The professor who brandished a machete against a New York Post reporter has been sacked from her job at Cooper Union over anti-Israel posts, that paper reported on Sunday. Shellyne Rodriguez, an artist and community organizer, told her students on Jan. 23, “Cooper union has fired me because of a social media post I made about ‘Zionists’ ... effective immediately.” It’s not clear which post she is referring to, but Rodriguez has been outspoken in her support for Palestinians and has encouraged participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “The role of artists in society is to hold up a mirror and SPEAK TRUTH,” the professor wrote in her email, which was reposted by Cooper Union’s Students for Justice in Palestine. “This is fascism. Y’all are learning about it in real time.” SJP immediately condemned the art school’s move as “an intense escalation of McCarthyist repression” and drafted an email to its dean demanding Rodriguez’s reinstatement. Some of her colleagues, however, said her behavior went too far, veering into blatant antisemitism which threatened the school’s Jewish community.
