Following the bulk of the coverage on his initial deleted tweets, Professor Timothy Farage put out the following apology letter on July 25th.
“A week or so ago, I tweeted about an article dealing with monkeypox. The article said that a common way to transmit this disease was by men having sex with men. My comment about the article was I thought that doctors should try to find a cure for male homosexuality. I actually thought that this was a compassionate comment because I’ve had a few homosexual friends who wished they were heterosexual. Since then, I’ve received a great deal of negative feedback. And it is clear to me that my comments were offensive and hurtful to many. I promise you that I had no intention of offending anyone. And I deeply apologize to those who were. Students who have taken courses from me know that I harbor no ill will towards anyone, and especially not because of their sexuality, or race, or country of origin. Please forgive me.”
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Weak apology. The ‘I’m sorry you were offended’ apology is the universal way of saying ‘I stand by what I said, but it sucks that you got hurt’. Also, his comment “Students who have taken courses from me know that I harbor no ill will towards anyone” is far from true according to the several comments I’ve seen from his former students about his persistent offensive comments.