Mike S. Adams, professor of sociology and criminology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, took his own life last week. At UNCW and in public speaking, as well as in columns for Townhall and The Daily Wire, Adams was a stalwart defender of free speech, the Second Amendment, and the sanctity of life, and he stood bravely — often alone in his position in academia — for conservative and Christian values. He was 55.

What makes Adams’s death all the more tragic and, frankly, outrageous is that he spent decades being bullied by hateful leftists at his university and elsewhere, only to be bullied even in death by celebrating leftists.

Adams fought a seven-year legal battle against UNCW to achieve the tenure he was initially denied — tenure that was granted to professors with far less in the way of accomplishment yet denied to Adams because of his political beliefs. Previously an atheist liberal, Adams converted to Christianity and later to conservatism. His friend and attorney David French wrote, “Prior to his religious and political conversion, his student and peer teaching evaluations were remarkably high (teaching evaluations were important for retention and promotion). After his conversion, his student evaluations remained sky-high (routinely among the best in the department), but his peer evaluations plunged.”

Adams frequently used acerbic wit and provocative rhetoric, but neither Adams nor conservatives in general are the aggressors in the culture war. The aggressors are the “social justice” warriors who want to fundamentally transform America.

But like the bullies they are, all leftists can do is scream that people like Adams dare to fight back.

Even after news broke that Adams had committed suicide, the bullies at NBC headlined, “Professor who announced retirement after racist and sexist tweets died by suicide.” NBC’s hack “journalist” David Li offered no evidence for those charges, other than linking to UNCW’s vacuous statement earlier this summer. That statement likewise offered no evidence of the charges, and administrators only grudgingly conceded that Adams was protected by free speech even while declaring they “stand firmly against” him.

Other Leftmedia stories — including one in 2016 by the “LGBT” activist division “NBC OUT” — derided Adams for such things as calling “transgenderism” a mental illness, rejecting same-sex marriage, and calling out a homosexual Muslim student for embracing a religion that demands her own execution.

These are, of course, mainstream conservative opinions, not “racist and sexist” language. But if there’s one thing you don’t do in Marxist-dominated academia, it’s challenge the Rainbow Mafia.

The last straw, however, was the “racist” one. Near the end of May, Adams took on North Carolina Governor Rory Cooper’s pandemic shutdown with his typical edgy humor, tweeting, “This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go!”

This time, he didn’t fight the predictable outrage; he negotiated his exit from UNCW on August 1.

Those of us who dare challenge the Left know how vengeful the radicals can be. As Mark Steyn lamented, “If you’re doing the heavy lifting on an otherwise abandoned front of the culture war, what you mostly hear, as Mike Adams did, is the silent majority’s silence.” Thus, we know that the will to fight can sometimes leave even the toughest and, in Adams’s case, the seemingly happiest warrior. For those of us in our humble shop who corresponded with Mike over the years, we also know that his blood is on the hands of the leftist bullies, including those in the UNCW administration, whose cruel hatred knows no bounds.

Yet they do not have ultimate victory. Finally, Mike, you can rest in peace.