A professor at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) is still under suspension for making hateful comments about Charlie Kirk shortly after his assassination, even praising the assassin.
Kate Polak, who made the comments, is a professor of English in the university’s College of Arts and Letters. She finds her present situation “humiliating,” after being suspended in September.
According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Kolak posted on social media the notion that, regarding Charlie Kirk, “delighting in the death of someone who wished death on us isn’t sick. It’s self-defense,” and replied ‘SAME’ in response to a user’s ‘Wanna buy [Kirk’s killer] a bottle!’”
FAU faculty Senate President Bill Trapani told the Sun Sentinel that Polak, who he calls an “exceptional educator,” being placed on administrative leave is “mind-boggling.”
“The fact that she’s been kept out of the classroom now for what will be an entire academic year is unheard of,” he said last Friday.
In November, the university hired a former Florida Supreme Court justice, Alan Lawson, to investigate the comments made not only by Kolak, but by other professors at the school who have made similar comments on social media.
“The findings reflect that each professor’s social-media statements, though provocative to varying degrees, were authored in a personal capacity on matters of public concern,” Lawson wrote, according to Inside Higher Ed.
The investigation into Polak remains ongoing, while the other two professors investigated were re-instated in November.
