(FreedomBeacon.com)- A University of Southern California professor is taking a lot of flack from students and the university because he won’t remove a pro-police flag from the door on his office.
James Moore, a professor of engineering and policy at USC, first put up the flag on his office door at the beginning of this fall semester. It’s an American flag that has a “thin blue line” in the middle of it, to signify support for police around the country.
Only recently, though, did Moore start being criticized for refusing to take down the flag.
In an interview with The College Fix, Moore said an administration with the university called him to suggest that he take the flag off his door. An article in the student newspaper, the Daily Trojan, was published that said the flag was a “controversy.” Several students in that article demanded Moore take down the flag, saying it was “inappropriate.”
One graduate student who was quoted in the paper said:
“This is an inappropriate and unnecessary symbol to have on an office door where USC is, within the last year or two, trying to have a much broader diversity initiative and to be inclusive, especially in the STEM area.”
This particular student said he saw the flag for the first time last month, and told the dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Office of Equity and Diversity.
The student also said that Moore was trolling with his flag. They cited an incident from back in 2018, where he reminded students prior to an event that year called “Coffee and Title IX”:
“If the day comes you are accused of some crime or tort of which you are not guilty, and you find your peers automatically believing your accuser, I expect you find yourself a strong proponent of due process protections than you are now. Accusers sometimes lie.”
Moore went on to say that he wasn’t trolling in that instance. He defended his position by saying:
“It’s important. Blue lives protect black lives, and black lives are not at risk from the police — they are at risk from crime — and it’s blue lives that stand between them and crime.”
In the interview with The College Fix, Moore laid out three reasons that he hangs the pro-police flag on the door of his office.
He said he wants to dispute the idea that police are the biggest threat to black people. He also wants to honor a member of his family who was a former police detective who retired recently. And he also wants to raise awareness that the murder rate in America has increased by 30% since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, and the movement to “defund the police” began to rise.
For their part, the university told the student newspaper that there’s no policy that prohibits Moore from hanging the flag.
Moore concluded by explaining further why he’s doing it:
“We are in an environment where there is a lot of homogenization of ideas, and diversity should include diversity of ideas. This [USC] is supposed to be a safe space for diversity of thought. We are charging people very good money to teach them to think. I am just trying to deliver.”
