BUZZ
Key Takeaways
- Kate Polak, an FAU English professor, remains suspended for the spring semester due to her controversial comments regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk, claiming it is self-defense to delight in someone's death who wished harm on others.
- Polak expressed that the ongoing investigation and her suspension are humiliating, and she rejected a drafted apology from the university, believing it could protect them from a lawsuit.
- FAU faculty Senate President Bill Trapani criticized the decision to keep Polak on administrative leave, highlighting her status as an exceptional educator with high student evaluations, and noted that faculty suspensions at FAU are rare.
- While other professors at FAU faced similar scrutiny over comments about Kirk, they were recommended for reinstatement with guidance on maintaining civility, unlike Polak whose situation has drawn more severe responses.
A Florida Atlantic University English professor suspended over comments she made regarding Charlie Kirk’s assassination will not be reinstated for the upcoming spring semester.
Kate Polak (pictured) had written on social media “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!” remark and subsequent query about whether a GoFundMe had been established for the shooter.
According to the Sun Sentinel, Polak believes she’s “the only public university professor in Florida to remain on leave” for anti-Kirk comments.
She called the ongoing investigation into her situation and continued suspension from campus “humiliating.”
A “scholar, writer, and artist whose work focuses on poetry and comics” according to her faculty page, Polak claimed investigators went beyond her remarks about Kirk’s murder, asking about comments she made about an early-September anti-ICE protest.
Polak had written “Our own administration treated us like enemies today because we don’t want our students (or ourselves!) hauled off into gulags […] I wore my sluttiest professional attire to make sure I looked like a Fox News anchor and yet sneered at all the bootlickers checking me out.”
In mid-December, Polak said investigators had “drafted an apology that they wanted her to sign,” which she refused on the basis that it was “groveling.” She also claimed the apology might insulate the university from a future lawsuit.
FAU faculty Senate President Bill Trapani, a university trustee, said the fact that Polak remains on administrative leave is “mind-boggling,” adding that she is an “exceptional educator” with some of the highest student evaluations at the university.
“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 Friday.
Teachers at other Florida schools have faced discipline over their Charlie Kirk comments, but no public universities have gone to the same lengths as FAU. …
At FAU, suspensions of faculty are rare, Trapani said. The last time he recalled the university suspending a faculty member was in 2013, when communications professor Deandre Poole was placed on leave over an exercise he led that asked students to write “Jesus” on a piece of paper and step on it.
Around the same time as Polak’s suspension, two other FAU professors faced similar discipline.
Art History Professor Karen Leader (pictured) had made myriad retweets of Kirk-assassination remarks, and defended them in an interview saying she just “wanted to start a discourse” about the Kirk’s “whitewashing.”
On the other side of the political coin, Business Professor Rebel Cole had told anti-Kirk folk that “we are going to hunt you down,” “make you radioactive to polite society,” and “make you both unemployed and unemployable.”
After an investigation, in mid-November both were recommended to be reinstated — but with “written guidance about the university’s ‘expectations of civility, integrity, and professionalism.’”
MORE: Florida Atlantic U: It’s OK to ask students to step on Jesus
