UALR Fires Law Professor Felicia Branch Over Social Media Posts Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

Law Professor Fired Over Controversial Social Media Posts

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has officially dismissed one of its law professors, Felicia Branch, after a spate of publicized posts on her social media profiles. The posts glorified the latest killing of Charlie Kirk, a leading conservative political activist. The chancellor of the university declared that the remarks of the professor had damaged the credibility of her students and other employees such that she could not continue to work.

Professor Branch, the former Assistant Clinical Education Professor and the Director of the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, had just become a faculty member at the William H. Bowen School of Law in July. On October 13, she was dismissed following a month long investigation. This enquiry was occasioned by a deluge of complaints made by students, former students and high-profile elected officials who were furious by her internet utterances.

The case has sparked a raging controversy on the limits of free speech concerning the actions of the state employees and the professionalism required of the teaching personnel. Although Branch argued that she was acting as a private citizen, the university eventually ruled that her actions were disruptive to the law school functions and performance. This move to fire her has elicited both praise and criticism, and it has brought forward the strong political schisms in the state.

The scandal started only several days following the shooting and murder of Charlie Kirk in a civic gathering in Utah on September 10. Professor Branch went to her open Facebook page to share her emotions in response to his death. Her posts that were soon screenshotted and distributed were perceived as glorifying the act of violence. This had an instant backlash which placed a lot of pressure on the university to do something.

The Posts Celebrating an Activist’s Assassination

The statements of Professor Branch in social media were clear cut. She called Charlie Kirk an evil man and said that she was not going to withhold any celebrating that an evil man had died at the approach he preferred to adopt. This particular wording was an explicit allusion to the fact that Kirk himself is a gun rights activist and has had some hot words to say on that subject.

She particularly quoted previous statements of Kirk that had implied that certain deaths involving guns were a price worth taking to defend the Second Amendment. Branch in one of her posts wrote, after all – a couple of deaths a year because of gun violence is the cost we have to pay to have our other right. His. Words.” This was construed as her projecting his bloody murder as a way of rogue justice.

Those scandalous posts did not stop. Professor Branch in a separate post included a meme that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross. The message on the photograph was, “People mourning Charlie Kirk. This post, which compared the people mourning the death of the activist to the members of a hate group, only aggravated the outcry of people against her.

The university chancellor used these particular posts as the centre of the issue in her dismissal letter. In his first recommendation on firing, the law school dean Colin Crawford said her posts were a celebration of the death of Charlie Kirk and said she hoped he was troubled in hell. He also mentioned her vulgar acronym that suggested that Kirk had discovered something by being shot, which she referred to as rebalancing the world.

Swift Political and Public Backlash

The response to the posts by Professor Branch was swift and harsh, especially the highest political figures in Arkansas. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders openly urged Branch to be terminated, describing her remarks as vile, disgusting and unacceptable. The governor demanded that the professor should be terminated at once, and this established a political imperative to the people of a university of higher learning.

Lieutenant Governor Leslie Rutledge and Attorney General Tim Griffin also shared the same sentiments with the governor. Griffin described the posts as appalling and said that although academic freedom was liberal, it did not mandate that an employer should tolerate an employee flaunting political murder. These top-down denunciations changed what would have been an in-house university issue to a nationwide political conflagration.

The chancellor received a wave of complaints at the university, which he termed as a torrent. These were made by not only the general population, but by the students of the law school, the parents of the law school students, as well as influential alumni. The negative feedback of the people was overwhelming, which left the law school in a crisis which made it question its reputation and their capacity to operate properly.

This gargantuan pressure in terms of the outside and inside put the university administration in a challenging situation. Branch was first suspended without pay by the UALR chancellor, Christina Drale. Drale even stated that she supports freedom of expression in a public statement but stated that she was against violent rhetoric in the most vehement language, and that the posts made by Branch did not represent the values of the university.

The University’s Final Decision to Terminate

After the first suspension, the university has gone through an internal review. Colin Crawford, the dean of the law school, officially advised on September 24 that Professor Branch be dismissed on cause. The case was however directed to the faculty appeals council of the university who looked into the case and made another conclusion.

Professor Branch was not supposed to be dismissed, as the faculty appeals council recommended. Rather the council recommended that she be given a mere warning and given the freedom to continue her employment. This suggestion placed the faculty body squarely against the leadership of the university and the high political pressure exerted by the state government.

After all, the bottom line was with UALR Chancellor Christina Drale. Drale reversed the decision of the faculty council on October 13 and formally dismissed Felicia Branch. The chancellor in her dismissal letter considered Branch argument that she was only expressing herself as a private citizen but she dismissed it as a valid defense in this case.