Furman professor under investigation for possible ties to white nationalist groups
A Furman University professor has been placed on leave for attending the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where protesters gathered to oppose the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
The private Greenville university announced in a letter to campus stakeholders last week that it had launched an investigation after learning a faculty member had attended the rally — which was organized and attended by white supremacists — because the employee may have ties to white nationalist groups.
The 2017 Charlottesville rally, where armed protesters waved Nazi and Confederate battle flags and chanted racist and antisemitic slogans, turned deadly when a white supremacist protester deliberately drove his vehicle into a sea of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring 35 others.
Furman President Elizabeth Davis said in the letter that after learning about the faculty member’s attendance at the 2017 rally, she immediately opened an investigation and barred him from teaching or coming to campus.
“The views of the organizers of the Unite the Right rally do not reflect the values that I hold, and they are not the values that we have committed to in our vision, mission and values statements,” Davis wrote. “They are harmful to members of our community, diminish a sense of belonging, and inhibit each individual’s opportunity to thrive.”
While the university declined to identify the faculty member or share any additional information about its investigation, he was identified online by an anti-fascist group as Christopher Healy.
The State Media Co. reached out to Healy, a longtime computer science professor, who directed a reporter to a free speech group he said was handling his media requests and could share his “perspectives regarding Charlottesville.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, a nonpartisan advocacy organization that defends free expression for people of all views, issued a statement from Healy Thursday.
In the statement, Healy, a 51-year-old Pickens resident, said he’d simply been exercising his rights as an American citizen to oppose the removal of the Lee statue.
“This episode has taught me that there are real enemies of free speech,” he said in the statement. “In the USA, we are not guilty by association, but I feel like a butterfly being accused of starting a hurricane.”
FIRE on Wednesday sent Furman a letter outlining its concerns about the university’s treatment of Healy and demanded it reinstate him.
“While some may be deeply offended by Healy’s attendance at that protest, Furman promises its community freedom of expression and cannot backtrack based on the exercise of that freedom,” the organization said in its letter. “Because there is no legitimate basis on which Furman may sanction Healy, it must immediately end its investigation and reinstate him to his teaching duties.”
What prompted Furman’s investigation?
The university had not been aware of Healy’s attendance at the Unite the Right rally until last Friday, when the group Sunlight Anti-Fascist Action outed him on Twitter.
The anti-fascist group, which describes its mission as “exposing Nazis, racists and fascists wherever they hide,” unspooled a lengthy Twitter thread about Healy that included photos of him at the rally juxtaposed with other photos of him available online.
In the rally photos, Healy is seen wearing an olive Polo hat, checkered blue shirt, olive slacks and brown boat shoes. He stands amid a crowd of protesters, some of whom are brandishing Confederate flags or wearing white supremacist iconography, but nothing about his appearance identifies him as a supporter of that ideology.
Sunlight Anti-Fascist Action, which said it identified Healy through an anonymous tip, tagged Furman in a number of its posts. The group also published a lengthy blog post explaining its rationale for outing Healy, whose personal information it said appeared on the leaked list of a known neo-Nazi group.
Healy did not immediately respond to emailed questions about his alleged ties to white nationalist groups and a FIRE spokeswoman said the organization was not representing Healy and could not speak on his behalf.
According to Healy’s Furman bio, which remains online, he has taught in the university’s computer science department since 1999. He served for three years as the Furman chapter president of Phi Beta Kappa, a selective academic honor society, and for 10 years as the chapter advisor of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, a computer science honor society.
On his Furman page, Healy lays out his teaching philosophy and lessons he says he’s learned in life. Among the lessons Healy cites are helping people who are ignored or pushed aside by society, thinking critically and having the courage to do the right thing.
“Don’t always believe something just because someone says so,” he writes.
A page for Healy on the teacher rating website ratemyprofessors.com contains 33 student reviews of his teaching over the course of 20 years. Opinions of Healy’s teaching methods are split, but none of the reviews mention anything about the professor discriminating against students or sharing his own political ideologies in class.
FIRE demands professor’s reinstatement
Sabrina Conza, FIRE’s program officer for campus rights, sent Furman’s president a letter Wednesday night demanding Healy’s reinstatement.
The photos of Healy at the rally show him “peaceably protesting,” she wrote, and no one had alleged he participated in any violent or unlawful actions that day.
“The fact that Healy attended the rally cannot alone be a basis for punishing him,” Conza wrote.
She continued that even if Furman ultimately decided against issuing any formal discipline, their investigation violated the university’s commitment to free expression outlined in the faculty handbook because it dissuades others from exercising their First Amendment rights in the future.
FIRE has requested a response from the university by Oct. 12.
Furman spokesman Clinton Colmenares reiterated Thursday that Healy would not teach or be welcome on campus as the university gathers information and determines next steps.
“We’re taking every measure to make sure there are limited disruptions for students, faculty and staff, and that our community comes through this even stronger than we were before,” he said.
Furman examines its racist history
Furman, which was founded by a slave owner and didn’t desegregate until 1965, has in recent years taken steps to examine and distance itself from its racist past.
In 2017, the university formed a task force on slavery and justice in response to an editorial in the student newspaper that explored the school’s racist beginnings.
Later that year, the task force launched its Seeking Abraham project, named for a slave owned by Furman’s first president, which sought to investigate contributions slaves had made to the university. Furman faculty actually traveled to a conference at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, two months after the Unite the Right rally, to present their initial findings.
The task force published its final report in July 2018.
In the ensuing years, Furman has removed the name of the founder’s son, James C. Furman, a slave owner and the university’s first president, from one of its buildings and has erected a statue of Joseph Vaughn, its first Black student, in the middle of campus. The university celebrates Vaughn’s legacy on Jan. 29 each year.
This past year, Furman adopted a strategic plan for diversity and is in the process of hiring a chief diversity officer, Colmenares said. The university also has hired an associate dean to help focus on faculty diversity and inclusion, and made several other key diversity hires, he said.
In wake of the news that one of its professors had attended a rally organized by white supremacists, campus leaders have met to discuss organizing events where students and faculty members can gather to process the situation.
“This is something that Furman takes very seriously,” Colmenares said.
