A University of Tennessee professor will receive $1.9 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the school of violating her constitutional rights after officials sought to discipline her over social media posts criticizing conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Knox News reported Monday that the University of Tennessee System Board of Trustees approved a $1.9 million settlement for former professor Tamar Shirinian after she called Kirk, who was assassinated Sept. 10 during his “American Comeback Tour” at Utah Valley University, a “disgusting psychopath.”
Shirinian was put on administrative leave following a social media post where she had said in part, “The world is better off without him in it,” and added, “His kids are better off living in a world without a disgusting psychopath like him and his wife, well, she’s a sick f— for marrying him so I dont [sic] care about her feelings.”
She later apologized and said it was “insensitive” and “uncharacteristic of me as a person.”
Shirinian was fired on Feb. 11. She will not be reinstated, Knox News reported.
In the February letter to Shirinian informing her that she had been fired, UT Chancellor Donde Plowman wrote, “Your words celebrated a gruesome murder, which horrifically took place on a college campus similar to our own, and then went on to callously demean the grief and loss felt by the widow and young children of the victim while also mocking any grief felt by others who sympathized with the surviving family.”
“My client is pleased that the parties reached a resolution,” Robb Bigelow, Shirinian’s attorney, said in an email to Knox News. “Litigation is always difficult, and we’re grateful to everyone on both sides who worked diligently to bring this matter to a close.
“We believe the resolution reflects the seriousness of the issues while allowing everyone to move forward,” Bigelow said. “We wish the University nothing but success in the future.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for the University of Tennessee System said, “We do not have a comment outside of what was publicly said in the board meeting yesterday.” [Fox News 6-30-26]
Everywhere you turn, the bad guys are winning. It’s not because evil is stronger than goodness. It’s because the good is afraid to assert itself with the full force of its superiority. The good are silent, and humble — while the nasty, the horrible, the irrational and the willfully stupid carry the day with their big mouths and broken souls — though only by default. If the good guys would call these people — these woke, leftist psychopaths, these parasites, grifters and nihilists — what they are, and treat them accordingly, they would all go back under their rocks and the good and the beautiful could thrive again. Not in this era.