We heard about this earlier today and the whole thing was posted on TigerDroppings, so we’re reasonably comfortable saying it wasn’t a hoax – or at least if it is one it’s awfully well constructed.

Last night being Halloween, in Baton Rouge’s tony Bocage neighborhood some folks held a Halloween open house. These being reasonably typical upscale South Baton Rouge residents, the homeowners were Republicans, and so there was a funny decoration on the house’s front porch with skeletons dressed up as Donald Trump The Garbage Man and Kamala Harris as the garbage…

That’s not half bad as skeleton art goes, honestly.

Anyway, it was an open house, so there were people sitting out front in lawn chairs and other folks inside, and as we’re told there were kids and adults hanging around inside the house and everybody was having a good time until this happened…

The TigerDroppings thread indicates this is the culprit…

Apparently he was identified by the homeowner. Orwin’s address is on Kenilworth Parkway, which is most certainly not in Bocage, so exactly why he’d be known by the homeowner is something we’re not sure about.

And here was the aftermath of the attack…

Oh, the humanity!

This isn’t a huge, earth-shaking deal. Our first instinct was that it was a joke, like Orwin knew the homeowners and for Halloween he was going to play the unhinged lefty professor and trash the Trump display.

Which would be pretty funny, actually.

Except we’re told that isn’t what this was. That it’s not a hoax.

Which is too bad. Big missed opportunity if it’s not a hoax. If it’s real, then now we have one more example of the tired trope – the unhinged, triggered leftist, who is of course a sinecured academic, who can’t even act in a civil fashion toward dissidents of his political ideology.

Digging into Alex Orwin a little, he fits that trope. Though not perfectly. He’s written a couple of articles for the Claremont Review of Books, which is generally considered as a right-of-center publication, and one of them was a review of a liberal interpretation of the Koran that Orwin didn’t have much use for.

Of course, those were in 2015 and 2018.

Orwin has been a political science professor at LSU since 2017. Here’s his CV from the university’s website…

Area of Interest

Alexander Orwin studies medieval Islamic political philosophy, and compares it with various other traditions, including the classical political philosophy that inspired it, as well as modern European and Islamic philosophy. He is currently working on a wide-ranging project examining the use of Plato’s Republic in Islamic philosophy.

Selected Publications

Orwin, Alexander, editor. Plato’s Republic in the Islamic Context: New Perspectives on Averroe’s Commentary. University of Rochester Press, 2022.

Orwin, Alexander. 2021. “Submission to Peace, and Polygamy: Should the French Acquiesce to Houellebecq’s Dream of New Islam?” In Michael S. Kochin, and Alberto Spektorowski, eds. Michel Houellebecq, the Cassandra of Freedom: Submission and Decline. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.

Orwin, Alexander. 2021. “Jihād for the City: How Alfarabi Discourages, and Encourages, Death in Battle.” In Erin Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd, and Bruce Peabody, eds. Political Theory on Death and Dying. Routledge Press.

Orwin, Alexander. 2021. “Democracy in Muslim Spain: Averroe’s Domestic Account of Popular Rule.” In Patrick N. Cain, Stephen P. Sims, and Stephen A. Block, eds. Democracy and the History of Political Thought. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

Courses

POLI 2060 Introduction to Political Theory
POLI 4081 History of Political Theory from Plato to More
POLI 4082 History of Political Theory from Machiavelli to Nietzsche
POLI 4090 ST: Political Theory/Comparing the Bible and Quran
POLI 4234 Studies in Literature and Politics/Three Great American Novels on Race
POLI 7990 Political Theory: Interpretation and Analysis
POLI 7991 ST: Political Theory

About

Professor Alexander Orwin (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2015) studies Islamic political philosophy in the context of the broader history of political thought. He is currently working on an extensive book project examining the use of Plato’s Republicin Islamic political philosophy. His teaching encompasses a wide variety of books, including philosophy, literature, and scripture. He aims to provide fair and disciplined classroom leadership that pushes students in the effort needed to appreciate and enjoy the world’s greatest books.

Nothing about that gives off too many red flags that he’s a totalitarian Marxist, though those course descriptions do come off as rather crashingly boring.

But then you go to Rate My Professor, and you find out that Alex Orwin is decidedly not well liked by LSU’s poli sci students.

He’s got a 1.7 rating out of 5, and only 14 percent of the students say they’d take his class again.

Oof.

Here’s a typical review…

And another…

We won’t take you through all 23 ratings. They’re pretty consistent, and they all say the same thing – that he’s a boring douche who proselytizes rather than teaches. You can see all of them here.

Are we going to yell and scream that this guy ought to be fired? Not really. But what we’d say is that your tax dollars are funding this guy’s $74,000 salary, it doesn’t seem like he’s all that good at his job and now he embarrasses the university in what’s destined to be a viral video. In the private sector he probably wouldn’t last long after this.

And what we’d also say is we’re tired of this trope. We’ve had enough of the coddled leftist academic in a cozy sinecure that they abuse and weaponize against their students, and then act the ass around normal people when their beliefs are challenged. We give credit to the people at that party that Orwin wasn’t beaten to a pulp, because that would be the common expectation as results go.

And maybe that should start happening. Though given the judges at the 19th Judicial District Court and who they are, delivering a beatdown to Orwin probably doesn’t get you off scot-free and this guy isn’t worth getting a criminal record over.

Calls will almost certainly be made to Bill Tate, LSU’s president, demanding that Alex Orwin get a pink slip. We doubt Tate is going to find his continued employment a particular hill to die on, and Orwin probably will get let go. If he does, he’ll almost certainly find a job at some blue-state university where he’s celebrated for his victory over the Trump skeleton in Baton Rouge.

But at least those LSU students suffering through his boring classes might get some relief. Until he’s replaced with some other manifestation of the tired trope your tax dollars will pay for.