A college professor who was fired after video emerged of her apparently holding a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter who’d knocked on her apartment door accused her former employer of bending to “racists, white nationalists, and misogynists.” In a statement to ARTnews, Shellyne Rodriguez said she’d been “inundated with vile and hateful emails, texts, and voicemails” after she was filmed confronting anti-abortion students at Hunter College. She said she was ordered by the school to apologize, and did so, only for the altercation with the Post reporter to lead to her dismissal. Rodriguez did not directly address the machete incident, but said that the torrent of abuse had created “reasonable fear that they would show up at my home to cause me physical harm, as has happened with so many other women who have similarly had their personal info exposed as a form of politically motivated harassment.” She framed her situation as “one part of a broader political struggle taking place across the country,” saying that right-wing media had weaponized her case “as a prism through which to project their attacks on women, trans people, black people, Latinx people, migrants, and beyond.”
