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Read our latest statement regarding recent claims made by visiting scholar Dr. John Eastman from our Director of Legislative Affairs, Matt Harvey:

We at GPSG recognize that the past week has been harrowing and exhausting for our Buff community. Graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, and staff have carried the physical and emotional burdens of continuing the university’s mission while navigating a pandemic, and the challenge of a charged election does little to alleviate those stressors. In these tumultuous times, we stress the importance of temperance, patience, and respect for our fellow Buffs as each state follows its own legal procedures to certify votes and deliver them to Congress in December.

Over the past week, Dr. John Eastman, a visiting scholar at the Benson Center for Conservative Thought and Policy, has made a series of statements on Twitter that call into question the legitimacy of our electoral process. Time and again, Dr. Eastman has amplified anti-democratic sentiments and has blatant falsehoods on the legitimacy of voting by mail . As President-Elect Biden opened leads in Wisconsin and Michigan, and as mail-in ballots swung Milwaukee and Wayne counties in the respective states, Dr. Eastman asserted those urban, majority non-white cities as areas where electoral fraud was likely by virtue of their turnout for President-Elect Biden. ,

We at GPSG recognize Dr. Eastman’s right to free speech, but this is not a mere partisan conflict. This is a scholar appointed to a position at ¾«Æ·SMÔÚÏßӰƬ actively propagating talking points designed to cast the incoming administration as illegitimate, in defiance of the elected will of the people, and in defiance of repeated studies that have found mail-in/absentee ballots to be largely free of voter fraud. ,  Given that these talking points are promoted by the same scholar who alleged (in an argument rooted in xenophobia rather than law) that Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris would be ineligible to serve due to the VISA status of her parents at the time of her birth, we are disappointed and troubled but not surprised by this conduct. 

Again, we respect Dr. Eastman’s rights to free speech and to use his platform as he chooses. However, in light of the challenges facing American democracy and an outgoing administration that refuses to concede, GPSG condemns Dr. Eastman’s subversive and dangerous rhetoric as an appointed member of our Buff community.