More Censorial Hijinks in the Kirk Shooting Aftermath

Darren Michael

Regular readers of this blog will understand that Curmie is likely to take the side of theatre professors against The Man unless they’ve done something really appalling.  So it should come as no surprise that when Curmie heard about the case of Darren V. Michael, who was fired by Austin Peay State University for posts on social media, he set fingers to keyboard rather promptly.  You will, one hopes, forgive Curmie for choosing this particular manifestation of institutional censorship to highlight.

Michael had been employed by APSU since 2007, and is referred to as a “professor” in all the accounts Curmie has seen.  That may be simply a term for a faculty member at a university, but it seems to be applied as an academic rank, meaning that he almost certainly had tenure.  What he appears to have done would be protected speech even if he were a part-time adjunct, but tenure carries with it an even broader protection… or, rather, it does at institutions that aren’t run by partisan morons.  And the fact that APSU is a state school means that the First Amendment applies, irrespective of what the administration might think.

OK, so what did he do?  The university won’t say, specifically, only that he “reshared a post on social media that was insensitive, disrespectful and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death. Such actions do not align with Austin Peay’s commitment to mutual respect and human dignity. The university deems these actions unacceptable and has terminated the faculty member.”

The local news, both TV and newspaper, covered the story, but didn’t dig very far.  KZTV makes no attempt to determine what Michael said or did; ClarksvilleNow.com mentions that Michael reposted a headline from a 2023 Newsweek article: “Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment.”  The irony that it was Kirk himself who suffered because of the nation’s infatuation with guns ought certainly to be worth noting, and no reasonable person would suggest that it’s other than protected speech.  (This is not to suggest, of course, that everyone out there is reasonable.)

Primetimer did a little better in their coverage.  First, they identified Michael’s remarks as “insensitive,” which they no doubt were, although that’s a damned low bar to clear before a right to censorship kicks in.  They also found a post on X by T.R. Sartor (@dripchud), which includes a meme of a conversation between two well-known fictional characters:  “‘Is he dead yet?’ asked Piglet.  ‘No,’ said Pooh.  ‘Fuck,’ said Piglet.” 

OK, that’s perilously close to celebratory, if it hasn’t in fact crossed the line.  But Curmie notes two things.  First, that meme has been around since the first Trump administration, and the pronoun in question has always referred to POTUS.  Indeed, Michael clearly intended that reading: Sartor’s post is on the 10^th, the day of the shooting, but the meme had been posted six days earlier. It’s completely irrelevant to the Kirk assassination except as an indicator of Michael’s general political philosophy.  It’s certainly crude and more than a bit tasteless, but, importantly, it’s still protected speech.  There is no “true threat,” no “intentional incitement to immediate violence.”  Oh, and the often over-zealous Secret Service didn’t show up on Michael’s doorstep.

There’s also, of course, the matter of timing.  Michael’s post of the Newsweek headline was on Wednesday evening.  He was fired Friday morning: not a lot of time in there for due process.  [EDIT, just as Curmie was formatting: the university has changed the dismissal to a suspension, admitting they hadn’t followed due process.  Go figure, right?]  Rather, this was a typical over-reaction by a narcissistic and authoritarian university president, one Mike Licari.  He claims that APSU suffered “significant reputational damage” because of Michael’s posts.  Well, that’s utter crap.

APSU, after all, is named for the segregationist Tennessee governor who is best known nationally for signing the bill outlawing the teaching of evolution, leading to the famous Scopes “monkey trial.”  Of course, those positions were considerably more acceptable a century ago than today, but still there’s a sort of “only in Tennessee” feel to the whole business. The university accepts virtually everyone who applies, and it graduates only 27% of its students.  While Curmie is confident that there are some excellent faculty and students there, APSU is not exactly going to be confused with an elite institution.  There is not a lot of “reputational damage” to be done.

You know what does cost the school, though?  An idiot president who fires a tenured professor for posting something ironic online.  As far as Curmie can tell, there was no accompanying text to Michael’s post, no “Hate begets hate.  ZERO sympathy” like what got an assistant dean at another Tennessee state university fired.  (Hers was protected speech, too, of course.)  Unless there’s something we don’t know about, nothing Michael did was enough to spawn a raised eyebrow, let alone a dismissal without due process... or a suspension, for that matter.  (Also, of course, Curmie’s willing to bet there aren’t a lot of people in Clarksville, TN with the skillset to teach what had been Michael’s classes, either.) There is no such thing as free speech if a state employee can be fired for saying something someone in power finds distasteful.

Oh, Curmie sees that look on your face, Gentle Reader: “Curmie’s a liberal, so he’s going to side with them.”  Nope.  Curmie was a career educator and remains a passionate defender of free speech: of an Israeli guest lecturer at Michigan State most recently, of a law professor at Ohio Northern who opposed his school’s DEI policy, and of a conservative prof at North Carolina State, to name but a couple of cases.  There are plenty of examples on both sides of the political fence.  For the past couple of weeks, the oppressors have been almost exclusively on the right.  That will change in time: not because they’ll stop being censorial, but because the left will find their opportunities.  Alas.

One thing is certain: there are some university administrators out there who are about to get sued.  That brings us to the best Facebook comment Curmie has seen in a while.  The honor goes to Leslie Skrzypczak, responding to a story about l’affaire Michael posted by Cape Cod Women for Change: “They’ve tried to reach him for comment but his lawyer’s eyes were twinkling and they laughed and laughed.”

What she said.