“Fuck Charlie Kirk. He was a hate-spreading Nazi.”
Is that really a fire-able statement? The South Dakota Board of Regents thinks so. USD art professor Michael Hook said something like that (we don’t have the exact quote, since the media namby-pamb around saying he used an “expletive”, and since the professor’s social media post has since been deleted, but let’s work with that line, since it is a proper, moral response to any hate-spreading Nazi), after the hate-spreading Nazi was sacrificed at the altar of the Second Amendment, and the Board of Regents swiftly booted him for a political expression no less robust and impassioned than Charlie Kirk’s minions and patrons use:
Hook, formerly listed as a professor of Art at USD, was placed on administrative leave over a Facebook post about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The now-deleted post included an expletive and referred to Kirk as a “hate-spreading Nazi.”
The South Dakota Board of Regents said they intend to terminate Hook based on SDBOR policy 4.4.8, which covers “unprofessional conduct.”
“The board and its administrators possess the inherent power to discipline employees, including faculty members, who fail to adhere to expectations for competent, productive, effective and ethical teaching, research or service, who violate laws, rules or policies implicated in university operations, or who engage in misconduct, neglect of duty, insubordination or otherwise unacceptable conduct,” the policy states [Gracie Terrall, “USD Professor’s Firing Sparks First Amendment Debate,” KELO-TV, updated 2025.09.16].
Unprofessional conduct? So when Trump dropped an f-bomb at the White House on camera this summer, he should have been terminated?
If case law means anything more than the whims of six bitter robed Trump toadies anymore, the Board of Regents is in trouble:
In a social media post on Friday, USD political science professor Ed Gerrish pointed to Supreme Court case Pickering v. Board of Education as precedent on free speech for educators. In the 1968 case, a teacher was fired for writing to a local newspaper, criticizing BOE policies. He was later reinstated after the Supreme Court ruled on the case.
“A teacher’s exercise of his right to speak on issues of public importance may not furnish the basis for his dismissal from public employment,” the court opinion reads.
In his post, Gerrish said, “When your employer is the government, then the government has a special duty to protect free speech when not in your place of employment” [Terrall, 2025.09.16].
Evidently, the Board of Regents is capitulating to the fascist regime, defending not just the dictator but the dictator’s dead friends from any public criticism. Their firing of Professor Hook is just another brick in the scary wall of thoughtcrime that the current dictator is building to erase any expression that threatens its vision of an unchallengeable white manly America.
Hate speech and hate crimes now exist and are punishable, under this new regime. MAGA, White, Christian, Nationalists, and Conservatives have the protected classs. Those are the classes in need of and worthy of protection: not only protection to voice those beliefs (that’s their First Amendment right), but also the protection to not have opposition (the removal of opposition’s First Amendment right).
Establishment of State Media: check.
Linguistically dehumanizing the opposition and dissidents: check.
Banning books and silencing the opposition platforms: check.
Occupying dissident cities with military force: check.
Gathering up the guns: unnecessary — disciples already over-armed.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . .
Jimmie Kimmel got the ax at CBS fr the same thing. I think lawsuits against the Board and CBS are in order for free speech violations. Either or both entities could have simply stated that the opinions of those who work for them do not reflect the opinions of the whole.
If anyone should be removed it s the convicted felon/adjudicated rapist in the WH.
On a lighter note, Stephen Colbert got and Emmy and the felon did not. Goodbye Emmys. We hardly knew ye.
Obvious some Republicans are using Kirk’s murder to advance their warped agenda.
They’re not even hiding it well. The immediate coordination was obvious. Couldn’t wait 5 seconds to start blaming ‘the left’, even before anyone had a clue who the shooter was.
Republicans, do you really want the 1st amendment trashed? Think a little bit.
sx123, in MAGA think, the answer is YES! Remove all protections and guard rails so that your cult leader has ABSOLUTE power.
Yeah, it was not a great statement following a horrible death like that, but people are allowed to have an opinion and to voice it. I’m not sure what the Regents think they are doing, but legally they shouldn’t be able to get away with firing him.
Hook’s statement was, to be honest about it, along the lines that I was thinking immediately upon hearing the news. Kirk was a man with hate in his heart, and he expressed those sentiments loudly and often not caring diddly squat about social niceties on campuses across the land. One thing I liked about Kirk is that he did seem to believe in the First Amendment. In honor of Kirk, the Regents should grow up.
You all talk about these Regents fellows, and the fine ladies like Mrs. Johnson, and Ms. Roberts, like they were some sort of shadow kings or something. An anonymous cadre of illuminati who puppet society from shadowy places. This poor professor fellow with the foul mouth aside, where is the indignancy over Mr. Kimmel, he of The Man Show fame? grudznick used to watch The Man Show, and it was good. Especially the Juggy Dance Squad. The point is, society seems to be trying quash down on people who laugh about this Mr. Kirk fellow’s murder. grudznick never heard Kirk speak and he probably didn’t deserve to be shot. This professor fellow may not have deserved to be fired, but golly the shadow Regents seem to be able to do whatever they want and don’t answer to blogs or anyone. And ABC or Disney can fire Mr. Kimmel as well. So ultimately, it was a choice of words by the professor and Mr. Kimmel, and it was the choice of their employer to sack them.
grudznick does miss the girls on trampolines.
Side note, how does one get be be one of these regental fellows? It seems a swell job.
As far as I understand, you can be fired for what you say, you can be sued for what
you say, but you can’t be put in jail for what you say. I think that’s what free speech
means. What you say can have good or bad consequences.
Why does a teacher or a coder or even a registered nurse need a liberal arts education especially when the English Language Holy Bible and The Turner Diaries are all you’re allowed to read? South Dakota Democrats need to run on a corporate income tax, ending video lootery, reducing the number of South Dakota counties to 25 and turning Dakota State and/or Northern State University into community colleges.
Edwin’s point is well taken. Those implications are no less terrifying: that government institutions (public education) and near-monolpoy media outlets now have a purity test. The only speech they will tolerate is confirmation of the greatness of the Dear Leader and his ilk. This feels more like blacklisting. Are we one step away from loyalty pledges to the Dear Leader as a precondition of employment in the US?
For organizations that have been lambasted as “liberal institutions” in the past, I certainly don’t see liberalism at play here.
Hook’s dismissal also shows SD’s right to work mentality in that the there are no protections for labor — but that’s another discussion.
Jail is a bit too narrow a standard for determining whether the state is suppressing free speech.
How many Americans have said the same thing about someone who deserved it. In the upsidedown GOP world, they are guilty of all of it and when called out they squirm. Seems like “their own self”* version of DEI. Of “woke”.
* grudz insult intended
My hair dresser once annoyingly said: “Tell me how you really feel”. So much for intimacy :)
A perfect time to look to invest in military hardware manufacturing in Europe. While at it, make sure you have your passport current. As maw used to say, be prudent.
It’s wrong to speak ill of an assassinated civil rights speaker!!?
“MLK was awful,” Kirk said. “He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”
MLK is not great because he was assassinated. He is great because of the content and purpose of his advocacy; that is where the parallel to Kirk ends — the moment the bullet takes his life.
if we look back into the history of the n word we see a multitude of people who disagreed with the regime that were put into camps: intellectuals, academics, artists, any trouble makers of any sort. This person they are firing is in a position to teach adults. When we take away free speech in the arts, be it literature, fine arts, theatre and so on (which have always had a discourse on politics) is our next step to write children’s books and nursery rimes to record our current history? We are in very dangerous times!!!