Just when it seemed like infamous Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar might’ve learned her lesson and stopped making controversial posts on social media, she did it again.
Jarrar, a tenured English professor who previously boasted about her job security at Fresno State among many things, demanded in a Twitter post Tuesday that white editors resign.
Jarrar’s Twitter account is on a private setting, but Campusreform.org apparently was able to take a screen shot of her post.
“At some point, all of us in the literary community must DEMAND that white editors resign,” wrote Jarrar, according to Campus Reform. “It’s time to STEP DOWN and hand over the positions of power.
“We don’t have to wait for them to *** up. The fact that they hold these positions is **** up enough.”
According to the Washington Times, Jarrar reportedly was responding to the controversy surrounding a poem written by Anderson Carlson-Wee and published in The Nation.
After backlash about the poem, The Nation’s poetry editors apologized and called it a “serious mistake” to have it published in the magazine.
The poem later was deemed by the editors as culturally insensitive and “ableist,” which is discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities.
Jarrar already had been facing backlash for her comments in April about former first lady Barbara Bush and the Bush family.
Within an hour of Bush’s death, Jarrar went on a Twitter rant and said she wanted to dance on the former first lady’s grave.
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“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal,” Jarrar wrote then. “**** outta here with your nice words.”
In a separate tweet, she added: “I’m happy the witch is dead. Can’t wait for the rest of their family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million Iraqis have.”
Back then, Jarrar’s Twitter account was open for the public to read.
She also taunted those who said she should be fired and stated she was tenured, perhaps implying she couldn’t be fired, and that she made more than $100,000 a year.
Fresno State quickly tried to distance the university from the professor’s comments, pointing out that Jarrar made her comments as a private citizen whose opinions were protected speech.
But the university still faced its own backlash, especially after Fresno State president Joseph Castro stated Jarrar would not be fired.
Castro did describe Jarrar’s comments as “insensitive, inappropriate and an embarrassment to the university.”
Nonetheless, many on social media and even some locally continued to express anger at the university and encourage others to stop supporting Fresno State, particularly since Jarrar was not fired.
Jarrar had been on leave from her teaching job during the spring semester.
Fresno State’s class directory, however, shows Jarrar is set to teach again for the upcoming fall semester, including an Arab-American Literature class.
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