a
faculty-run think tank that challenges social justice orthodoxy at a California community college is so loathed by activists on and off campus that an elected official apparently suggested treating its leaders like his doomed livestock.
John Corkins, vice president of the Kern Community College District Board of Trustees, made the agricultural quip at a Dec. 13 meeting following public comments dominated by accusations of racism and harassment by the Renegade Institute for Liberty at Bakersfield College.
“I think there’s a segment” of people at BC, perhaps “5 percent that we have to continue to cull,” said Corkins, who runs an eponymous agribusiness. Trustee Nan Gomez-Heitzeberg, a retired 30-year administrator at BC, nodded in agreement.
“Got ’em in my livestock operation, and that’s why we put a rope on some of ’em and take ’em to the slaughterhouse,” Corkins continued, prompting a guffaw from Gomez-Heitzeberg. “Just bothers me when the bad actors are paid staff and they’re faculty,” who are “hard to get rid of.”
Tenured history professors Matthew Garrett and Erin Miller are leaders in the Renegade Institute, which has 23 listed “committed faculty.” The duo have been on the chopping blockfor at least two years.
