“This is a school in the deep south, none of us have any illusions about where we live and the environment we're surrounded with, but we expect the university to honor the promise they made when they had every incoming student sign the Respect Compact,” said Ray Pearce, senior at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW).

Ray, on the executive board of UNCW Pride, was referring to highly controversial criminology professor, Mike Adams, who has made clear his values on the LGBTQ community, along with abortion and Muslims. A recent Daily Beast piece went in depth about his hate speech and his methodology of spreading it through public Facebook posts and his widely read articles.

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Students from his class have said he keeps his views low-profile while teaching, but Adams uses social media, Townhall and Daily Wire articles as outlets for his controversial views. But the university itself released a statement saying it cannot get involved. Adams even seems to know he has the upper hand — on November 28 he shared a link to a petition calling for his removal with the comment, “[g]ood luck with that.”

On the university not taking action, Ray said: “There is no dignity in this. They hold students to higher standards than of their professors. If a student would face disciplinary action for discriminatory behavior, I expect a professor to not be able to hide behind their tenure like a shield when enacting the same discrimination.”

When asked if the university should intervene, Nick Didio, a senior business student at UNCW who identifies as bisexual, said, “He should have been gone a long time ago, back in my freshman year.”

He continued: “But really, do I think the university should be involved more? Absolutely. Do I think the university understands the complexity of the problem? Absolutely. Do I think the university genuinely cares about their students? Absolutely. I think the chancellor and the university are caught between a rock and a hard place. They’re afraid of getting another lawsuit.”

Mikaela Fleming, a 2016 UNCW graduate, found herself a target of Adams hateful social media posts back in the spring of 2015 after she participated in a protest at the university.

“I didn’t know anything about him until the protest began and I was interviewed by two local news stations about my counter-protest, because I was counter-protesting the organization that was there at the school. In my interview I just said that we were countering the hate and we were trying to support love. Then, suddenly I was being told that I was on his Facebook page and that I was all over his blog and that he was saying cruel and hateful things about me. I was starting to get messages from his followers that I didn’t know. Suddenly I was getting harassed and ridiculed by a professor I had never met.”

She then described what happened when she reached out to the university for help: “I felt betrayed. I came to a university, and I wasn’t expecting to be coddled, I wasn’t expecting to never be challenged, but I was never ever expecting to be treated like I wasn’t human. Like I wasn’t worthy of expressing my beliefs, and when I decided to go speak to the dean of students and talk to the chancellor at the time, we had meetings with them, and they told us it didn’t count as harassment. And I said, ‘But I personally feel harassed. I don’t feel comfortable coming onto campus because I’m afraid of seeing him. I’m afraid of seeing his followers.’ and they said, ‘Sorry, it’s not harassment. There’s nothing we can do about it. They essentially told us we were overreacting when in my opinion it was bullying, and bullying has lasting effects on people, and as someone who has struggled with bullying in the past to have a professor do it was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.”

Mikaela doesn’t have much, if any, faith in the system now. “I feel kind of hopeless. I just don’t see that they’re going to do anything about it. And that just breaks my heart. I love UNCW, it’s my alma matter, I have a lot of strong connections to it, but I just feel like they’ve let us down. But so many other professors I know, in the communications department and creative writing department, are on our side. But the higher ups, they don’t seem to care. And I guess I just feel betrayed by the university, more so than I do Adams.”

Like Nick, Mikaela is frustrated by the university's lack of action, but also questions why this is just now getting mainstream attention: “We had a sit-in in the chancellor’s office, doing everything we could to try to get attention, and nobody was listening. And so now all of these people are calling me, it’s all over the news, and I’m kind of like, ‘Okay, well, finally. Why didn’t this happen a year ago? Or so many years ago? He’s been doing this since he sued the school in 2006.”

Anne, a gay student at UNCW, said: “I would say that I am less concerned about his negative views, and more concerned with the power he holds in expressing them and using them to target students and other professors. It's disheartening to know that he is indicative of a larger problem with the culture at UNCW.”

She argues: “But firing him won't solve the larger issue at hand. It will take a restructuring of campus culture and how we implement multiculturalism in our system and curriculum. These problems are not individual, they are systemic. It's going to take an effort from students, staff, and administration to remedy this. Cultural competency and advocacy for diversity is important.”

Even freshmen, who haven’t been as familiar with Adams have feelings about this issue. Jacqueline Waple, a freshman majoring in environmental science at UNCW, said: “I am ashamed to be a part of a university that allows a professor to express such blatant disrespect and hate to his student body. So many students are understandably disgusted by this.”

Thomas Booton, a senior majoring in environmental science at UNCW, identifies as gay. He said in a message, “It's disappointing to know [Adams] is going out of his way to make minority students such as myself feel unwelcome on campus. A university should provide a space to learn about other views and cultures without hostility.”

Evan Housel, a junior majoring in criminology at UNCW, is a student of Adams this semester. Evan respects his professor’s opinions and his right to have them, but he can’t deny that what he voices affects him.

“Honestly, it does bother me that my professor has views that do not align with my own as he is publicly unaccepting of gay people, transgender people, and Muslims, as evidenced by his many articles. I can quote one from 2009, when he wrote ‘There will never be a shortage of people who choose lifestyles that make them more susceptible to violence than others," to respond to a violent, alleged hate crime that was committed against two gay individuals in downtown Wilmington,” said Evan.

He went on to say: “When we look at situations that have to do with professors writing articles about students and faculty, we also have to decide whether these articles are an expression of an individual's freedom of speech or just simply harassment. I know that what Dr. Adams says outside of class is offensive and morally unacceptable to many, but I do not have the right to decide on the scope of if what he says is legally acceptable or not.”

Evan, who identifies as gay, was aware of Adams views before taking the class, but decided to take the class anyway. He said: “One of my friends, a liberal, open-minded feminist encouraged me to take his class because, with all politics and opinions aside, Dr. Adams is one of the best professors I've had at UNCW. Although I disagree with him on fundamental issues, I highly value my education, and I didn't want to sacrifice that.”

While Evan ended on a positive note, encouraging students to reach out and talk to people if they are feeling discouraged about Adams, Thomas anticipates others take away a different message from this: “I hope as this story spreads, people recognize that a college campus is not the place to be spreading homophobia, xenophobia, or any type of hate speech. Mike Adams cannot mock the idea of safe spaces while also requiring his own space.”

Some names have been changed to protect the identities of our sources.

Related: This UNC Professor Is Getting Away With Saying APPALLING Things About Students On Social Media

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