Florida Atlantic University faculty are sounding the alarm about an effort to investigate and possibly discipline faculty members for comments they made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The FAU Faculty Senate, an advisory body to the university president and Board of Trustees, as well an FAU union, the United Faculty of Florida, have issued a joint resolution reaffirming their commitment to defending free expression and civil discourse. The Faculty Senate passed the resolution, as well as a separate one condemning Kirk’s murder, unanimously without discussion at a meeting on Monday.
The resolution questions FAU President Adam Hasner’s decision on Sept. 13 to publicly announce on social media that he was removing and investigating one tenured professor. FAU faculty say Hasner’s move has a “chilling effect” on public speech.
The faculty resolution comes as educational institutions and school districts have grappled with how to respond to employees who issued harsh public critiques of Kirk in the days after his killing. Kirk was shot to death Sept. 10 while addressing a university audience in Utah. In the days after his assassination, conservative activists scoured social media sites for controversial comments about the murder, taking steps to get those who did so fired or disciplined.
Although there are cases in many K-12 schools in Florida, FAU is the only public college or university in the state that has publicly confirmed it’s investigating faculty for social media posts related to Kirk. The first FAU faculty member identified was Karen Leader, an associate professor of art who is also a faculty associate in the Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
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Leader shared others’ posts on X in the days after the Kirk assassination that criticized him on matters related to race, gender, guns and LGBTQ issues. In many of them, she added her own comments to others’ posts, such as “This was Charlie Kirk.”
After a number of conservative activists shared her comments on X and tagged FAU officials, Hasner announced Sept. 13 on the social media site X that a faculty member, whom he didn’t name, had been placed on administrative leave and was under investigation.
“Earlier today, I became aware of repeated comments on social media made by a tenured faculty member regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” read a statement from Hasner, posted Sept. 13 on FAU’s X account. “It is our expectation that all employees consistently pursue the university’s mission and values to promote higher education, cultivate academic excellence, and support the personal growth of our students.”
The resolution suggests that faculty found Hasner’s post troubling.
“The public disclosure of personnel actions taken in response to public speech — when such disclosure lacks clearly articulated and specific grounds — has a chilling effect on the free expression of ideas within the university community,” the faculty resolution states.
FAU confirmed Leader’s name after she was quoted in a news story acknowledging she was under investigation.
Since then, two additional faculty members also were placed pending an investigation related to Kirk comments, although FAU didn’t announce those. The university did confirm the names after they identified themselves in news stories or social media posts. They are English Professor Kate Polak, who criticized Kirk, and College of Business eminent scholar Rebel Cole, who criticized Kirk’s opponents.
“The university did not share specific names or details relating to these matters,” FAU spokesman Joshua Glanzer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It was the individuals involved who chose to go to the press or onto social media and identify themselves publicly.”
But Leader told the Sun Sentinel on Monday that she found the university’s response disingenuous.
“Although I was not named, there was no ambiguity about who President Hasner was referring to,” she said. “The original posts had been picked up and circulated by prominent national political influencers.”
Leader said Hasner’s social media post resulted in the matter generating even more attention and led to misconceptions about her job status. “This was not a discipline or dismissal,” she said. “It’s a personnel action, which does not in any way suggest guilt or innocence.”
The faculty resolution “opposes any effort to suppress, punish, or otherwise infringe upon the exercise of free speech and expression by public university employees, when that expression is legally protected from punitive action.” It asks university administrators to adhere to existing policies of FAU and the State University System, which support the right to express a range of perspectives, “even if other members of our community may find those ideas abhorrent.”
The resolution also urges FAU administrators to develop a policy with faculty to ensure due process for students and employees “whose speech or expression may legally be subject to disciplinary action.”
Glanzer said the university is following the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement with faculty as it conducts the investigation, which is still ongoing.
FAU math professor Fred Hoffman told the Sun Sentinel after the meeting that it was important for faculty to take a stand.
“We have to make it clear that we favor free speech, and some of the things have been troubling,” Hoffman said. “I don’t know that anything irreversibly bad has happened, but to go into people’s social media communications is highly unusual and a little worrisome.”
The Faculty Senate also unanimously passed a second resolution on Monday, as part of a joint statement with faculty unions throughout the State University System. That resolution “unequivocally condemns the murder of Charlie Kirk as a reprehensible act of violence and an attack on the principles of free expression and lawful discourse.”
The statewide resolution also opposes efforts to suppress speech or punish people at a university for their speech and asks leaders in Florida “to safeguard our educational institutions as bastions of free expression and civil discourse, consistent with the purpose of institutions of higher learning within a free and open society.”
