M.A. Istvan Jr.

M. A. Istvan Jr., whose artworks have recently resulted in his due-process-less and unappealable termination from Austin Community College, does not write academic articles or poetry or satirical textbooks or comic routines or so on in ignorance of the burgeoning threat to artistic freedom. Dr. Istvan is aware that, worldwide (and especially in the US), artists are censored and intimidated—and more and more under the feel-good banners of “protecting the youth from corruption” and “nurturing diverse spaces.” In fact, one of the larger motivations behind his iconoclastic and provocative art is to keep the circumference of what can be expressed wide enough that we do not need to fear losing our livelihoods for exhibiting our humanity. Far from corrupting the youth or shutting down diversity, Dr. Istvan works, in effect, to ensure that the youth grow in a world of voices that are not merely diverse on surface-levels or in the “right way.” He vows, here and now, never to stop struggling against the anti-diversity groundswell of cancellation, however much bloodthirsty retribution it provokes! Join with him to engender a world in which sudden termination is not a necessary consequence of heterodoxy.