A professor who disrupted a Turning Point USA meeting allegedly used class time to organize her protest, The College Fix has learned.
The viral video shows a professor, identified by witnesses as Nicole Rousseau, entering the mid-November kickoff meeting of a new TPUSA club at Purdue University Northwest. She begins to complain about “fascism” and says the center-right group wants to control what people are allowed to say.
“You have a situation here where you want to go into classrooms and you want to tell faculty that they’re not allowed to speak the truth about the history of this country,” Rousseau said.
However, this was no spontaneous protest by a single professor.
“She was strategizing on how to interrupt our group…in her class time,” Vice President Hailey Vanderhye told The Fix during an in-person interview. The group learned of this via a student in Rousseau’s class. The sociology professor also brought a group of students with her to protest the organizational meeting.
The professor also reportedly called Turning Point USA a terrorist group. She wanted to “take down Turning Point and remove us from campus,” President Abby Najacht told The Fix during an on-campus interview Dec. 10.
Rousseau initially ignored the group’s advisor who tried to deescalate the situation when she first entered. Only after the advisor brought in an administrator did she leave.
The sociology professor did not respond to two emails and a voicemail in the past week that asked for comment on the situation. The Fix also asked her to address allegations she used class time to disrupt the meeting.
Her background is in critical race theory, “historical womanist theory,” and “feminist theory,” according to her curriculum vitae.
She has a history of using her faculty position to try to shut down the free speech rights of other groups. “Served as faculty advisor of student-led protest,” the professor lists on her curriculum vitae. “George Mason University student sit-in protesting anti-gay rhetoric in campus newspaper.”
She has also previously lectured to the board of directors for Planned Parenthood in Northeast Ohio.
Listed media rep Kale Wilk did not respond to an emailed request for comment Friday on what the school has done to address the situation, if the university encourages or discourages professors from using class time to organize disruptions of student organizations, and for any additional context. The Fix followed up with an email and voicemail on Monday, but Wilk has yet to respond.
The school previously criticized the disruption.
Hellbound and Down 