BUZZ
The University of Tennessee System Board of Trustees has approved a tentative settlement to pay a professor fired for her Charlie Kirk comments $1.9 million to settle her wrongful termination and First Amendment lawsuit.
Former Assistant Professor Tamar Shirinian will not be reinstated at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville as part of the deal, Knox News reported, adding the attorney general and Gov. Bill Lee still need to approve the settlement.
Board Chair John Compton, who recused himself from the vote, said that any “continuing litigation would require significant time and attention, and financial resources, and those resources are better directed toward advancing the institution’s mission, vision and values,” according to the news outlet.
As The College Fix previously reported, Shirinian was placed on administrative leave and termination proceedings were launched after posting controversial comments regarding the assassination of Kirk, which went viral.
“The world is better off without him in it,” the professor had stated in part, adding “his kids are better off living in a world without a disgusting psychopath like him and his wife, well, she’s a sick f*** for marrying him so I dont [sic] care about her feelings.”
She apologized after the post, saying it was “insensitive” and “uncharacteristic of me as a person.”
In February, the university officially fired her.
“Your words celebrated a gruesome murder, which horrifically took place on a college campus similar to our own, and then went on to callously demean the grief and loss felt by the widow and young children of the victim while also mocking any grief felt by others who sympathized with the surviving family,” UT Chancellor Donde Plowman said in a Feb. 11 termination letter.
Shirinian’s attorney, Robert Bigelow, said the settlement “will resolve this matter in its entirety.” the UT Daily Beacon reported.
As a professor of anthropology, she taught a variety of classes, including Queer Anthropology, Feminist Anthropology, Decolonization, and Ethnographies of Trauma, her faculty bio states. Her “Scholarly & Creative Works” include “The Gender and Sexuality of Armenia,” “Objects of Struggle: Woman, Environment, Colonialism,” and “A Queer Plea for the End of the Nation.”
