Tennessee Professor Being Targeted By Colleagues With Flyers Calling Turning Point USA a ‘Racist Hate Group’

A Tennessee Tech professor is being targeted by his colleagues for being a faculty advisor for the Turning Point USA chapter on campus.

Faculty members Julia Gruber and Andrew Smith are allegedly spreading flyers featuring a photo of professor Andrew Donadio and branding him a “racist” and Turning Point USA a “hate group.”

“I’m not sure why they would decide to attack the students and myself, and create an environment that’s hostile to communication, that’s threatening and intimidating,” Donadio told “Fox & Friends” on Saturday, noting that his colleagues who posted the fliers are “experts in English” and “knew exactly what they were doing.”

Gruber, is an associate professor of German and Smith is an English instructor, according to a report from Fox News.

“Professor Donadio and Turning Point USA. You are on our list,” the flier reads. “Your hate [and] hypocrisy are not welcome at Tennessee Tech!”

“This racist college professor thought it would be a great idea to help start a Tennessee Tech chapter for this national hate group, where racist students can unite to harass, threaten, intimidate and terrorize persons of color, feminists, liberals and the like, especially their teachers.”

The flyer also bizarrely claims that “hate speech is not free speech,” contradicting the First Amendment.

Tennessee Tech’s Turning Point chapter president Gittle Sciolis told Fox News, “It’s been a crazy ride since the beginning.” She added that “it’s very hard hearing those words” come from “people who are supposed to be your mentors, especially at the university you love so much.” Additionally, she defended Donadio, saying that he is “such a supportive university and faculty adviser.”

The university told Fox that no disciplinary action has been taken against the professors who are spreading the libelous flyers “at this time.”

Gruber and Smith reportedly made the flyers in response to Donadio cheering on a local school board who opted not to rename the Algood Middle School Redskins mascot during a meeting.

“I found Mr. Donadio’s behavior at the school board meeting disrespectful, unprofessional, given his position as county commissioner, and hostile, chilling, actually, considering that my Native American friend, his wife and two minor children, were in the room as well,” Gruber told Newsweek.

He added that he made the flyers  “as an act of rhetorical defiance” and “of purposeful parody, to hold a mirror to the hateful tactics of Turning Point.”

 

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