In the aftermath of the September 10 shooting death in Utah of right-wing activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, many right-wing commentators and even elected officials, including president Donald Trump, have responded with increasingly extreme rhetoric, including calls against the “radical Left.” This campaign has included an effort to call out people who have posted on social media about Kirk’s death, and, if possible, get them fired. Art historian Karen Leader, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), in Boca Raton, has been placed on administrative leave, pending an investigation after social media posts concerning Kirk.

University president Adam Hasner announced on September 13 that a faculty member had been placed on leave after comments “regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk.” The South Florida Sun-Sentinel was first to identify Leader, an associate professor of art history and faculty associate in the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as the professor in question. 

None of Leader’s posts reference the killing; rather, they point to Kirk’s statements and positions.

“This is about freedom of speech and freedom of expression and how much it is being crushed,” said Leader in a phone conversation. “Many other people are having their reputations challenged because the Right doesn’t like what we say and they want to erase it from the historical record. They want Kirk to be some kind of saint and to be non-controversial and to make the Left look hysterical.”

A memorial for Charlie Kirk at the headquarters of Turning Point USA, Phoenix, Arizona, September 16, 2025. Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images.

Free speech organizations have rallied to Leader’s defense.

“Public university professors have the First Amendment right to speak as private citizens on matters of public concern,” said Zach Greenberg, faculty legal defense/student association counsel with FIRE (which was founded over two decades ago as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), in an email.

“This includes the right to comment about Charlie Kirk’s assassination on social media. FAU, as a public university bound by the First Amendment, must protect its professors’ free speech rights. The university may not retaliate against professors for their social media posts about Kirk, even if administrators and the general public are offended by the posts. This is because the First Amendment protects political speech that may offend others.”

“Universities have a duty to model how free societies confront speech some may dislike,” said William Johnson, director of PEN Florida, in an emailed statement. “Institutions of higher learning should condemn violence when necessary, but resist the impulse to punish faculty for expression that the law protects. Retaliation erodes trust in higher education and narrows the space for honest discourse, an environment essential to the pursuit of knowledge and the broadening of understanding.”

An FAU spokesperson said via email that the school would not comment on personnel matters.

Leader holds an art history PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, a top program, and has taught at FAU since 2009. In the wake of Kirk’s murder, Leader posted numerous times on X, reposting others’ messages, some of which included video of Kirk or past media coverage of him, often adding the words “This was Charlie Kirk.” 

Among the posts she amplified was video of a grinning Kirk mocking the brutal 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of California Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, calling for a “patriot” to bail out the attacker. Another post linked to an account by journalist and professor Stacey Patton that went viral for explaining the harassment she was subjected to after showing up on a “digital hit list” of leftists published by Turning Point USA. Another post points out that Kirk invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned by Congress about providing buses to Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

Florida Atlantic University. Photo: Shutterstock.

FAU College Democrats, a student organization to which Leader is the faculty advisor, posted a statement condemning Leader’s being placed on leave, noting that her posts did not comment on Kirk’s assassination but rather foregrounded his “undeniable record of racism, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny,” adding, “In the absence of threats, hatred, or harassment, it is unjust and un-American for University leadership and FAU President Adam Hasner to retaliate against faculty for their speech.”

The school’s free expression statement reads in part: “Individuals wishing to express ideas with which others may disagree must be free to do so, without fear of being bullied, threatened or silenced. This does not mean that such ideas should go unchallenged, as that is part of the learning process.”

The action against Leader comes as journalists, professors and others are losing their jobs and being subjected to online harassment for comments about Kirk. Among the most high-profile instances are Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, who says on Substack that she was fired for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns”; and political pundit and consultant Matthew Dowd, with whom MSNBC cut ties after he observed on air that Kirk was guilty of incendiary speech and said that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”

On Monday, the American Association of University Professors posted a statement on Facebook, reading in part: “The AAUP notes with great alarm the rash of recent administrative actions to discipline faculty, staff, and student speech in the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk. We write to remind leaders of colleges and universities of their fundamental duty to protect academic freedom and the absolute necessity to ensure that the freedom to discuss topics of public import without constraint is not curtailed under political pressure.”