Austin Peay State University (APSU) in Clarksville, Tennessee, has reinstated professor Darren Michael, who was fired over his social media post in response to the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The school will also reportedly pay the reinstated professor $500,000.
Darren Michael, APSU associate professor of acting and directing, is back on the job — and half a million dollars richer as part of a settlement agreement related to his termination — after being fired over comments he made about Kirk’s assassination, according to a report by WKRN News 2.
In addition to being paid $500,000, the public university will reimburse the professor’s therapeutic counseling services, according to a copy of the settlement agreement and settlement authorization obtained by the outlet.
On September 10, just hours after Kirk’s assassination, Michael took to social media to downplay the most consequential political assassination since Martin Luther King Jr., sharing a headline that had taken Kirk’s words about gun violence out of context — a common tactic being used by assassin apologists celebrating the Turning Point USA founder’s murder at the time.
As a result, the professor’s post went viral on social media and as a result, and caught the attention of Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
Later that day, APSU released a statement announcing it had fired an employee for comments that were “insensitive, disrespectful, and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death,” according to a report by the Tennessean.
“Such actions do not align with Austin Peay’s commitment to mutual respect and human dignity,” APSU President Mike Licari said at the time in the statement about Michael’s termination.
“The university deems these actions unacceptable and has terminated the faculty member,” Licari added. Despite this, the university ended up reinstating him last month, WKRN reported.
“APSU agrees to issue a statement acknowledging regret for not following the tenure termination process in connection with the Dispute,” the school’s compromise and settlement agreement reads, in part.
The headline Michael shared hours after the conservative icon and free speech martyr’s assassination read, “Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment.”
As Breitbart News reported, of the seemingly countless hours of footage of Kirk expressing his views online, leftists managed to cherry-pick two to three quotes from him — all grossly taken out of context — then circulated the remarks on social media in an attempt to justify political assassination.
One out-of-context quote shared en masse by leftists championing Kirk’s assassination featured his comments on gun rights at an event in 2023, in which the TPUSA founder expressed that the “cost” of having “the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights” is, “unfortunately,” some “gun deaths every single year.”
Assassin apologists, however, only share a small snippet of Kirk’s monologue from the 2023 event, preventing the public from being able to zoom out for more context, at which point they would find that the Turning Point USA founder was not dismissing gun deaths via his remarks.
Elsewhere in his monologue, Kirk — who was known for laying out hard truths in an attempt to make his audiences see issues more clearly and objectively — urged his audience not to fantasize about an unrealistic “utopian” society but, rather, to “have an honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence.”
He pointed out that society as a whole appears to have decided that the number of auto fatalities each year is worth it so that people can travel from one place to another at a faster rate.
“Driving comes with a price — 50,000 die on the road every year,” Kirk said in 2023, during the same monologue. “That’s a price. You get rid of driving, you’d have 50,000 less auto fatalities.”
Given that the annual number of auto fatalities is significantly higher than gun homicides, it is reasonable for one to wonder why the public never seems to criticize those who support the freedom to drive, unlike the scrutiny faced by those who defend gun rights.
Notably, leftists often misrepresent a pro-Second Amendment stance as support for gun violence in an effort to advance their political agenda.
But Kirk had articulated a principled point, that the right to bear arms is a fundamental check against tyranny and protects against greater threats, such as government overreach and the loss of personal autonomy through the eroding of other unalienable rights.
The Turning Point USA founder’s tough but honest view, that no right comes without unfortunate trade-offs, was meant to provoke thought about the cost of freedom, not to trivialize the loss of life — as leftists are so quick to do.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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