The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is cutting ties with an instructor involved in an altercation earlier this year with a conservative student on campus.
The Omaha World-Herald reports that an English lecturer accused of harassing a member of the university’s Turning Point USA chapter will not have her contract renewed.
From the report:
NU President Hank Bounds said the graduate student-lecturer who called a conservative student a “neo-fascist” for recruiting for Turning Point USA would no longer teach at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The World-Herald further learned that the lecturer, Courtney Lawton, will be released from employment completely when her contract expires at the end of the school year.
Lawton was part of a group of protesters that confronted Kaitlyn Mullen, a campus coordinator and member of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln chapter of Turning Point USA, as she was recruiting members on campus earlier this semester.
Video from the protest showed Lawton yelling “Neo-fascist Becky right here. Wants to destroy public schools, public universities, hates DACA kids” and a photo showed English professor Amanda Gailey holding a sign reading “Turning Point: please put me on your watchlist,” referring to the organization’s Professor Watchlist.
A campus employee also showed up amid the altercation and told Mullen she could not hand out her materials advancing free market ideals in that particular location, calling it “propaganda” and telling her to move to the university’s designated free speech area. That effectively shut down the group’s recruiting efforts and Mullen was escorted by police back to her apartment.
The incident received wide-ranging news coverage as well as the ire of some Nebraska state legislators. The World-Herald reports that public records show employees at the public university wanted to push back against the negative coverage stemming from the altercation involving Lawton:
NU also released emails as a result of public records requests by Conservative Review and other organizations. Some emails indicated UNL public relations staffers were eager to spin the story and “have a surrogate(s) submit op-eds” to the Omaha World-Herald and Lincoln Journal Star as “aggressive counter-measures” to coverage of the matter.
One of those staffers, UNL news director Steve Smith, was no longer employed as of Friday.
“I was not asked by anyone to leave the university,” Smith said. “I did, however, decide to resign.”
Teresa Paulsen, chief communication and marketing officer at the university, has also resigned her position, according the newspaper.
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