Amid a nationwide storm of recriminations following last week’s murder of Charlie Kirk, Clemson University this week fired two faculty members and an employee for social-media posts concerning Kirk’s death.
The terminations follow a weekend of pressure on Clemson from Republicans in South Carolina’s legislature and congressional delegation, who threatened to pull the university’s funding if it didn’t fire employees who “celebrate” Kirk’s death. The lawmakers’ campaign against Clemson, bolstered by right-wing X accounts with large followings, even got the attention of President Trump. Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday during a debate-style event on Utah Valley University’s campus.
Clemson had initially condemned the employees’ remarks about Kirk while emphasizing that the university was committed to upholding the First Amendment, saying that “appropriate action” would be taken “for speech that constitutes a genuine threat.” A day later, Clemson said it had suspended a staff member and would continue to investigate social-media activity brought to its attention.
By Monday, the staff member had been fired. In a statement, Clemson officials said the decision came as a result of an “immediate and deliberate investigation into inappropriate social media content.” The two faculty members were removed from teaching duties and notified on Friday to stay out of the classroom as the university conducts an investigation, the university said.
On Tuesday, Clemson officials said the two faculty members were dismissed for the same reasons.
“We fully acknowledge the concerns raised regarding the timing of recent personnel decisions,” the university said. “Every deliberation reflects the university’s unwavering commitment to conduct all actions in full compliance with institutional policies, state and federal laws, and the foundational principles of due process.”
The university’s actions had the backing of the Board of Trustees, who signaled their support for the university’s “immediate and appropriate measures” against the employees in a special session Monday.
The board “expects the highest levels of integrity, accountability and professionalism from all university employees,” Kim A. Wilkerson, the chair, said at the meeting. “When individuals fall short of these expectations, especially in ways that compromise the safety of our campus community and undermine the learning environment, decisive action is not only warranted, but necessary to uphold the university’s missions and values.”
The controversy began on Thursday when the Clemson College Republicans, a student group, reposted to X a series of comments made across several social-media platforms by three university employees. The College Republicans’ viral posts called for Clemson to immediately fire the employees.
Jack Lyle, the student group’s chairman, said he believed this was the first time his organization had advocated for an employee to be terminated. Lyle said that he and other members support the employees’ First Amendment rights, but that they should be fired for violating Clemson’s code of ethics.
“It’s not at all that we think they shouldn’t be allowed to say these things, but instead that, in accordance with the rules which the school passes down and enforces for all of us, that they should have lost their jobs for what they’ve said,” Lyle said.
The student group identified the employees as Robert Newberry, the university’s asbestos program manager; Melvin Earl Villaver Jr., an assistant professor of audio technology and global black studies; and Josh Bregy, an assistant professor in the environmental engineering and earth sciences department. (Assistant professor roles are typically tenure track but do not confer full tenure protections.) The university didn’t name any of the employees in a Monday statement and declined to provide further details, saying the cases were personnel matters.
In the posts about Kirk, many of which have since been deleted, the employees make light of Kirk’s death.
Newberry, the staffer presumably fired on Monday, wrote on Facebook: “In a world of Charlie Kirks and Brian Thompsons, be a Tyler Robinson or a Luigi Mangione.” (The former is the suspect arrested in Kirk’s death; the latter has been charged with the murder of United Healthcare’s chief executive.) Newberry also wrote that Kirk was a “cancer on our constitution that has now thankfully been ameliorated.”
Villaver, one of the faculty members, said on X, “Racism and white supremacy age you,” in response to a comment saying Kirk looked old at 31, according to screenshots from the College Republicans. Villaver also shared another user’s X post that stated, “According to Kirk, empathy is a made-up new age term, so keep the jokes coming. it’s what he would have wanted.”
Bregy, the other faculty member, reposted this screenshot: “Karma is sometimes swift and ironic. As Kirk said, ‘play certain games, win certain prizes.’”
The bar for firing faculty members over speech is high, particularly at public universities that must abide by the First Amendment. The viral social-media posts should be constitutionally protected, two free-speech advocacy organizations told The Chronicle.
While the comments might be offensive, “speech can’t be punished just because it’s offensive or hateful to others,” said Graham Piro, a faculty legal defense fund fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE. Piro also called out the university’s assertion that “speech that incites harm or undermines the dignity of others” wasn’t covered by the First Amendment, saying he didn’t think that interpretation applied for the Clemson employees’ viral posts.
“That sort of language is so broad that you can kind of drive a truck through that sort of loophole,” Piro said.
As the fallout from Kirk’s killing continues, colleges, K-12 schools, and other organizations are rapidly taking disciplinary action and, in some cases, terminating employees as a result of opinions shared online.
In cases involving online pressure, speech advocates said, colleges sometimes act swiftly rather than logically. “What we’re seeing at the moment is a wildfire of censorship being stoked by self-appointed vigilantes who are looking for easy targets,” said Amy Reid, senior manager for the Freedom to Learn program at PEN America. “We need to have administrators be thoughtful about what they’re doing and to follow the processes on their campuses.”
Meanwhile, the pressure campaign on Clemson is continuing. The university’s chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative organization Kirk founded in 2012, has urged the university to fire the two suspended faculty members.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, requested that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon cut off funding from any educational institutions that “fail to take immediate administrative action, and to the extent allowed by law, to terminate any personnel who spews this hate.”
Harmeet Dhillon, a top official in the U.S. Department of Justice, said on her personal X account that federal funding for higher education is a “privilege, NOT a right,” calling Monday’s employee termination a “good start.”
“Not every asshole is entitled to a government job in an educational institution,” Dhillon posted, adding that she was speaking on behalf of herself and not the department.
And Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s attorney general, wrote in a letter to Clemson’s president, James P. Clements, that the university would not be prosecuted if it decided to fire a professor over the Kirk posts.
Wilson cited the state’s “political firing” statute, noting on X that the law “does not shield professors who glorify assassination.” Wilson said the statute “was written to protect free political thought, not to excuse public employees who celebrate violence.”
Piro said it was concerning that Wilson and other influential politicians were “basically giving the university free reign to violate the First Amendment in some way.”
Online commentary should merit engagement rather than “blanket censorship,” Reid said.
“There is a bitter irony,” Reid said, “in the fact that the death of someone who is being held up as an exemplar of free expression and civil debate is being used to justify the censoring of so many others.”
