Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor, is moving to Europe after receiving death threats. Photo / Rutgers University
Faced with a stream of death threats, a Rutgers University history professor who teaches about anti-fascism said he is moving out of the United States just a month into the autumn semester.
Mark Bray, who has taught at Rutgers since 2019, told his students this week that his courses would move online immediately.
“Since my family and I do not feel safe in our home at the moment, we are moving for the year to Europe,” Bray said in an email to students.
“Truly I am so bummed about not being able to spend time with you all in the classroom.”
Several far-right activists and other social media users homed in on Bray in late September, after he was quoted in news stories about US President Donald Trump’s executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organisation”.
Bray described antifa – a far-left decentralised global movement whose proponents oppose fascism – to the Washington Post at the time as “a kind of coalition politics of all kinds of radicals” and “not a group”.
Bray has written four books on anarchism and antifa. One of them, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, is a history of post-war anti-fascism.
One online activist called Bray a “domestic terrorist professor”, and another shared the address of his home in New Jersey.
The campus’ chapter of the conservative student group Turning Point USA then launched a petition last Friday to demand that the university fire him, referencing Trump’s executive order and claiming Bray is a risk to their safety.
Bray has received three death threats since September 26, including one threatening to kill him in front of his students, according to screenshots of emails reviewed by the Washington Post.
The threats and the publication of his address compelled Bray to move his family to Spain for the remainder of the academic year, he said.
Rutgers said yesterday that it was aware of the petition to fire Bray and his message to his students.
“We are gathering more information about this evolving situation,” the university said in a statement.
Threats to academics over their research and teachings – particularly on the topics of race, ethnicity and gender – are becoming more common, said Zach Greenberg, legal counsel with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The uptick risks eroding the country’s core principles of freedom of speech and expression in higher education, he said.
“Many of these allegations are just thinly veiled opposition to the professors’ teaching and pedagogy - the content of their class,” Greenberg said.
“It’s detrimental to academic freedom and free speech. We have these rights to teach these things that may be controversial.”
Bray said the harassment by members of the far-right exemplifies how the Trump Administration has fostered an environment that squashes research it doesn’t agree with – an environment that risks the health of the country’s higher education system.
The Trump Administration has sought to bring universities and colleges across the US into compliance with its ideological priorities.
Trump’s executive order on antifa followed the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, as the Administration vowed to dismantle institutions on the left that it claims promote violence and terrorism.
“There’s been a concerted attack on universities,” Bray said.
“And I feel like this is a facet of that, to make it so that professors who conduct research on protest movements don’t feel safe sharing their research or teaching about topics that the Administration doesn’t like.”
Other professors at institutions in the US have left the country, Bray said, and he added that he knows some who are searching for jobs in Canada or England.
When asked about the threats Bray received and his concerns about the Administration’s actions affecting universities, the White House claimed that “examples of Democrat violence are plentiful”, referencing several recent incidents, such as the fatal shooting of Kirk, which remains under investigation.
“The Trump Administration is focused on stopping this violence - Democrats are fuelling it,” the statement read.
Turning Point USA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bray’s academic research and commentary on anti-fascism has drawn public ire in recent years. After the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Bray – then a lecturer at Dartmouth College – told NBC News that he believes violence is sometimes justified.
Bray faced blowback from across the political spectrum, and the then-Dartmouth president condemned Bray in a statement, saying he was “supporting violent protest”. More than 100 Dartmouth faculty members rallied around Bray.
Since joining the Rutgers history department, Bray has taught courses spanning terrorism, human rights, modern Germany, and communism.
Bray said he hopes to return to the US and the classroom in the near future. Until then, his classes will be prerecorded, and students will view the video lessons at their convenience.
“I’m hopeful about returning, and I’m hopeful – and I say this as a history professor – that someday we will look back on this as a cautionary tale about authoritarianism,” Bray said.
Greenberg, with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said it is imperative that universities uphold their commitments to academic freedom.
“When you get this kind of pressure on institutions and professors, it does a disservice to the students, the professors and the university itself,” he said.
“Universities have to step up and protect their professors and address any threats facing their employees, and protect their freedom to teach, research, debate ideas, and resist pressure from outside groups to cave to the mob.”
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.