(Headline USA) Hunter College confirmed on Tuesday that it had severed its relationship with anti-life art adjunct Shellyne Rodriguez after the Marxist instructor first violently assailed a group of students exercising their free-speech rights and later threatened a New York Post reporter with a machete.
“Hunter College strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez and has taken immediate action,” school spokesman Vince Dimiceli told the Post.
“Rodriguez has been relieved of her duties at Hunter College effective immediately, and will not be returning to teach at the school.”
Original story below:
Pro-Abortion NYC College Prof. Wields Machete at Reporter
(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) The college professor who dropped F-bombs in a viral rant against pro-life students on campus reportedly threatened a New York Post reporter with a machete when he attempted to interview her at her home.
Part of the encounter on Tuesday morning was caught on video in which Hunter College adjunct professor Shellyne Rodriguez appears to tell Post scribe Reuven Fenton to “get the f*** away from my door” and holds the machete to his throat.
Another person at the scene in the New York City borough of the Bronx, perhaps the accompanying Post photographer, can be heard on the video saying “let’s get out of here. You can’t do that.”
According to the Post, the “unhinged” professor moments earlier said, from behind her closed door, “Get the f*** away from my door, or I’m gonna chop you up with this machete!”
In addition, the news outlet reported that Rodriguez — while still allegedly brandishing the blade — followed the reporter and photographer out of the apartment building after they immediately left the premises.
She reportedly continued to shout more expletives at them and “briefly chased The Post’s photographer down the street to his car before coming back to kick the reporter in the shins. She finally retreated into her building just moments later.”
For personal privacy reasons, as a general principle, anyone has the right tell the media to get lost and may have good reason to do so. Wielding a weapon in a threatening manner is, however, next level.
The Post article did not indicate if law enforcement would become involved in the teacher’s full-throated response, as it were.
Manhattan-based Hunter College, which is part of the City University of New York system, is already investigating the art teacher for vandalizing the pro-life information table and cursing out the students who were manning it.
A Hunter College spokesman initially told the Post that the public institution was “outraged” over the new footage and that “We will take swift and appropriate action.”
In an update to the story, the same spokesman informed the Post that “Hunter College strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez and has taken immediate action. Rodriguez has been relieved of her duties at Hunter College effective immediately, and will not be returning to teach at the school.”
Rodriguez’s bio said that she is “an artist, educator, writer, and community organizer based in the Bronx. Her practice utilizes text, drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation.”
Rodriguez is listed as an adjunct assistant professor on the Hunter College Art and Art History Department studio art faculty webpage as of Fall 2022.
Although the particular employment status in this instance may be different, an adjunct in academia usually means a part-time instructor on a semester-to-semester contract.
In analyzing the first incident, influential George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote that “It is obvious that the [pro-life] display is not just triggering for Rodríguez’s students given the professor’s unhinged response. It is all part of an anti-free speech movement that seeks to treat speech as harmful. Once this foundation is laid, any speech can then be curtailed or denied for the protection of others.”
The constitutional scholar and self-described liberal added that “The problem is that, while this conduct may be allowed or even encouraged at private colleges, Hunter College is a public college and it is subject to the First Amendment.”
