with them. They need to own their arguments. If they want to engage in the public square and they believe their cause is just and true, then they should be eager to attach their name to it. But they won’t. This one went on to tell me I’m thin skinned! Imagine insulting any other religion and then telling that person they are thin skinned if they call you out.” He then bid the commenter “Bye, bye.”
Anderson’s determined commenter still wasn’t finished though and launched into a criticism of the professor for his work at ASU combating academic cancel culture referring to the pervasive anti-Christian bias the professor has striven against as “free of speech,” and accusing him of “a very public campaign with Arizona legislators trying to get your colleagues fired.” He further alleged that Anderson, “constantly snitch-tag(s) politicians and media influencers on twitter, including actors like Charlie Kirk whose purpose is to intimidate and harass college professors.“
The pseudonymous “RD” concluded, “You suggested that ASU should discipline your colleague for a social media post that you claim mocks (your understanding of) Christianity, and you think politicians should concern themselves with the (non-required) recommended reading list of a program at your institution. In short, you have no respect either for free speech or for academic freedom, and so you shouldn’t be surprised when no one wants to talk to you. That’s all from me.”
In what appears to be the final exchange between the two, Dr. Anderson incisively cut to the core of the commenter’s argument and eviscerated it noting: “This post is a present. Thank you. You’ve admitted that academics don’t have to keep their own standards about sensitivity and not insulting other religions (in the name of free speech and academic freedom). I’m looking forward to seeing you apply this. No wonder you want to stay anonymous.”
“Dr. A,” to use his sobriquet from his Substack, concluded by highlighting the aforementioned exchange with a few key notes:
1. “RD didn’t respect my boundary. I said I won’t engage with anonymous trolls. RD didn’t dispute that title, but insisted I must listen to more insults. That is called stalking. It is a behavior ASU prohibits.
2. RD calls me a snitch. Is this the third grade playground? What RD doesn’t like is that I’m a whistleblower and that those he is defending are guilty of the very thing they preach against. They preach sensitivity but want to ban Christians and conservatives from campus. RD calls this freedom. He calls me defending the right for Christians and conservatives to speak on campus ‘snitching.’ The truth is I am a whistleblower and have protected rights under federal and state law as well as the ASU faculty manual. RD knows that coming at a whistleblower will result in trouble and so wants to be anonymous.
3. RD insults me for ‘snitching’ on a colleague who insulted Christians on social media. Imagine if this was any other group than Christians. RD would help fill out the disciplinary form and hand it in to ASU.
4. What hasn’t happened. I have had a handful of ASU professors come at me to insult me since I began speaking publicly about abusive behavior towards Christians. I haven’t heard them say, ‘we should examine our behavior.’ They very clearly teach that it is wrong to insult a person’s religion. However, they want to get away with doing so toward Christians. They want freedom of speech protected for their radical leftist beliefs, but they deny that same thing to conservatives.”
The professor signed off the post with a promise that he would continue to call out his critics on their hypocrisy adding, “If that means they call me names then I’m looking forward to it.” And left his readers with a quote from Socrates writing, “When one of his disciples asked Socrates, ‘aren’t you worried what people will think of you?’ he replied, ‘I only care what thoughtful people who take time to investigate the situation will think.’”
When reached for comment by AZ Free News, Dr. Anderson confirmed that the commenter “RD” has made no further effort to contact him, and they have not revealed their identity. You can subscribe to Dr. Anderson’s Substack here, to read about his ongoing work to expose academia’s hostility toward Christianity.
Arizona State University (ASU) is facing a lawsuit over the inclusivity training it mandates for faculty.
The Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute sued the university earlier this month over the allegedly discriminatory training, on behalf of longtime ASU philosophy and religious studies professor Dr. Owen Anderson. The organization specifically alleged that ASU’s training violated Arizona law, A.R.S. § 41-1494(A), prohibiting trainings, orientations, or therapies that present any blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex.
“Arizona state law prohibits mandatory training for state employees and use of taxpayer resources to teach doctrines that discriminate based on race, ethnicity, sex, and other characteristics,” said Goldwater Staff Attorney Stacy Skankey in a press release.
Contested aspects of the ASU training, “ASU Inclusive Communities,” required faculty to acknowledge the history of white supremacy and social conditions persisting its existence as a structural phenomenon; society’s normalization of white supremacy; the sociohistorical legacy of racism, sexism, homophobia, and structural inequalities that impact minority faculty; white privilege; antiracism; and the relationship between sexual identities and power and the privilege of heterosexuality.
The training also included a video to which Anderson objected. The video encouraged faculty to “critique whiteness,” and to ascribe definite beliefs of good and evil as inherently racist.
“And what colonization did, was it really created this system of binary thinking,” stated the video. “There were folks that were inherently good and folks that were inherently bad, and that led to the systems of superiority that were then written into the foundational documents of our Nation.”
In addition to completing the training, ASU required faculty to pass an exam. The correct answers for that exam reinforced controversial concepts of systemic bias, intersectionality, land acknowledgement, equity, decolonization, microaggressions, and social justice. The Goldwater Institute claimed in their lawsuit that the inclusivity training only served to teach concepts of blame or judgment based on race, ethnicity, or sex.
“The Inclusive Communities training provides discriminatory concepts including, but not limited to: white people are inherently racist and oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; heterosexuals are inherently sexist and oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; white people should receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of their race or ethnicity; white people bear responsibility for actions committed by other white people; land acknowledgement statements are a way of holding one race or ethnicity responsible for the actions committed by other members of the same race or ethnicity; transformative justice calls for an individual to bear responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race, ethnic group or sex; and dominant identities (whites or heterosexuals) are treated morally or intellectually superior to other races, ethnic groups or sexes.”
As justification for its call of decolonization, the ASU training also challenged the validity and goodness of the American founding.
In a press release, Anderson said that his employment shouldn’t hinge on his submitting to ideas that conflict with his beliefs.
“This ‘training’ is simply racism under the guise of DEI. It goes against my conscience, and I want no part of it,” said Anderson.
The contents of this training were obtained last May through a public records request by the Goldwater Institute. Prior to filing the lawsuit earlier this month, the organization sent a letter to the Arizona Board of Regents last fall asking ASU to cease and desist spending on the inclusivity training and others like it that allegedly run afoul of state antidiscrimination law.
The university requires faculty to repeat the inclusivity training every two years.
The case, Anderson v. Arizona Board of Regents, is in the Maricopa County Superior Court.
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