For more than two years, Ken Parker, a political science major, attended classes at the University of North Florida without anyone knowing he moonlighted as a neo-Nazi and served as a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

But he blew his cover when he agreed to be featured in a magazine cover story about the strength of the KKK in northern Florida. A student from the University of North Florida was leafing through a copy of the local Folio Weekly Magazine in October, when she realized that the Ken Parker quoted in the article and pictured wearing green Klan robes was the very same Ken Parker from her history class.

“Honestly, he seems like a regular white guy,” she later told the Tab, a news site dedicated to covering college and youth culture. “He’s very quiet. I even spoke to my professor about it, and he was so surprised.”

Since then, Parker, 37, a Navy veteran, has found himself at the center of a free speech debate currently raging on college campuses.

On Nov. 13, a couple weeks after he was “outed,” Parker got into an argument with members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a leftist student activist group, on Facebook.

“It is okay to be WHITE,” Parker wrote. “Let SDS and the other clowns come at me. I will shut them down!! Fuck the BLM [Black Lives Matter] BS. I am WHITE and Proud, and these queer balls have yet to confront me on campus.” To hammer his point home, he also posted a photo of himself shirtless, displaying large swastika tattoos on his chest, and wielding a rifle.

Cancelled classes

The university responded to the post by the following day. “Some classes were cancelled and the building he had class in was swarming with police,” said Brittany Nazario, an anthropology student. Parker was suspended from school pending an investigation into the incident.

He appealed his suspension, and on Monday, returned to campus to appear before a disciplinary panel, composed of both students and faculty. About 100 student protesters rallied on campus, in response to rumblings that white nationalists planned to assemble in support of Parker (in the end, there were four white nationalists, including Parker’s girlfriend, Crystal Moore).

During that hearing, he was formally charged with violations of the school’s code of conduct (which have not been made public). Meanwhile, Parker’s suspension has been lifted, according to a statement from John Delaney, the university’s president. However, out of concern for his safety and that of students and faculty, Parker will be required to take classes remotely for the foreseeable future. He will return to campus for another hearing in a month, and when he does, he’ll be escorted by a police officer.

“Public universities are in a tough place here.”

“Substantial disruptions have been caused to date and there is a reasonable expectation that those disruptions to the learning and living environment would continue and may possibly escalate if he is allowed on campus,” Delaney wrote.

The incident highlights a current quandary for school administrators across the country: how to uphold the First Amendment and ideals of free speech and expression while also protecting the community from hate speech and threats of violence.

Universities are on high alert and eager to disassociate themselves from white nationalist activity on college campuses, particularly in the wake of August’s deadly “Unite the Right” rally, which began on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. But even if they wanted to deny the likes of white nationalist Richard Spencer the right to speak on campus, they’re obliged to permit it in accordance with the law, as well as pick up the expense of policing it.

Safety of students

“Public universities are in a tough place here,” said Clay Calvert, the director of the University of Florida’s Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project. “We’re pitting the First Amendment rights of individuals against real-world safety concerns of students and faculty.”

Universities are also essentially trying to mitigate potential PR disasters. “If you allow [Parker] on campus, and he commits violence, the president of the university will be fired,” said Calvert. “But also, if Parker files a lawsuit and wins a First Amendment case against the university, then he gets to take the moral high ground.”

The Constitution protects hate speech, but it doesn’t protect speech that communicates legitimate threats of violence to a person or group. In this instance, legal experts and free speech advocates agree that Parker’s language may be sufficiently couched to mean he’s within the law.

“They are investigating Parker for speech. For words he wrote, and a picture he posted, which constitutes expression.” said Ari Cohn, the director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at F.I.R.E, a free speech on campus watchdog. Cohn says that if you look closely at Parker’s phrasing, he is suggesting that he would defend himself in the event that he was confronted or attacked by Black Lives Matter or SDS.

The university might have dodged a lawsuit in the meantime by lifting Parker’s suspension, but that doesn’t mean the coast is clear. Barring him from campus is also problematic, because the justification stems from the original Facebook post.

Calvert thinks the president of the school knows he’s walking on thin ice, pointing to the statement released Tuesday. “It’s lawyered very well,” Calvert said, because it folds in language from a 1969 Supreme Court decision in a case involving a high school student’s free speech rights. “He’s dropping in all the key terms.”

But this strategy isn’t foolproof either, Calvert added. “The courts are split on whether you can apply a legal standard for high schoolers to college students.”

“I’m going to get a degree”

Parker’s appearance in the Folio Weekly Magazine wasn’t the first time he’d gone public with his views. In 2015, he talked to News4Jax, a local TV news outlet, about his recruitment efforts on behalf of the KKK, but did not provide his last name. “We’re trying to let white America know that we’re not going to put up with the ideals of what our country was founded on being ruined,” he told reporters. “America was founded as a white Christian nation.”

He was also featured in an episode of the Viceland series Hate Thy Neighbor, which aired earlier this year, in which he identified himself as a member of the National Socialist Movement.

Some students say the university isn’t doing enough to reassure them that they care about their safety.

“I graduate this semester, so this will end my time in classes with Ken Parker,” said Nazario, the anthropology student. “However, I will not be applying to grad school at UNF because of these events. As a Hispanic woman, I no longer feel welcome at this university. I have zero desire to remain here any longer.”

“It also makes me sad for future students,” Nazario added. “This has set a precedent and emboldened the racist students to continue their disgusting behavior knowing that they won’t face consequences.”

Parker, on the other hand, has been vocal about his plans to continue his studies at UNF to prepare for law school.