In Knoxville, Tennessee, a University of Tennessee professor has initiated legal action against the institution, claiming her First Amendment rights were breached after she faced suspension over remarks regarding conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s reported assassination. Dr. Tamar Shirinian, who previously taught anthropology, is challenging the university, its Chancellor Donde Plowman, System President Randy Boyd, and Charles Nobel, a faculty fellow at the Haslam College of Business, in her lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

The lawsuit, brought by Shirinian, seeks compensation for lost wages, emotional distress, and punitive damages, although the exact amount remains unspecified. The controversy began when Shirinian was placed on leave with a pending termination following her comments about Kirk. The lawsuit provides detailed context and verbatim quotes of her remarks.

Shirinian’s contentious comments were made on her personal Facebook page in response to a friend’s post about unfriending those who supported Kirk after his death. She remarked that “the world is better off without him” and suggested his children “are better off living in a world without a disgusting psychopath like him.” Shirinian emphasized that her Facebook profile did not associate her with her role at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

In her defense, Shirinian penned an apology letter, explaining her stance against Kirk’s rhetoric. She noted her identity as an Armenian woman and descendant of genocide survivors, expressing that Kirk’s comments, particularly those mocking war victims in Gaza, were deeply offensive. Additionally, she found his views on race, diversity, education, and the LGBTQ+ community distressing and inaccurate, given her personal connections as an LGBTQ+ member and stepmother to three Black children.

The day following her comment, Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett publicly criticized Shirinian’s remarks on Facebook, labeling them as “classless, almost demonic attacks.” He asserted that individuals in higher education making such statements “need to be gone, absolutely, 100%.” Burchett further argued that those opposing Kirk should never have been hired and identified the leadership of educational institutions as a fundamental issue.

The day after Shirinian’s comment, Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett posted on Facebook saying that people who worked in higher education and made “classless, almost demonic attacks” toward Kirk “need to be gone, absolutely, 100%,” the lawsuit said. The filing added that Burchett said anyone who spoke out against Kirk and his rhetoric should “never had been hired,” and claimed that the “people in charge” at higher education institutions are “the real problem.”

The lawsuit continued to explain that Burchett received a message on X from someone who was forwarding Shirinian’s Facebook comment, and Burchett publicly responded: “On it.” The screenshots were also sent to others, which Shirinian said included Tennessee Representative Jason Zachary and Boyd. The lawsuit pointed out that while Burchett and Zachary have never spoken out about President Donald Trump’s endorsement of violence, Burchett felt called to action because of a comment on a private Facebook page.

After discussing Burchett’s comments on social media, Shirinian alleged that Plowman did not actually believe Shirinian endorsed campus shootings and should have known her comments were protected by the first amendment. However, because Plowman and the university were receiving pressure from Republican politicians and lawmakers to retaliate against Shirinian for speaking negatively about Kirk, Shirinian said she believes Plowman acted in a manner of self-preservation and concern for her own potential punishment and terminated Shirinian.

Shirinian also noted public comments by Boyd and Nobel that either directly or indirectly suggested that she advocated for violence.

In response to the university’s decision to terminate Shirinian, which made national news, Shirinian said she received a significant amount of hate mail, including statements like “Please go back to your country of origin,” and other explicative-filled comments. Shirinian previously shared that she had also received death threats and that her information had been doxed.

The lawsuit also pointed out apparent hypocrisy and inconsistency of how rules have been applied at the university. Some of the examples of Shirinian provided were the:

• The university allowing the Traditionalist Workers Party, a neo-Nazi white nationalist group, to plan a lecture series on campus in 2018,
• The university allowing a “White Nationalism: Fact or Fiction” event in 2019. The person who rented the space for the event reportedly drew national attention previously for his slogan “Make America White Again” billboards.
• The university’s determination in 2016 that a professor was exercising “his First Amendment rights” when he responded “Run them down” to a tweet from a news station discussing protestors blocking traffic on I-277, which came after a police officer shot Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old African American man in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The lawsuit pointed out that the University of Tennessee’s faculty handbook includes a “Policy Affirming Principles of Free Speech for Students and Faculty,” which states that the university must be committed to maintaining a marketplace of ideas for all faculty and students “in which the free exchange of ideas is not to be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University’s community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, indecent, disagreeable, conservative, liberal, traditional, radical, or wrongheaded.”