Stephen Kershnar said it was ‘not obvious’ to him that pedophilic sexual contact was necessarily wrong
A New York college professor who made remarks in favor of sex between adults and young children has been stripped of contact with students and banned from campus as the college’s investigation continues.
The State University of New York at Fredonia (SUNY Fredonia) launched an investigation this week after video clips of philosophy professor Stephen Kershnar defending pedophilia went viral online.
In the clips, Kershnar said it was “not obvious to me that it is in fact wrong” for adults to have sex with willing children and that “the notion that it’s wrong even with a one-year-old is not quite obvious” either. Kershnar even claimed there was a “good reason to believe that there’s actually a strong benefit to adult-child sex.”
After social media users called for Kershnar to be fired, SUNY Fredonia President Stephen H. Kolison issued a statement on Tuesday claiming that the matter was under review.
“The views expressed by the professor are reprehensible and do not represent the values of SUNY Fredonia in any way, shape or form,” Kolison said.
On Thursday, Kolison issued an update to the investigation and revealed that Kershnar had since been prohibited from having contact with his students.
“Please allow me to reiterate my earlier statement that I view the content of the video as absolutely abhorrent,” Kolison continued, adding that he “cannot stress strongly enough that that the independent viewpoints of this individual professor are in no way representative of the values of the SUNY Fredonia campus.”
Kershnar, however, had been making similar remarks for over twenty years and had authored a book on pedophilia and adult-child sex in 2015. SUNY Fredonia’s official profile for Kershnar even boasted that the professor had written extensively “on such diverse topics” as “adult-child sex,” among other things.
Kershnar has a history of making controversial arguments and has written articles titled, ‘For Torture: A Rights-Based Defense’, ‘A Liberal Argument for Slavery’, and ‘For Discrimination Against Women’.
