Former ASU staffer Ann Atkinson said a faculty protest and her firing following an on-campus event with conservative speakers was an example of “intimidation in the classroom.”
“The Honors College faculty went into attack mode,” Atkinson told host Leyla Gulen on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast. “They didn’t like the views of the speakers, particularly Dennis Prager, Charlie Kirk, and to a lesser extent, Robert Kiyosaki.”
“And so instead of just expressing their views to their dean, they put together a petition, they sent it across the university to coordinate this to other faculty members saying we are mobilizing in protest, Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk are purveyors of hate,” said Atkinson. “So it was really intimidation in the classroom.”
She said the faculty also told their students not to attend because it was “an event for white supremacists.”
This full episode is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
Atkinson is the former executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett, the Honors College at ASU. She was fired from her position after hosting the “Health, Wealth and Happiness” in February that featured Prager, Kirk, Kiyosaki, and other speakers.
Tom Lewis, the funder of the Lewis Center, pulled his funding for the center shortly after Atkinson’s firing.
Lewis recently criticized ASU President Michael Crow after Crow defend faculty members following an ASU report that cleared the faculty of free speech violations in the case of the Lewis Center.
"It is both shocking and laughable that President Crow would defend his radical faculty who are the same ones who harassed and hurled insults and ugly comments at Prager and Kirk,” reported PHX Reporter.
In response to the ASU report clearing itself of violations, Ariz. State Sen. Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) said it was a case of the "fox guarding the henhouse” and announced that the State Senate will hold a hearing next month to further investigate free speech violations at the university.
Alerts Sign-up