Kevin Allred, a self-described "Beyonce Professor," has been fired from Montclair State University in New Jersey before the start of the school year after saying on Twitter that he hopes someone would shoot President Donald Trump. In a now-deleted tweet, Allred said that Trump was a "f-cking joke" and that he hoped someone would "shoot him outright," followed by a shrugging emoji.
Smart tweet. Why'd you delete it? pic.twitter.com/AfdJjWBxNF
— Hello, Friend (@MattsIdeaShop) July 29, 2017
He then followed up that tweet clarifying that wishing someone was dead is not the same as a death threat.
Allred has since locked his Twitter account from public view, but he announced his firing and then slammed "Trump's base" and "Trump trolls" for lashing out and pressuring the university to fire him. Additionally, Allred said that Montclair State had "caved" to conservatives and was "firmly taking a side" against liberal viewpoints like his.
In a somewhat hilarious twist, someone dug up an old tweet where Allred criticized universities for hosting Milo Yiannopoulos and said that his "vitriol" does not fall under free speech.
— Jason (@CounterMoonbat) August 1, 2017
This is not Allred's first brush with controversy. In November, he complained that he had been forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after his tweets following Trump's election made students at Rutgers (where he was employed at the time) feel threatened.
Granted, it's not entirely clear that Allred's tweet was 100 percent the reason why he was fired, and there could be another reason. But to suggest that a state university in New Jersey of all places is somehow a bastion of conservatism is...stretching it.
I don't know if Allred should have been fired for his tweet. While I don't think it was an appropriate thing to say, nor do I think I'd ever go out of my way to take one of his classes (despite the fact that they apparently consist of watching Beyonce music videos, are self graded, and have no homework), he does still have the First Amendment--even if he thinks it doesn't apply to vitriol like what he spewed.