Yahoo Movies Furman professor under investigation for possible ties to white nationalist groups
A Furman University professor has been placed on leave for attending the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where protesters gathered to oppose the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
The private Greenville university announced in a letter to campus stakeholders last week that it had launched an investigation after learning a faculty member had attended the rally — which was organized and attended by white supremacists — because the employee may have ties to white nationalist groups.
The 2017 Charlottesville rally, where armed protesters waved Nazi and Confederate battle flags and chanted racist and antisemitic slogans, turned deadly when a white supremacist protester deliberately drove his vehicle into a sea of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring 35 others.
Furman President Elizabeth Davis said in the letter that after learning about the faculty member’s attendance at the 2017 rally, she immediately opened an investigation and barred him from teaching or coming to campus.
“The views of the organizers of the Unite the Right rally do not reflect the values that I hold, and they are not the values that we have committed to in our vision, mission and values statements,” Davis wrote. “They are harmful to members of our community, diminish a sense of belonging, and inhibit each individual’s opportunity to thrive.”
While the university declined to identify the faculty member or share any additional information about its investigation, he was identified online by an anti-fascist group as Christopher Healy. The State Media Co. reached out to Healy, a longtime computer science professor, who directed a reporter to a free speech group that he said was handling his media inquiries and could elucidate his “perspectives regarding Charlottesville.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, a nonpartisan advocacy organization that defends free expression for people of all views, issued a statement from Healy Thursday.
In the statement, Healy, a 51-year-old Pickens resident, said he’d simply been exercising his rights as an American citizen to oppose the removal of the Lee statue.
“This episode has taught me that there are real enemies of free speech,” he said in the statement. “In the USA, we are not guilty by association, but I feel like a butterfly being accused of starting a hurricane.”
FIRE on Wednesday sent Furman a letter outlining its concerns about the university’s treatment of Healy and demanded it reinstate him.
“While some may be deeply offended by Healy’s attendance at that protest, Furman promises its community freedom of expression and cannot backtrack based on the exercise of that freedom,” the organization said in its letter. “Because there is no legitimate basis on which Furman may sanction Healy, it must immediately end its investigation and reinstate him to his teaching duties.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
