An online petition that seeks to remove the Turning Point USA chapter from the Rutgers University includes the backing of an associate professor of religion, Fox News Digital is reporting.
The Change.org petition launched earlier this week claims in its statement: “The Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) has been continuously promoting hate speech and inciting violence against our community. This disturbing behavior has created a toxic environment that has already led to tragic consequences.”
While Change.org does not list all of its signatories, each petition features a rotating “recent signers” carousel near the top of the page, according to Fox Digital.
Monitoring the page, the news outlet saw that Tia Kolbaba, an associate professor of religion, had signed, supporting the effort to ban the conservative campus group.
Examining her official entry on her Rutgers page, Breitbart News learned that the associate professor’s areas of specialization are “Early Christianity” and “Byzantine Studies,” the latter covering the first-century empire situated between the Islamic Middle East and Catholic Europe.
If the Fox Digital report is accurate, the faculty member’s backing of the petition presents a certain irony in that Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk was a devout Christian.
Kolbaba has many good ratings on the popular Rate My Professors, though a Google search shows that one student wrote on the site, “Nasty woman who hates anything conservative. I felt threatened by her. She wants to shut down free speech.”
Fox Digital published this statement from Rutgers:
Rutgers University is committed to providing a secure environment — to learn, teach, work and research, where all members of our community can share their opinions without fear of intimidation or harassment. Rutgers is committed to upholding the rights of students and faculty to free speech and academic freedom as fundamental to our community.
The statement added, “The university does not comment on specific personnel or student conduct matters.”
Kolbaba did not return Fox Digital’s request for comment.
The petition began circulating online less than a month after authorities charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah with assassinating Kirk with a long-range rifle shot during a campus event at Utah Valley University.
A Turning Point coordinator at Rutgers slammed the online petition this week, calling it “defamatory.”
“The accusations of ‘inciting violence’ and ‘making threats’ are complete lies,” outreach coordinator Ava Kwan told the Fox online news outlet. “The same people claiming we’re suppressing their free speech are actively trying to silence us for speaking the truth. It’s not just ironic, it’s hypocritical and absurd.”
The controversy erupted after Turning Point’s Rutgers chapter started its own petition demanding Rutgers fire professor Mark Bray, whom they call “Dr. Antifa.”
Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, a book that reportedly promotes “militant anti-fascism.”
Bray, according to Fox Digital, is allegedly an Antifa financier, and noted in his book that, “at the very least 50 percent of author proceeds will go to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund which is administered by more than three hundred antifa from eighteen countries.”
Amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on Antifa, Bray reportedly announced this week that he and his wife were moving to Spain. Bray claimed his address was doxed and his life was threatened.
The petition to ban Turning Point USA from campus implies the chapter was responsible for Bray “fearing for the safety of their family due to threats and harassment cultivated by this group.”
Turning Point’s Kwan dismissed that claim.
“Any opinion that challenges their worldview is immediately branded as ‘hate speech,’ a meaningless term weaponized to control dissent and protect their false narrative,” she said. “The petition, Bray’s retreat abroad, and my own doxxing by unhinged Rutgers leftists all tell the same story: they know they’re losing.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
