The union Todd Wolfson leads instructs members ‘at all times be accurate’
The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a union-backed group that aims to “ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good,” falsely claimed that Charlie Kirk’s assassin is a right-wing Christian Republican, an apparent violation of the association’s “statement of principles” which require professors to “at all times be accurate.”
Todd Wolfson, a media studies professor at Rutgers University and AAUP president, wrote that Tyler Robinson, the alleged Kirk killer, was “a disturbed right wing kid” who believed Kirk “was not right wing enough.” Robinson, 21, allegedly shot Kirk while the conservative activist was speaking at Utah Valley University for an event for his campus group Turning Point USA.
Wolfson said Robinson was likely motivated by Nick Fuentes, a far-right pundit who leads the so-called Groyper movement, echoing a baseless theory promoted by numerous liberal pundits and academics. He reposted other statements that called Robinson a “white Christian, Conservative, Republican male with a gun.”
But text messages and statements from Robinson’s family members indicate he embraced leftist politics. Robinson wrote “Hey fascist, catch” on a bullet found in the rifle he allegedly used in the shooting. Robinson’s mother told police that he had recently become more political, aligning himself with leftist politics and voicing support for pro-gay and pro-trans movements. And Robinson wrote to his boyfriend, who is transitioning to a transgender woman, that he “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred.”
Wolfson’s inflammatory remarks seem to undermine AAUP’s landmark statement “on academic freedom and tenure,” which established the tenure system in 1940 to ensure professors “be free from institutional censorship or discipline.”
While the statement called for broad protections for professors’ academic writings and other statements, it said professors must “remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances.”
“Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution,” the statement says.
Wolfson, who was elected AAUP president last October, has not corrected his statements about Robinson. Neither he, Rutgers, nor AAUP responded to requests for comment.
Wolfson referred to the MAGA movement in the wake of Kirk’s death as “fascist,” echoing the language that Robinson etched on a bullet found in the rifle he used in the Kirk murder. Wolfson stated that “Trump is the enemy,” and compared Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels after Miller spoke at Kirk’s memorial service on Sunday.
AAUP, which received $1.8 million from the American Federation of Teachers union last year, has been highly critical of Turning Point USA, which Kirk founded in 2012 to promote conservative principles on high school and college campuses. In 2017, AAUP defended University of Nebraska-Lincoln lecturer Courtney Lawton after she was filmed berating a college student who set up a Turning Point USA recruitment table on the campus.
AAUP, which claims to represent 43,000 college professors, published a “toolkit” for professors on how to respond “if Turning Point USA comes to your campus.” It advises AAUP members to “talk to your administration and make sure administrators are aware of TPUSA’s methods before an incident occurs.”
AAUP has no similar concerns about left-wing groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Hamas organization that has threatened Jewish students and professors at schools across the country. In a report in December, AAUP asserted “there is zero evidence” linking Students for Justice in Palestine to Hamas and that the claim has been stoked by “vehemently pro-Israel faculty.”
AAUP has increasingly embraced anti-Israel causes. Last year, AAUP ended its decades-long policy opposing academic boycotts, drawing concerns from Jewish groups who saw the policy change as an embrace of the anti-Israel BDS movement.
In 2023, AAUP defended former University of Pennsylvania lecturer Dwayne Booth, who published a series of anti-Semitic cartoons that showed Zionists drinking the blood of Palestinians. The group’s Penn chapter said that school administrators had “endangered academic freedom by publicly condemning” Booth’s drawings. The association went to bat for Maura Finkelstein, a Muhlenberg College professor who called to “shame” Zionists. “Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable,” she said.
But AAUP offered no such support for conservative professors accused of making inflammatory statements. According to Greg Lukianoff, the president of the pro-free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, AAUP did not “lift a finger” to defend Amy Wax, a tenured Penn law school professor who was censured for controversial remarks about racial issues. AAUP refused to go to bat for Carole Hooven, an evolutionary biologist forced to resign from Harvard University because she opined that medical professionals should not back away from using the terms “male,” “female,” or “pregnant women.”
