Three days after Tamar Shirinian posted a Facebook comment about the death of conservative activist and Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk, the University of Tennessee initiated expedited termination proceedings and placed the anthropology professor on administrative leave with pay.
"As faculty members, even when we speak privately, our speech has a broader impact," UT Knoxville Chancellor Donde Plowman wrote in a letter to Shirinian notifying her of her termination. "By celebrating violence and murder in your social media posts, you have violated the university's expectations for the people teaching our students."
The letter followed a barrage of messages to UT administrators, many of which came from a group of Kirk's followers who had launched a concerted effort in the days following his death to seek out and punish employees of colleges and universities across the United States who they felt threatened their agenda.
Emails and phone calls flooded UT offices calling on Plowman and UT System President Randy Boyd to fire Shirinian for her comment.
"I thought they might want to reach out to talk to me," Shirinian said. "But no, that's not what happened at all."
Instead, Shirinian was removed from the classroom and discouraged from visiting campus. The impact was immediate – and enduring. WUOT News obtained and reviewed hundreds of pages of emails and texts from administrators to understand how university officials arrived at their decision to terminate Shirinian.
UT Knoxville's chancellor and provost, along with the system's president, declined to comment for this story citing pending litigation.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that at least 26 publicly-funded colleges and universities have fired faculty and staff for their criticism of the conservative activist, who was shot and killed by a lone gunman while speaking to a crowd of students on the campus of Utah Valley University in September.
Austin Peay University, Middle Tennessee State University and the University of Kentucky are among the campuses that have fired at least 12 faculty and staff across Appalachia. At MTSU, a dean is suing after she was fired for posting about her lack of "sympathy" for Kirk after U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn called for her removal. In Lexington, a staffer at UK lost his job for saying he read Kirk's obituary "with great satisfaction."
Following these firings people on campuses across Appalachia have begun to self-censor in an effort to please university administrators and the politicians who control public funds.
"To have people being targeted for their political ideas … to be terminated for their political ideas … is terrible," Shirinian said. "It's terrifying."
The firings have set a new precedent for speech protections — one Shirinian is trying to reverse. She filed a federal lawsuit against UT leadership in October accusing them of violating her First Amendment rights.
"I want to fight for my First Amendment rights, and I want to do that for everybody's rights," Shirnian said. "When a person fights for their rights, they do it not just for them. They do it universally, for everybody."
Behind the screens
In 1988, as the Lebanese Civil War raged through Beirut, three-year-old Tamar Shirinian fled the ongoing violence in her home country for the United States. Her father, a refugee of Soviet Armenia, had gone before them to prepare a home in a steadily-growing Armenian community in Los Angeles.
Her family's lived experiences have lingered with her. As a refugee, Shirinian says she remains deeply disturbed by ongoing violence in the Middle East, including Israel's war against Hamas.
"If I were to kind of think about who I am and where I came from, it was from the context of war and in a family that carried the historical memory of genocide," Shirinian said.
On the night Shirinian made her comment about Kirk, she sat up unable to sleep, scrolling through her Facebook feed. She swiped through posts displaying graphic images and videos of children screaming and dying on the streets of Gaza.
Mixed in with these were posts honoring the legacy of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It had been two days since he had been assassinated and propelled to the center of the national conversation.
Social media platforms were flooded with posts about Kirk's death and legacy.
"I will forever be thankful for Charlie and his boldness to share the truth," read one.
"He was wise beyond his years," read another. "He was a devout Christian and a champion of the gospel, and he wasn't ashamed of that!"
As Shirinian scrolled, she kept stumbling on videos of the conservative commentator making hateful comments about minority groups. She stopped on one widespread video of Kirk speaking at a church in 2023.
"I used to say that if you as a gay person would go to Gaza they'd throw you off of tall buildings," Kirk said with a grin on his face. "Now they don't have any tall buildings left … Is that too soon? Maybe you shouldn't kill jews, stupid muslims."
To Shirinian, Kirk used his platform to speak out against everything she stood for. She's an immigrant. She identifies as queer. She has three Black stepchildren. And she was a university professor teaching anthropology at the University of Tennessee.
As all of this swirled through her mind, Shirinian swiped to a friend's private post which criticized Kirk's followers.
"And I made probably the stupidest comment I've ever made," she said.
In her comment, she said the world was better off without Charlie Kirk in it. She also attacked Erika Kirk, his wife, for marrying him.
"There was no thought in it," Shirinian said. "But I was just in such an emotional state that I didn't use thought. I used pure emotion and grief and anger. And I said something really stupid."
Two days later her comment had spread across the internet. Administrators at UT received dozens of emails from people claiming to be alums, students or parents all urging the university to take action.
"We would like to see Ms. Shirinian held accountable for her vile words and terminated," one person said in an email to Shirinian's department head.
Another said she was previously considering UT for her son, but ultimately decided against it. "I will not send my son to a school with such horrible representation, such as Tamar Shirinian," she wrote to the UT System president.
As the messages piled up, Donde Plowman, UT Knoxville's Chancellor, expressed disbelief in a text message to Provost John Zomchick.
"I'm holding out hope that it is fake and she didn't actually do that," Plowman wrote.
Later that night, somebody on X tagged Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican of Tennessee's 2nd congressional district, in a post about Shirinian's Facebook comment.
"Tim Burchett, have you seen this," the post asked. "Pure evil."
Two minutes later, Burchett responded in a repost.
"On it," he said.
On it. https://t.co/Mwgu2e7Wv2
— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) September 14, 2025
Burchett has not responded to multiple requests for comment on what he meant by that post, or whether he had any conversations with UT leadership leading up to Shirinian's suspension.
The next morning, UT System President Randy Boyd referred to the situation as a "firestorm," according to emails obtained by WUOT News. He sent a statement prepared for the public to the UT Board of Trustees for review, and told them they were getting ready to take action.
"We are discussing faculty hand book, board policy and legal ramifications," Boyd wrote. "I'd welcome a call if you would like to discuss more."
Boyd went on to post a statement on social media condemning Shirinian's comment as "reprehensible" and said it would not be ignored.
"UT Knoxville is actively investigating the matter and will take decisive action to ensure it is addressed with the full weight and attention it deserves," he wrote on Facebook.
A few hours later, Shirinian received a letter from Plowman placing her on administrative leave pending expedited termination proceedings. She accused Shirinian of being unfit for teaching, and suggested that her comment "increases the risk of violence on our campus."
Shirinian says it changed her life. But she wasn't the first, or the last, university professor in Appalachia to be punished for their speech.
'This was really a purge'
The day of Kirk's assassination, two professors at East Tennessee State University publicly shared their opinions about his death on social media. Andrew Hermann commented on one person's post about Kirk, "he reaped what he sowed." Russ Brown, a professor of biomedical science, posted a scathing comment under a local news article on Facebook, writing that Kirk was "one of the most verbally destructive and vile" of all Republicans.
"I do not advocate or support violence, but I also think that this is a net positive for our failing republic," Brown wrote of Kirk's death.
One day later, ETSU announced they were placing both Hermann and Brown on administrative leave. They were later forced to resign.
"Condoning or calling for violence has no place within ETSU's campus community," the university said in a statement. "Celebrating murder is abhorrent and unequivocally wrong … Our hearts are with Mr. Kirk's family and loved ones as they continue to grieve this unimaginable tragedy."
ETSU President Brian Noland declined to comment on personnel matters.
Faculty say the university's actions have had a chilling effect on campus speech.
One tenured professor in ETSU's College of Arts and Sciences says she and other colleagues feel they can't speak up in support of Brown or Hermann. She didn't want to reveal her identity for this story in fear of retaliation for her speech.
"The reason we didn't openly speak out is people felt like they too could come under attack," she said. "And these are folks who might be single parents. They are not earning huge incomes. They do not want to risk their financial security."
Instead, faculty and staff met off-campus in a private meeting to try to talk through some of their feelings and process the event. The messaging from ETSU was that Hermann and Brown were being uncivil and calling for violence, but to the professor the implication was that those who express opinions that do not align with those in power will be punished.
"This was really a purge," she said. "This was an attempt to use this occasion to purge people who were seen as liberal."
Tony DeLucia is a longtime ETSU faculty member. He's been a professor in the university's surgery research department since 1977, and is a close friend of Russ Brown. He says Brown is a talented teacher and gifted researcher who happens to have strong opinions about politics. He doesn't think that should get anybody who works at a public institution fired.
"That could happen to any of us in academia – or really in about any profession – if you speak up," DeLucia said. "If we can't have that freedom of expression and freedom of influence then it's going to be very easily taken away from us."
DeLucia thinks of his First Amendment right as a muscle. It can be exercised, and thereby strengthened over time. Or it can be neglected, which causes it to wither away.
"And if you can't exercise it, it's going to atrophy," he said.
Some faculty, staff and students on campuses across Tennessee have already begun to limit their exercise of free speech. Dave Strickler is a PhD student and graduate teaching assistant at UT. He's also a presbyterian minister. He used to post on social media to provide people with his perspective as a religious leader on current events.
"When Dr. Shirinian was fired, I deactivated my Facebook account immediately – like that very day – because I couldn't guarantee that, no matter how tactful I would be, that my statements wouldn't be misconstrued," Strickler said. "The culture makes you feel like you can't say things, because if you do you'll get fired. And so you self regulate – you self-surveil – and that's what's happening right now."
Jessica Westerhold is an assistant professor of classics in UT's College of Arts and Sciences. She says she doesn't use social media very much, but talk has spread among her department about self-censorship.
"Colleagues have told me that they have self-censored in their classrooms," Westerhold said. "They have self-censored on social media."
At ETSU, posters have appeared in hallways informing people of their First Amendment rights alongside hotline numbers for the counseling center and police department.
And student media are having a harder time getting faculty to talk to them about even mundane topics since the firings. Patrick Busch is the news editor for UT's student newspaper, The Daily Beacon.
"Predominantly our experience is that people decline and that people are afraid to speak," Busch said. "Legally and constitutionally, we all have the strongest protections for speech in the world. But does that really matter if people are afraid to use it?"
Questions linger about rights
In 1915 over a dozen faculty were rapidly dismissed from the University of Utah, the University of Colorado and the University of Pennsylvania for expressing pro-union ideas. This rash of firings drove the American Association of University Professors, founded that very same year, to draft its first principles on academic freedom.
These would be revised multiple times throughout the decades, and today stand as the model for free speech rights on college campuses.
"When [college and university professors] speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline," the principles affirm. "The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition."
This language has long been incorporated into University of Tennessee Board of Trustees policy as well, something the AAUP noted in a letter sent to Plowman on October 7 urging her to reinstate Tamar Shirinian.
The university's seeming defiance of this policy has bewildered many faculty, including Paul Gellert, a professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences.
"I find it pretty troubling that on such an important case the leadership of the university is not following their own policies," Gellert said.
Gellert also serves as the treasurer for UT's chapter of the AAUP, which organized a panel of three professors to speak about academic freedom and free speech rights on October 22. In a full auditorium in the law building, questions were fielded from faculty worried about their freedom of speech on campus.
One of the panelists was William Mercer, a teaching professor of law who specializes in U.S. legal and constitutional history. He was asked what he expects a court to do with Shirinian's case.
"I don't know," Mercer concluded. "[There is] a bit of uncertainty."
That's because First Amendment rights have never been applied uniformly in the U.S., according to Mercer.
It wasn't until a landmark Supreme Court case in 1925 that the First Amendment was applied to state governments. And clear protections weren't affirmed by the court for employees of public institutions until 1968.
"Are we perhaps at another inflection point," Mercer asked. "I think that's a legitimate question."
Pushing back
Despite an overall atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, some faculty have stood up in defiance of UT's decision to rapidly terminate Shirinian. Plowman, UT Knoxville's chancellor, has been accused of unilaterally taking control of the situation and defying policy in order to quickly handle a growing crisis.
Others accuse UT administrators of enforcing a 'double standard' when compared to a similar case.
In 2016, when Black Lives Matter protestors closed a portion of Interstate 277 in Charlotte, North Carolina, University of Tennessee Distinguished Professor of Law Glenn Reynolds tweeted, "run them down," in response. His post angered many people on campus, but the university under different leadership chose not to take any action, citing the First Amendment.
In an attempt to allay some of these concerns, Plowman appeared alongside Provost John Zomchick at a September 22 meeting of the UT Faculty Senate.
"Took a beating with the faculty senate today," Plowman wrote in text messages to Boyd. "Crowded room, lots of jeering and sustained applause for each speaker. Not sure I helped the cause. One yells, 'who made you the [arbiter] for what's civility?' That kind of tone."
Afterwards, the UT Knoxville chapter of United Campus Workers Southeast drew up a petition they began distributing online calling for Plowman to reinstate Shirinian and commit to upholding the principles of the First Amendment. It received over 1,300 signatures and was delivered to Plowman's desk in a dramatic march to her office on November 12.
Shirinian wasn't the first, or the last, to be punished for her speech in the wake of Kirk's death. But she is one of the few to challenge what has happened to her.
"I would say the core value of America is free speech," Shirinian said. "You really are free to say what you think and express yourself, especially politically around matters of public concern. And it is really scary that that is being denigrated now."
It could take years for her case to be decided. In the meantime, she's asked for a temporary restraining order against UT to get her job back and restore the status quo on a campus that finds itself at a crossroads.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky and NPR.
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