emmett macfarlane
A constitutional law professor in Canada called for burning the U.S. Congress to the ground in the wake of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death.
A constitutional law professor in Canada called for burning the U.S. Congress to the ground in the wake of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death.

"Burn Congress down before letting Trump try to appoint anyone to SCOTUS," Emmett Macfarlane, a Canadian professor of political science at the University of Waterloo, tweeted within an hour of Ginsburg's passing.


Macfarlane wrote a non-apology the following day "to reinforce what I think was the obvious sentiment" and "regret the firestorm," while he refuses to "succumb to a fascist cancel campaign."


Comment: Translation, "while he refuses to admit he's an over-emotional partisan hack with no objectivity or ability to reason."


"Last night in the context of the RBG news, I tweeted intemperately about rather seeing Congress burned down than seeing Trump appoint another SCOTUS judge," the public policy researcher wrote. "I don't think any reasonable person would see a 'burn it all down' tweet as a call for violence. To be clear: it wasn't."

Then Macfarlane accused "far-right personalities" of "agitating" the public to "inundate my employer calling for my head."

"I may end up quitting Twitter to avoid the headaches I sometimes create for myself by tweeting before thinking. But claims I was advocating violence are disingenuous and Twitter mobbing is a real problem," Macfarlane concluded his only follow-up statement on the matter before locking his account.
emmett macfarlane
In response, Canadian attorney Ezra Levant questioned the foreseeable consequences for MacFarlane's political science students who differ in opinion.

"Macfarlane is a professor at @UWaterloo, promoting violence against his political enemies," Levant commented. "If you were a young woman in his class who was a Trump supporter, would you risk being a target of his violent rage if he found out about you? Should you transfer to a different class?"


According to Macfarlane's faculty profile on UWaterloo's website, his doctoral dissertation focused on "judicial decision making and behaviour on the Supreme Court of Canada," which culminated in a book published by UBC Press, titled Governing from the Bench: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Role.

In Macfarlane's "empirical investigation," the academic draws on interviews with current and former justices "to shed light on the institution's internal environment and decision-making processes," explore "the complex role of the Supreme Court as an institution," and "situates the court in its broader governmental and societal context, as it relates to the elected branches of government, the media, and the public," the publication's abstract reads.

"I am not a member of any political party," Macfarlane typed a disclaimer at bottom of his personal landing page, acknowledging payment at a nominal rate as a regular op-ed contributor for Maclean's, the Globe and Mail, National Post, and Ottawa Citizen. "I am employed only by the University of Waterloo. All of the non-partisan policy advice I have given to the Government of Canada, various parliamentary committees, and parliamentarians of various stripes has been unpaid."

When Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell stated that President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee to fill Ginsburg's vacancy "will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate," Macfarlane called the Republican senator a "[f] โ€” ing piece of sh*t."

"And yes, I speak as a Professor of Political Science. It is an irrefutable empirical fact that McConnell is a piece of sh*t," Macfarlane tweeted as the news broke.
emmett macfarlane
Macfarlane' latest book manuscript currently under review at UBC Press is set to debut in May 2021, analyzing the Court's reference on Senate reform in Constitutional Pariah: Reference re Senate Reform, the Future of Parliament, and the Frozen Constitution.

The Post Millennial reached out to Macfarlane for comment, but has not heard back by the time of publication.