Lisa Durden has made a career talking about pop culture and politics, but even she was taken aback by the furor that followed her appearance on Fox News in June, when she defended a blacks-only Memorial Day celebration.

“You white people are angry because you couldn’t use your white privilege card to get invited,” she said during a heated exchange with the host Tucker Carlson.

The clip was shared widely online, and Durden was bombarded with complaints, hate mail and even death threats. Within two days of the appearance, Essex County College suspended Durden from her teaching job. Two weeks later, she was fired.

Her experience isn't unique. Professors are increasingly being policed and punished for the opinions they express — even outside the classroom on their own time — in a trend fueled by a tense political climate and a Wild West landscape on social media that is easily given to outrage. Free-speech advocates say the backlash is coming from both ends of the political spectrum, and that colleges and universities are overreacting and sometimes breaking the law when they punish employees for political speech.

At least five professors in New Jersey have faced such controversies in the past year — two of whom lost their jobs; a third has been suspended. Besides Durden, they include a professor prominent in the "alt-right" movement who said Hitler would be viewed as a “great European leader” in the future, another who insulted President Donald Trump during a commencement speech, one who posted anti-Jewish conspiracy theories online, and yet another who wished on Twitter that someone “would just shoot” the president.

“We’ve absolutely seen a dramatic uptick in these types of cases recently in the past six months,” said Ari Cohn, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonpartisan, anti-censorship organization. “I think a lot of it has been a manifestation of political tensions in the country following last year’s election. It’s been the subject matter of a lot of the speech that professors are targeted for.”

The response from schools has worsened the situation, he said.

“Frankly, I think one of the reasons why this trend has continued and exhibited an upturn is because colleges and universities are caving in instead of defending free-speech rights,” Cohn said.

Durden blames the political climate under the Trump administration for her predicament.

“I am one of the most egregious cases,” said Durden, who is now running as the Green Party candidate for lieutenant governor in New Jersey. "I’m an example that was made with Essex College. They’re sending the message that firing Lisa Durden is going to be what you get if you don’t stay in your place.”

Colleges fear 'negative impact'

Within days, video of Durden's appearance on Fox News was shared thousands of times online by viewers and by right-wing media outlets who accused her of being bigoted. Some viewers joined a Facebook page calling for her dismissal, including many who used racial slurs and threats.

Durden, a television and radio host and commentator, didn’t claim to be speaking for Essex County College and didn’t identify herself as a professor when she went on Fox.

Still, the college's president, Anthony Munroe, said he decided to fire her because he was inundated with complaints from people concerned about the “negative impact” that her comments would have on the campus, and because he believes that “racism cannot be fought with more racism.”

“The College affirms its right to select employees who represent the institution appropriately and are aligned with our mission,” Munroe said in a statement about the controversy.

Durden worries that the controversy and Munroe's comments have hurt her professional reputation. She had taught just one semester at Essex County College, but Durden, a producer and content creator for documentaries and television shows, said she has received no response to any job applications in recent months.

Another controversy flared last month after video surfaced of Jason Reza Jorjani, a professor of science, technology and philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, at a convention of a white nationalist organization headed by Richard Spencer in November.

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Jorjani, a founder of the AltRight Corporation, the business arm of the white-nationalist group, was secretly filmed having a conversation in which he envisioned a future with concentration camps and war, where Adolf Hitler is on currency and is seen, like Napoleon, “as a great European leader.”

“It’s going to end with the expulsion of the majority of migrants, including citizens, who are of Muslim descent, generally speaking. That’s how it’s going to end,” said Jorjani, a speaker at the convention and a former business partner of Spencer's.

Jorjani didn't respond to requests for comment. On his blog, he wrote that his words had been taken out of context and that he was giving a “nightmarish prediction” of what would happen if the West didn’t address “the Muslim migrant crisis.’”

NJIT placed Jorjani on administrative leave in September.

The university said in a statement that it had been aware of Jorjani’s controversial views for nearly a year but “made no effort to quell his speech.” Now, many in the university community believe he crossed a line, the school said in a statement.

“To the extent those comments promote violent outcomes and illegal discrimination, they are not simply offensive but also dangerous,” the statement read, adding that the matter remained under review.

In November, Kevin Allred, an adjunct professor in women's and gender studies at Rutgers University, was fired after posting controversial comments on Twitter.

In one, he wrote: "Will the Second Amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting at random white people or no …?"

Responding to a student complaint, Rutgers called police in New York City, where Allred lives, and officers took him to Bellevue Hospital for a psychological exam. Allred said he was quickly released.

In another post, he wrote: “I wish someone would just shoot him outright,” referring to Trump.

The post triggered a backlash, death threats and calls for him to be fired.

Allred said in an interview that the tweet, which he quickly removed, was "hyperbolic" and "stupid," but that it wasn't a threat and wasn't incitement. Rather, he said, he was expressing frustration in a series of posts about politics.

"It was a stupid thing to say, obviously, but it still doesn't meet any legal incitement definition and it’s completely protected speech," he said.

He, too, believes the political climate has changed since Trump won the presidency, and that right-wing critics feel more empowered to go after colleges.

"I guess they felt silenced in some way," he said. "Now, they're saying, 'We are finally taking education back. We’ve been discriminated against and our opinions haven't been welcome in classrooms.' They feel whatever they feel, but that's not necessarily the case I’ve seen in education or in schools."

After the incident, he said, Montclair State University revoked an offer of employment to teach introduction courses in LGBTQ studies and women's and gender studies in the fall. Allred said the classes were scheduled and he submitted syllabi. The university said, in a statement, that it "never made a formal offer of employment" to Allred.

While he writes and does speaking engagements, Allred said his primary income was from teaching. He worries about potential employment, now that anyone can "Google my name and see all these decontextualized stories come up."

Just last week, a Rutgers professor, Michael Chikindas, came under fire for Facebook posts in which he shared anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and called Israel a "terrorist country." By Friday, more than 1,600 people had signed a petition calling for Rutgers to suspend Chikindas, a professor of microbiology, saying that "hateful and discriminatory images and words compromise a faculty member’s ability to serve in that role."

Rutgers said it was reviewing comments to determine whether he had violated the university's discrimination policy.

At Princeton University, professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor was singled out after she called Trump a “racist, sexist megalomaniac” in a commencement speech at a New Hampshire college in May. The comments were caught on video and were repeatedly shown by Fox News with the headline “Princeton professor goes on anti-POTUS tirade,” using the initials for president of the United States.

“Within hours, invective filled my inbox,” Taylor, a professor of African-American studies, wrote in an opinion column in The New York Times. “I received emails that promised I would be lynched, shot and raped, and Princeton’s department of African-American studies, of which I am a member, was so flooded with hate that the locks on the doors had to be changed.”

Taylor declined a request for an interview. In her column, she wrote that there is a double standard among conservatives who claim free speech is stifled on campus, yet target professors when they don’t agree with their opinions.

"The right-wing media is obsessed with the supposed stifling of 'free speech' on college campuses, but it seems to care only about protecting speech it likes," wrote Taylor, who was not reprimanded by Princeton and continues to teach.

Many conservatives say the reverse is true — that liberals have stifled free speech by barring provocative speakers from coming onto university campuses and creating an environment of unforgiving “political correctness.”

Speaking at Georgetown University’s law school last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said free speech was under attack on campus, creating an “echo chamber of political correctness and homogeneous thought.” He condemned the free-speech zones that have been designated at some colleges.

Protesters, he said, are “now routinely shutting down speeches and debates across the country in an effort to silence voices that insufficiently conform their views.”

Free speech controversies mount

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has tallied 16 cases nationwide in the last six months in which professors have been targeted for political speech.

The American Association of University Professors put out a statement last month urging institutions to uphold free speech in the face of “terrifying” harassment. The association said many of the targeted professors are African-American or are involved in race or gender studies.

“Concessions to the harassers send the message that such odious tactics are effective. They have a chilling effect on the entire academic community,” the association wrote.

Websites have also been created to name and single out professors for alleged liberal bias in the classroom or for alleged anti-Israel bias, in what many say amounts to a blacklist. Academics say the efforts are an attempt to chill free speech.

Adjunct professors and lecturers are especially vulnerable because they lack the protections of tenure, so it's much easier for colleges to fire or discipline them. Both Durden and Allred held adjunct status, while Jorjani was a lecturer. Taylor, as an assistant professor, is considered tenure-track.

So when does free speech cross a line? Speech that incites “imminent lawless action” is not protected free speech under the law, Cohn said.

But even speech like Allred's wishing "someone would just shoot" Trump is protected, he said, because it is "incredibly doubtful that the faculty member intended for someone to shoot the president."

Public institutions risk lawsuits when they fire faculty members for political expression, Cohn said. At private colleges, administrators could be breaking faith with academics, and breaking contracts, when they seek to punish them for something they said.

Colleges are trying to stem a public relations disaster when they discipline employees, Cohn said, but "all that does is really make the fire bigger by adding First Amendment or free speech to the debate."

He urged those in higher education to stand their ground against what he calls “outraged mobs" on the Internet.

“Administrators would be well served when they see a controversy brewing to put out a statement that faculty are entitled to their beliefs as individuals,” he said. “And that we defend our faculty members’ right to freedom of speech.”

And faculty members should stand up for others who are targeted, he added.

“At some point," he said, "that outraged mob is going to come for you."

Email: adely@northjersey.com