Tufts Postpones Appearance by Anthony Scaramucci After Lawsuit Threat

An event at Tufts University featuring a former White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, has been postponed after he threatened to sue a student newspaper over the work of an opinion writer.

Mr. Scaramucci has objected to two opinion articles in The Tufts Daily, an independent student newspaper, in which Camilo Caballero, a graduate student, criticized Mr. Scaramucci’s character and his role on an advisory board for the Massachusetts university’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where Mr. Caballero’s master’s program is housed.

Mr. Scaramucci, a Tufts alumnus, is known for his infamously short stint in the White House. President Trump removed him from his role after the communications director launched into a profanity-laced tirade about other White House staff members in a recorded call with a reporter.

Among other criticisms, Mr. Caballero wrote that Mr. Scaramucci had “sold his soul in contradiction to his own purported beliefs for a seat in that White House,” and that he “cares about gaining attention and nothing more,” in op-ed pieces dated November 6 and November 13.

Mr. Caballero also applauded a petition that had circulated calling for the ouster of the former Trump-administration official from the advisory board.

Mr. Scaramucci contacted Mr. Caballero in a series of emails beginning on November 16. In them he threatened the student with legal action. “Just a bit of caution you have suggested publicly several times that I have engaged in ‘unethical’ behavior,” Mr. Scaramucci wrote in one message obtained by The Chronicle. “You will now have to back that up with facts … So either back it up or you will hear from my lawyer.”

“Why not write back or call me?” Mr. Scaramucci wrote in another email. “Aren’t you in a school of diplomacy? Nothing to be afraid of. Give me a call.”

After Mr. Caballero declined to reply, a letter dated November 21 was sent from a lawyer retained by Mr. Scaramucci who demanded that the above quotes, along with other parts of the opinion articles, be retracted and an apology issued. The letter was sent to both the newspaper and Mr. Caballero himself.

Mr. Caballero wrote another article dated November 27 — after both the emails and the official letter were received — that suggested replacements for Mr. Scaramucci on the advisory board.

Flying Too Close?

Mr. Scaramucci was scheduled to appear at a Fletcher School event on Monday. University officials said in a written statement that they had hoped to host a discussion about Mr. Scaramucci’s “background, experience, and the petition calling for his removal from the Fletcher School Board of Advisors.”

But “in light of recent developments,” the statement said, “we are postponing the event until these pending legal matters are resolved.”

Mr. Caballero said he had retained legal counsel from the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU and would not be answering questions from the news media.

A university spokesman said the event had been canceled in a “collaborative decision made by university and school leaders.”

The Fletcher School dean, James Stavridis, a retired admiral, shared his thoughts on working in the Trump administration in Time magazine earlier this month, saying that he had told students to avoid any job in the “immediate orbit” of President Trump.

“Don’t fly too close to the sun of the president himself,” Admiral Stavridis wrote, “because the wax holding your wings together, like those of Icarus in the Greek legend, may melt all too quickly.”