Conservatives went on a social media rampage following Charlie Kirk's shooting death to find what they deemed to be inappropriate comments about the Turning Point USA co-founder to get them fired from their jobs. But the wave of employee terminations has been short-lived.
The New York Times reports:
A tenured professor who was briefly fired by Austin Peay State University in Tennessee in September for what the school’s president said was an insensitive social media post about the killing of Charlie Kirk will get a $500,000 settlement and his job back.
The abrupt firing, which the university acknowledged soon afterward had violated the professor’s due-process rights, was made after the professor’s post drew a backlash from conservatives, including Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee.
The institution, which is a public school based in Clarksville, Tenn., about 45 miles northwest of Nashville, backtracked less than two weeks later, placing the professor on a paid suspension for the rest of the fall semester while it pursued his termination.
The professor, Darren Michael, 56, who teaches acting and directing, was reinstated on Dec. 30 as part of the settlement with the university, which ended a more than three-month dispute over his employment.
Shortly after reports of Kirk’s assassination, Michael posted on Facebook a screenshot of a 2023 Newsweek article from that quoted Kirk, noting that gun deaths in exchange for the preservation of Second Amendment rights are part of America's reality.
Blackburn drew attention to the post, included a screenshot, and wrote, “What do you say, Austin Peay State University?” tagging the school. She even included the professor's phone number and email address.
So, we're not allowed to quote Charlie Kirk? This has happened before.
Retired Tennessee law enforcement officer Larry Bushart is suing after he was jailed for over a month and held on $2 million bail after police arrested him over a Facebook post of a meme quoting Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk's death. Bushart's crime was quoting Trump when the president said, "We have to get over it," in response to a 2024 mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.
And the Texas American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is suing the Texas Education Agency (TEA), challenging its investigations into school officials it accuses of making “inappropriate” comments after the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. The teachers' union alleges the First Amendment rights of hundreds of educators have been violated by the probes into social media accounts after Kirk was killed during a college campus event in September, The Hill reports.
This isn't working out well for cancel culture conservatives.
