A law student at Edinburgh University is being investigated for a supposed “hate crime” because he mocked ISIS, calling its members “barbarians.” The student also believes he was targeted in revenge for highlighting that a former leader of an ethnic minority student group at the university, who is black, had referred to black men as “trash.”
Edinburgh law student Robbie Travers, 21, has been outspoken on social media. In one Facebook post last April, after the U.S. Air Force dropped a “massive ordnance air bomb” on an ISIS stronghold in Afghanistan, he wrote, “Excellent news that the US administration and Trump ordered an accurate strike on an IS network of tunnels in Afghanistan. I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.”
In another Facebook post he wrote, “I won’t give elements of Islam or Muslims who hold regressive beliefs a free pass for their assorted poisonous bigotries and regressive values because they face bigotry. If you have terrible, oppressive views that seek to attack the rights of others, expect to be called out for those views, regardless of being oppressed yourself . . .”
Esme Allman, a second-year history student and the former black and ethnic minority convenor of the university’s students’ association, took umbrage at the comments from Travers; she filed a complaint with the university, writing, “Not only do I believe this behaviour to be in breach of the student code of conduct, but his decision to target the BME Liberation Group at the University of Edinburgh, and how he has chosen to do so, puts minority students at risk and in a state of panic and fear while attending the University of Edinburgh.” She added, “While I have not met him personally, given my matriculation at the University of Edinburgh, my membership of the Black and Minority Ethnic Liberation Group at the university, and how I identify personally, I take issue with this clear and persistent denigration and disparagement of protected characteristics and blatant Islamophobia.”
Travers fired back at Allman, stating that her complaint was hypocritical; he posted a comment that she was alleged to have made on Facebook in which she herself described black men as “trash.” That claim was corroborated by The Times, which wrote that it had seen the post, which read, “To conclude, black men are trash. All men are trash.”
Allman wrote, “Travers published a decontextualised quote by Allman from a privileged conversation generated by minority students in a safe space he is neither subscribed to nor a member of, without her consent.”
The complaint triggering the university’s investigation claimed Travers had been “targeting minority students and student spaces.” The complaint prompted a university official conducting a preliminary investigation to allegedly accuse Travers of having committed a “hate crime.”
Travers responded, “I am deeply worried that I am being investigated for comments which are expressions of opinion in a jovial way . . . I do not incite the harassment or racist treatment, nor attack anyone with an illegal suggestion or suggest, indeed, that they be deprived of their human rights.”
Travers has no use for political correctness; he has written, “If I die from a stress-induced heart attack, you will all know it is from dealing with criminally moronic intersectional nonsense. Having a preference of what genitals your sexual partner has is now declared “transphobic’.”
Travers has also written:
But all too often at British universities, the concept of the safe space has morphed into something far removed from the original blueprints. In essence, these vacuous ‘spaces’ now ensure that uncomfortable and dissenting positions are disregarded, and that certain individuals are not given the freedom to advocate views deemed to be too dangerous to be given a public hearing.
Travers has said he would not “be intimidated into being silenced, and will continue to make criticism of hateful ideas, supremacist ideas and beyond regardless of any characteristic of the individual promoting the ideology.”
A university spokesman confirmed that “complaints alleging misconduct have been received against Mr. Travers and these are being investigated.”