CNU admin promotes anti-Trump teach-in with faculty listserv

A top-level administrator at Christopher Newport University happily promoted a day of anti-Trump teach-ins using school resources, encouraging professors to attend in an email to the faculty listserv.

Campus Reform obtained a copy of the email in which Professor Roberta Rosenberg solicits the help of Vice Provost Quentin Kidd, asking him to “please send an email to faculty encouraging them to participate with their students in” the teach-in scheduled for January 28.

Rosenberg seemingly persuaded Kidd by suggesting that the teach-in will provide students with a “positive, education, [sic] nonpartisan experience,” despite the event’s undisguised disdain for President Trump.

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Kidd proceeded to distribute an advertisement for the teach-in to his school’s faculty listserv, noting that he would be personally attending and hopes to see his colleagues there.

“Please see the note from Dr. Roberta Rosenberg regarding the CNU Teach-In: ‘Key Issues Facing the American Public in the Trump Presidency: A Community Conversation’ this Saturday,” he wrote. “I hope you can attend and look forward to seeing you there.”

On the agenda for the teach-in, a copy of which was obtained by Campus Reform, are several events dealing with various issues in the context of the “Trump Era,” such as “discrimination in the Trump era” and the “impact of social protest movements in the Trump era.”

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Notably, Kidd’s use of a university listserv to promote such an event could potentially violate his own school’s student code of conduct, which prohibits the use of university resources, or “university systems,” for “commercial or for partisan political purposes.”

CNU Director of External Affairs Tom Kramer, however, denied that Kidd’s email constitutes such a violation, asserting that “the event is consistent with principles of academic freedom and free speech that govern student and faculty activity,” and noting that “the event is free, open to the public, and anyone of any viewpoint is welcome to attend.”

Campus Reform contacted Kidd for additional comment on the matter, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

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