Karen Chief, a tenured affiliate professor of Artwork Historical past at Florida Atlantic College (FAU) in Boca Raton, has spent many of the final week afraid to depart her residence, contending with a torrent of threats despatched to her work e-mail and left as voicemails.
“I’ve by no means been afraid to go outdoors in my whole life,” Chief instructed Hyperallergic in an interview. “I wouldn’t want this on anybody.”
Chief, who additionally serves as the one college advisor to FAU’s Faculty Democrats group, was positioned on administrative depart by the college on September 13 over her social media posts criticizing Turning Level USA Founder and right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk’s political viewpoints. She is without doubt one of the reportedly dozens of educators throughout the nation who’ve been reprimanded for his or her feedback within the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination in Utah final week. This week, the American Affiliation of College Professors expressed “nice alarm” over the wave of retaliation in opposition to college and college students.
FAU is a chosen Hispanic-Serving public establishment with an enrollment of roughly 31,000 college students. It’s the most ethnically numerous faculty within the Florida public college system, in accordance with the FAU web site.
Chief’s posts in query, reviewed by Hyperallergic, had been principally reposts of different customers’ feedback about Kirk’s document of hateful statements, and didn’t particularly deal with or condone his demise. Nonetheless, they had been rapidly focused by right-wing people on social media, who tagged the college.
A letter from FAU’s Division of Visible Arts and Artwork Historical past, obtained by Hyperallergic, notified Chief final Saturday that she could be positioned on paid depart associated to her social media conduct pending an investigation.
“The College has acquired complaints, which provides us purpose to imagine that your continued presence on the job adversely impacts college operations,” the letter, signed by the division chair, learn. “The investigation will embody a evaluate of your conduct, together with, however not restricted to, your current social media posts that the College moderately believes may disrupt the environment friendly functioning of the College, and/or jeopardize the protection or welfare of different workers, colleagues, or college students.”
Chief denied that any of her posts jeopardized the protection of anybody on campus or espoused hate of any variety. She mentioned her intentions had been to counter dominant narratives that Kirk practiced politics with civility, a view espoused in a extremely criticized opinion piece by Ezra Klein within the New York Occasions, amongst others.
Certainly one of Chief’s posts, dated September 11, learn, “The predictable ‘blame the professors’ narrative is full circle, Charlie ‘Professor Watchlist’ Kirk. Ruining lives for enjoyable and revenue.” The remark made reference to the methods by which Kirk’s group Turning Level USA focused college professors whose views it disagreed with.
Chief additionally annotated a sequence of X posts from September 11 and 12, republishing them with the caption “This was Charlie Kirk.” The posts she recirculated critiqued Kirk’s anti-LBGTQ+ and racist feedback. She reposted one other submit, which was later decided by X to be factually incorrect, claiming that Kirk had used an anti-Asian slur; Chief deleted it as quickly as she discovered it was inaccurate, she mentioned.
One other repost was of a remark by an X person with the identify “I smoked Charlie Kirk.” Proper-wing commenters interpreted this as an endorsement of Kirk’s demise, however Chief mentioned that the person regularly adjustments their identify in an identical format to replicate “smoking” trending headlines.
“I didn’t say something or do something that inspired violence in any respect,” Chief instructed Hyperallergic. “I didn’t say or do something that celebrated his demise, that mentioned he deserved it, that in any manner, form or kind, condoned violence.”
FAU didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Chief highlighted in an interview with Hyperallergic that Turning Level USA prompted concern amongst fellow lecturers. One professor Chief is aware of carefully, whom she declined to call, landed on the group’s “Professor Watchlist,” which targets professors that Turning Level claims “advance leftist propaganda.” Chief mentioned her good friend feared for his or her life once they had been included.
“Anybody who’s on that checklist is aware of that there nonetheless may be folks coming into their class, actually to surveil them, signing up for his or her class to document them,” Chief instructed Hyperallergic.
The college issued a public assertion on its X profile asserting the compelled depart of an unnamed professor after FAU’s president grew to become conscious of “feedback on social media made by a tenured college member relating to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.” Chief mentioned she didn’t deal with the demise of Kirk in her posts, and that she views the president’s assertion as a “mischaracterization” of her precise social media exercise.
After right-wing accounts fixated consideration on Chief’s posts, together with Southern Poverty Legislation Heart-designated extremist Chaya Raichik‘s platform “LibsofTikTok,” Chief discovered posts revealing her residence deal with and school e-mail. She mentioned she has filed stories with each FAU campus police and Boca Raton police. She has not heard from the administration since they despatched her discover of administrative depart, she mentioned.
In current weeks, Chief has grow to be an more and more distinguished dissenting determine on campus. Over the summer season break, the college reportedly signed an settlement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by means of the 287(g) program, a partnership that will enable federal brokers and native police to detain or determine people for deportation on the FAU campus. Chief spoke at a pupil protest condemning the settlement days earlier than Kirk’s assassination.
Among the many points Chief opposes on the college’s campus is the current appointment of FAU President Adam Hasner, a former GOP state politician and former govt of the GEO Group, a personal detention firm that operates an ICE detention middle in neighboring Broward County.
Chief mentioned she has some protections from her union as she undergoes the investigation course of. Her lessons have been moved on-line, she mentioned, however she doesn’t know who will instruct her roughly 105 college students, and she or he fears her doxxing may put college students in hurt’s manner.
“My free speech protects me from what I did,” Chief mentioned. “However the response to it’d get me killed.”
