(FiveNation.com)- Just the News reported that the lawyer representing history professors in a lawsuit accusing the Kern Community College District of First Amendment retaliation is demanding an apology for “intimidating” language against his clients by a trustee.
Tenured professors Matthew Garrett and Erin Miller filed a lawsuit against Kern’s general counsel Christopher Hine and then-Chancellor Thomas Burke in 2020 accusing them of creating a false basis to fire them for “unprofessional conduct.”
The professors later amended their lawsuit to include Kern’s new chancellor and Vice President Billie Jo Rice whom Garrett accused of sharing confidential files with his detractors while attempting to stop his promotion.
Garrett and Miller are leaders of the faculty-run think tank the Renegade Institute for Liberty which challenges the community college’s social justice orthodoxy.
The Renegade Institute is so loathed by leftwing activists both on and off campus that one member of the board of trustees suggested treating its leaders like how he treats his doomed livestock.
During the public comments portion of a December 13 meeting, speakers accused the Renegade Institute of racism and harassment at Bakersfield College. Afterward, John Corkins, the vice president of the Kern Community College District Board of Trustees, told those in attendance that there is about 5 percent of the people at Bakersfield that “we have to continue to cull.”
Corkins, who owns an agribusiness, said he has a similar problem in his livestock operation, adding “that’s why we put a rope on some of ‘em and take ‘em to the slaughterhouse.” He said it bothers him “when the bad actors are paid staff and they’re faculty” because it is “hard to get rid of” them.
Arthur Willner, the attorney representing Garrett and Miller, told Just the News that his clients were “deeply concerned” about Corkin’s comments.
Calling Corkin’s remarks “disgusting and unprofessional,” Willner said that “at best” his language was “intimidating” and “at worst” Corkin “threatened violence against my clients” and the other faculty from the Renegade Institute “whose only ‘crime’ is to disagree with some of the prevailing campus political orthodoxy.”
Read the full report at Just the News HERE.
