Jackson Kernion is an instructor at the University of California at Berkley where he teaches the subject of philosophy. He has been a member of the university’s teaching staff since 2013. During that time, he has served as the instructor for eleven different subjects within the philosophy curriculum. He has, however, made headlines recently for his activity on the social media platform Twitter.
It was on the platform that Kernion recently posted many tweets where he negatively characterized rural Americans for their decision to live in the countryside rather than in a city. It was in these tweets that Kernion made it clear that he approves of Americans who choose to live in rural settings being criticized and characterized as people of low character. He also characterized rural Americans as being people that have chosen to make the wrong decisions in their lives. These tweets were made by Kernion in November of 2019 and he has since then deleted the comments. Though the philosophy instructor deleted his tweets that he posted in November, it was not before their existence had been noticed by many who were offended by them. The posts made by Kernion were initially reported to the general public by the Campus Reform organization.
It would appear that the motivation behind the tweets of Kernion stemmed from the state’s introduction of a program to provide healthcare solutions that are affordable in nature to rural communities. The California-Berkley instructor let it be known in his tweets that he felt that healthcare for those that live in rural areas should be expensive rather than affordable. He emphasized that he believed that those who choose to live in rural settings should bear the full responsibility of these healthcare expenses. The college instructor also took things a step further and claimed that he believes that rural Americans should also have to pay higher costs for services such as gas and broadband. These are measures that he feels will pressure rural American’s into having no choice but to move into cities. This series of tweets ended up going viral in rapid fashion and when this occurred, he expressed regret in making the statements and deleted his comments from the social media platform.
Kernion claims that he realizes that he made a bad decision in posting these tweets. He provided an apology to those that follow him on the social media platform. He also stated the need to think deeply about the statements that he made. An admittance from Kernion was that he came off as a much colder and uncaring individual than he prefers to consider himself. Regardless of the apologies that have been made by Kernion, some have compared the statements he made to the statements of 2016 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. According to Stuart Varney of Fox, her now infamous deplorables comments and the comments of Kerion can be seen in the same light and seen as coming from the same line of thinking. He also comments that he believes it is a prime example of the way that the elite class looks down on everyday people from rural America.
