An adjunct instructor at Rutgers University at New Brunswick whose contract was not renewed after he made remarks about the Second Amendment and flag burning said on Tuesday he had lost a job at another university for writing on Twitter that he wished someone would shoot President Trump.
The instructor, Kevin Allred, confirmed that he tweeted on Friday: “This is all a sham. I wish someone would just shoot him outright.” He later deleted the message after his friends cautioned him about it.
“I also further explained what I meant and that wasn’t meant to be a threat and shouldn’t be taken as such,” he told The Chronicle by email.
Mr. Allred, who said he had been scheduled to teach two classes this fall at Montclair State University, in New Jersey, told The Chronicle he had received insults and threats through his social-media accounts since the original posting. Many right-leaning news outlets also leapt to cover Mr. Allred’s remarks, including The Blaze, The Washington Times, and Fox News Insider.
He said he emailed Montclair State on Monday to explain the situation. He received a response from a dean that said “they were no longer offering me employment,” he told The Chronicle.
The university appeared to distance itself from Mr. Allred in a statement provided to The Chronicle by Erika Bleiberg, a spokeswoman.
“Kevin Allred has never been an employee of Montclair State University, is not one at this time, and the university has not made any formal offer of employment to him,” the statement said.
But emails between Mr. Allred and the university indicate that he had taken steps to teach at the university, including providing it with syllabi, a picture, and a biography.
“I was under every impression that I was hired,” he told The Chronicle. “I completed all the new-hire paperwork, they communicated the courses I was supposed to be teaching this fall, and even talked about teaching in spring and bringing my Beyoncé class to their program.”
Ms. Bleiberg didn’t immediately respond to follow-up questions about Mr. Allred’s statement.
Mr. Allred, an instructor in women’s and gender studies, also made headlines in November, after posting a series of messages on Twitter about gun control. In that case, he underwent a psychological evaluation, and Rutgers later cut ties with him.
A Rutgers spokesman said in a statement at the time that the university wouldn’t comment on the specifics of a personnel matter, but “as a general rule, however, when the university is presented with allegations of threats to public safety, we take those allegations very seriously and have an obligation to investigate.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an advocacy group focused on free speech in higher education, said on Tuesday that it was looking into the situation involving Mr. Allred and Montclair State.
“We are concerned by the potential threat to freedom of expression posed by the incident and have launched an investigation of the matter,” the organization wrote.
Clarification (8/2/2017, 11:20 a.m.): This post originally stated that Kevin Allred was fired from Rutgers University at New Brunswick. His contract was not renewed. The post has been updated to reflect this clarification.
