The Usual Suspects: Ephblog Searches for the Mystery Professor Who Threatened Violence Over the Chicago Principles

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Although Maud appears to have got the woke student activists out of the headlines for now, I'm still very interested in uncovering the the identity of the professor who threatened violence to stop the Chicago Principles from coming to Williams College. Earlier Ephblog came up with four professors whose background seemed to fit the report we read earlier from Luana Maroja. Click on the link below for the full Ephblog article.

Admit Your Privilege, 5

The enterprising leader of Ephblog, David Dudley Field '25, is intrigued by the educational benefits of having this potentially violent mystery professor share her personal experience regarding the anti-free speech riots at UC Berkeley. He writes:

A professor threatening violence is nuts! Is anyone else shocked by this? But, at the same time, tell us your story! EphBlog loves a riot. What was the Berkeley riot like? What did you do? What lessons did you learn? Perhaps you could share those lessons with your Williams students . . .

Field '25 recommends the student journalists at the Williams Record investigate Luana Maroja's story and reveal her identity. This might happen. In my experience, Nicholas Goldrosen, the current editor-in-chief, seems eminently fair. He has treated me fairly and I admire his courage for doing so. The work should be relatively easy because Ephblog has already revealed the names of the professors who are the most plausible suspects.

Ephblog reports one useful resource is the Williams College Course Catalog (pdf) which describes faculty backgrounds. The faculty with the most recent degrees from UC Berkeley include Sarah E. Olsen (PHD 2016), Ianna Hawkins Owen (PHD 2016), Kailani Polzak (PHD 2017) and Yana Skorobogatov (PHD 2018).

After a bit of on-line research, I would probably suggest Field '25 cross Sarah E. Olsen off his list. She was teaching at Amherst (or is it amHerst?) during the two years prior to her arrival at Williams College in the Fall of 2018. I think it is safe to assume she wasn't active in the rioting which led to the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos’s speaking engagement on February 1, 2017.

Ianna Hawkins Owen is an Assistant Professor of English who took her PhD in African American Studies from UC Berkeley. My Google research shows she was at UC Berkeley at the time of the riots. She was enjoying a post-doctorate fellowship which ran from 2016 to 2017. She arrived at Williams College in the Fall of 2017 and is part of the same cohort which included woke faculty activists Kai Green and Kimberly Love.

Kailani Polzak was probably not at UC Berkeley in January 2017. I'm thinking this only because I found she was a C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History at Williams College for two years starting in 2015-2016. Accordingly, it doesn't look like she was at UC Berkeley during the riots. Nevertheless, she does seem to be a woke faculty member. She has been involved in the effort to establish an Asian studies position. She is also a member of the same faculty cohort as Green, Love and Owen.

Yana Skorobogatov is a native Russia speaker with a strong interest in the Soviet Union. She is an assistant professor of history. Like Owen, it looks like she was definitely in the UC Berkeley area at the time of the riots. She seems pretty woke too. While at Berkeley she taught a courses on incarceration and global history. The only thing that would make her less likely to be the mystery professor is that she would have been in her first semester of her employment at Williams College. Specifically, she would have been publicly calling for violence within the first three months of her tenure track job.   

"Of course," Ephblog cautiously asserts, "just because this professor was at the riot does not mean that she has a degree from Berkeley, but this is the place to start." Field '25 concludes: "I also suspect that this is more likely to be a new faculty member since most already-hired Williams faculty would have been teaching during the February 2017 Milo riots."

All of this would be easily cleared up if I got a couple of phone calls from participants at the event or if Professor Luana Marojo is willing to give me the name. My number is 949-338-5921. You can email me at johndrew25@msn.com. I'm happy to protect your anonymity.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.