A State University of New York (SUNY) professor is under investigation by the school after he appeared to defend pedophilia in a video posted by Libs of TikTok and went viral.
Professor Stephen Kershnar teaches libertarian philosophy and applied ethics at SUNY Fredonia, according to the New York Post. He was filmed questioning if pedophilia was wrong and claimed that a 12-year-old girl could consent to be a “willing participant” to have sex with an adult man.
“Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. Imagine that she’s a willing participant,” he said in the video. “A very standard, a very widely-held view that there’s something deeply wrong about this. And it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that it's, in fact, wrong. I think this is a mistake. And I think that exploring why it’s a mistake will tell us not only things about adult-child sex and statutory rape, but also fundamental principles of morality.”
🚨🚨🚨 Professor says an adult wanting to have sex with a kid is accepted as being wrong but “it’s not obvious to me that it is in fact wrong” pic.twitter.com/ygC5nuHDNa
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 2, 2022
“There’s a couple things to say here,” the professor continued. “One is, even if you are looking for a threshold…let’s say it’s age 8. Still, that tells you that some adult-child sex is permissible.”
“The notion that it’s wrong even with a 1-year-old is not quite obvious to me,” he continued, adding that children consenting to sexual activity is like playing a sport or preparing for their Bar Mitzvah.
“There’s lots of activities that children engage in that they don’t understand all that well,” he claimed.
He compares minors consenting to sex to them consenting to a kickball game or lessons pic.twitter.com/AG4rAF1koT
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 2, 2022
SUNY Fredonia President Stephen Kolison issued a statement against the video, calling the remarks “reprehensible" and said that Kershnar is under review.
A message from SUNY Fredonia President Stephen H. Kolison pic.twitter.com/EDZCHCE7ch
— SUNY Fredonia (@FredoniaU) February 2, 2022
According to the Post, Kershnar has penned one hundred articles and book chapters on topics like abortion, adult-child sex, hell, pornography, sexual fantasies, slavery, and torture. And, he allegedly wrote in an abstract that it is “morally permissible” and “should be legally permissible” for state and private schools to discriminate against women, claiming that women are “likely to produce less than male counterparts.”
Students at SUNY Fredonia told Buffalo-based outlet WKBW that Kershnar made them uncomfortable.
"When I was reading his essays on the age of consent and thinking that underaged sex and sex with girls who are twelve are okay and shouldn't be thought of or questioned because you're taking away the right from people who wanna do it. I think that was the breaking point for me," Tralle Cotter, a junior, told the outlet.
"I hope they [the school] will remove him, maybe I'm optimistic or I want to trust this school," Olivia Sylvester, a sophomore, told the outlet. “But I want to be able to love this college, and I want to do it, and I want to be proud that I came from here, so I want to trust they're going to do the right thing."
WKBW noted that Kershnar's classes had been canceled.