When you come at Grand View University's Kevin Gannon — aka @TheTattooedProf — you better not miss.

The director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and professor of history at Grand View University proved as much when conservative commentator and provocateur Dinesh D'Souza directed an insult at him and the private Des Moines university on Twitter.

"Kevin you are a professor at a university no one has heard of. You might show a little intellectual humility," D'Souza mockingly said to Gannon, citing his own Ivy League education.

According to Gannon, fighting with D'Souza on Twitter is a fairly common occurrence for him. He and a few history professors from universities like Princeton, Boston College, Yale and others consistently challenge the fiery political commentator.

"There's about three or four of us in particular who have made it our ... I don't know about hobby, but sort of standing up for the profession and saying, 'No, you can't just make history up,'" Gannon said. "We can have different interpretations, but you can't just say that the sky is orange or that water isn't wet."

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But this time, D'Souza took things too far by insulting Grand View, which prompted Gannon to launch into a 21-tweet explanation of the university's history of promoting accessibility and egalitarianism, the kind of clapback perhaps only a professor of history can assemble off-the-cuff.

You can read Gannon's full retort against D'Souza here.

His defense of Grand View University has garnered hundreds of retweets and thousands of likes. Gannon says that friends, colleagues, Grand View alumni and professors at universities similar to Grand View across the country have reached out to thank him for defending their diversity and stated missions.

MORE:Former Grand View University football player gave free haircuts to Des Moines boys

Gannon, who has more than 56,000 followers on Twitter, is known to have an active Twitter presence by Grand View University and receives the tacit support of the administration. Along with fellow faculty members, Gannon said, the university president's wife, Carole Henning, acknowledged her support.

Along with the defense from Gannon, D'Souza's original insulting tweet became "ratioed," a term common among Twitter users to indicate that a tweet received more replies (usually negative ones) than it did retweets or likes. As of noon on March 5, D'Souza's tweet had 923 comments, 6 retweets and 50 likes.

D'Souza, who served a probationary sentence after he pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance law violations in 2014, was pardoned by President Donald Trump in May 2018.

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