Is Stephen Pax Leonard an arsehole?

Definitely!

Paxie is the academic who got into a spot of bother over some racist tweets.

Here's what he tweeted:

He had his honorary fellowship removed by St Chad’s College after complaints were made about tweets, which have since been deleted. One said: “With so few Jews it is extraordinary that the [Swedish] print media is largely owned and edited by Jewish families.” Another stated that Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, wanted the capital “to become a mecca for Muslims” and that “millions of Muslims support Isis”.

Both first statements are the racist, paranoid rantings of an idiot who believes some minority or other is taking over a city/a country/the press/name your pick, it's just Classic racist garbage and un-befitting of an academic. Re. the last statement, Paxie might want to consider the the vast majority of Isis' victims are in fact Muslims.

Paxie claims that his statements have been "decontextualised" [gulp!] and that we should read his books [no thanks!] but has as far as I know has not provided such context. And in any case it's difficult to see what kind of context might make these statements less racist.

Was his removal from Durham justified? OF COURSE NOT! Penalising free speech that way solves nothing, quite the contrary.

Finally, SPL describes himself as a 'green Conservative', which only shows that being green does not inoculate one against idiocy.