A university bureaucrat whose job depends on racial polarization is finding out that publicity is a two-edged sword.
Smearing the British royal family, and the princess of Wales in particular, with conspiracy theories might make for fans on the left, but the saner part of the world’s population has an opinion, too.
And the Fox News who is known simply as “Kennedy” made it known loud and clear.
“I’m a UCLA alumna. And I demand to know: How could the number one ranked public university in the country be filled with so much number two?” she wrote.
Kennedy (full name Lisa Kennedy Montgomery) was blasting the University of California, Los Angeles, for continuing to keep its head of “Race and Equity,” Johnathan Perkins, on the payroll in its Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion after his loathsome and entirely unsubstantiated attacks.
In a commentary piece published by the U.K. Daily Mail on Sunday, Kennedy called Perkins “one of America’s grimiest Twitter toads” and wrote:
“On campus, Perkins is tasked with ‘upholding dignity’ and fostering ‘understanding, compassion and inclusiveness.’ But to borrow a lefty bumper sticker, he isn’t living his truth.”
After Kate, wife of Britain’s Prince William, posted a visibly photoshopped photograph of herself and her children on March 10, Britain’s Mother’s Day, conspiracy theorists went crazy.
Late-night hosts like Stephen Colbert contributed to the speculation and X users used their imagination to come up with outlandish theories.
Do you believe Princess Kate is being truthful about her diagnosis?
However, after Middleton herself shared her diagnosis with the world, the narrative changed with well-wishes pouring in from around the world, including from Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
But Perkins, who has over 31,000 followers on X, apparently prefers to stay in the comfortable conspiracy theory rabbit hole he had dug for himself.
Shortly after the cancer announcement, Perkins posted, “Now, I wonder if Kate Middleton actually has cancer AND whether the diagnosis timing went down the way the Royal Family (who wrote it) described in her announcement. This is the problem with normalizing lying to cover up other lies. [I’m a cancer survivor—so don’t start with me]”
Now, I wonder if Kate Middleton actually has cancer AND whether the diagnosis timing went down the way the Royal Family (who wrote it) described in her announcement.
This is the problem with normalizing lying to cover up other lies. [I’m a cancer survivor—so don’t start with me] pic.twitter.com/Pv9FQX99uo
— Jay P (@JohnathanPerk) March 22, 2024
But Perkins’ cruelty didn’t stop there. He has also questioned “if Kate Middleton is still alive” and published a repulsive social media post on Easter Sunday asking, “Wait, isn’t Kate Middleton supposed to rise today?”
Wait, isn’t Kate Middleton supposed to rise today? Smh
— Jay P (@JohnathanPerk) March 31, 2024
Perkins is publicly an avid supporter of Prince Harry’s wife Meghan, once posting that his X account was a Meghan Markle “stan” account — meaning a devotee to the point of obsession. He’s head of DEI at UCLA– it’s not hard to connect those dots.
FYI, this is an American Princess Meghan Markle stan account ✊🏼✊🏽✨🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/TyrHrYZg1N
— Jay P (@JohnathanPerk) March 27, 2024
Love wins! pic.twitter.com/VevJGBnnLX
— JamJoy.eth (@JamJoy13) April 7, 2024
Perkins’ disturbing pattern of behavior is not new, according to Kennedy.
As a law student at the University of Virginia in 2011, she wrote, Perkins falsely claimed to be the victim of racial profiling by campus police, only to later retract the story, writing, “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct.”
He then returned to the same accusation in 2017, saying he’d been pressured by the FBI to recant his story. (The legal-oriented website AbovetheLaw has a sympathetic portrayal of Perkins’ past available here. Readers can make up their own minds.)
Kennedy likened him to the notorious race-lying actor Jussie Smollett.
“He’s the Jussie Smollett of EDI!” Kennedy wrote.
As a standard bearer for the university, holding a position that commands a salary of $126,000, Perkin’s opinions hold weight — even if he’s accusing the royal family of lying about something as serious as a cancer diagnosis.
But notice he’s not criticizing anyone of the wrong color for the progressive left.
Could you imagine him keeping his job if, instead of making up conspiracies about Princess Kate, he had done it with former first lady Michelle Obama?
Kennedy wrote that the university had given the Daily Mail the tepid response that “Statements on [Perkins’s] personal social media account don’t reflect the views of the university.” Such a response just shows a cowardly stance.
“So UCLA,” Kennedy wrote, “you’re telling me if an employee pushed anti-COVID vax gobbledegook while moonlighting as an Alex Jones promoter, it would all be hunky-dory if it was on ‘personal social media’ accounts? I doubt it.”
The examples of other institutions, like the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, have shown that even the most well-endowed schools can be forced to take action when privileged academics abuse their positions. When wealthy donors threatened to withhold funding over anti-Semitism and plagiarism scandals in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the presidents of those universities were swiftly ousted.
In the game of control, money is the loudest voice in the room.
If Americans want to see a return to sanity at universities that raise our next generation, they have to start talking with their wallets.
Unlike those rooted in faith and patriotism, woke theologists are like dust bunnies. Left undisturbed, they can spread. But if a good breeze of common sense comes into play, it will be like they were never there at all.