This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A wacky professor who held a machete to the throat of a New York Post reporter, generating outrage over her threatening actions, and who has pleaded guilty to harassment and menacing, is at it again. This time Shellyne Rodriguez has led a crowd in New York chanting about their ancestors, who, she said, "dreamed of us, slitting the master's throat."
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And constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, whose newest book, "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage," addresses such behavior, was blunt: "She is the very face of an age of rage."
He explained, "For a person who chased reporters with a machete, it is a curious choice for a speaker against violence. However, Rodríguez is clearly revered by the crowd. The fact that she pleaded guilty to harassment and menacing charges clearly did not reduce her popularity. To the contrary, for some, it may have increased it," he said.
"This was the person that two colleges wanted on their faculties and resisted efforts to fire her, even after trashing a table in an insane diatribe against pro-life advocates. She is the person that the PSC Graduate Center declared was 'justified' in her violence against those peaceful advocates."
The Daily Caller News Foundation reported last year when Rodriguez was handed "therapy" during a plea deal to various charges.
"Shellyne Rodriguez, who was fired from her position as adjunct assistant professor at Hunter College after threatening to 'chop' up a Post reporter with her machete when he knocked on her apartment door, pleaded guilty to two counts of menacing in the second degree, court records showed. As part of the plea deal, Rodriguez's criminal record will be wiped clean if she is not rearrested for a year and attends a minimum of six months of 'behavioral modification therapy,' according to the Post," the DCNF reported.
At the time, Rodriguez wildly projected, "Right wing media organizations are weaponizing and sensationalizing this case to further their agenda, and using me as a prism through which to project their attacks on women, trans people, black people, Latinx people, migrants, and beyond."
She originally gained notoriety for vandalizing a pro-life display on a table set out by students at Hunter College. She verbally abused them because she claimed their speech was "triggering" for her students.
Eventually, she was dismissed from Hunter, later gaining employment at The Cooper Union, from which she also later was dismissed.
Turley explained he previously had commented on "the machete-wielding former Hunter College professor. Rodríguez," explaining she "is back with a large following shown in a video with protesters chanting with her about 'slitting the throats of the masters.'"
He pointed out, "Somewhere between the machete to the neck and chasing the reporters down the street, Hunter College finally decided that Rodríguez had to go," so Rodriguez condemned the school for its capitulation to "racists, white nationalists, and misogynists."
He then cited the video from journalist Andy Ngo, where Rodriguez is leading a mob of pro-Palestinians chanting, "Our ancestors … dreamed of us slitting the master's throat."
Turley noted, "The scene shows a clearly unhinged Rodríguez who is not just supported by these protesters but clearly thrilling them with her rage rhetoric."