Mr. Povey, who specialized in speech recognition, said he believed he could not receive a fair hearing at the university because he was white and many of the protesters were black or transgender.

White men, Mr. Povey wrote, are expected to care about every demographic group except for their own, “like a neutered puppy-dog or some Justin Trudeau man-child.”

In an email to The New York Times on Saturday, Mr. Povey said he had accepted a new job at Facebook in Seattle but expected he would be fired.

“I fully expect to get fired from Facebook too as a consequence of the publicity around this, but I can line up other options,” he said.

The mood was tense inside Garland Hall that night in May. Protesters had locked university officials out of the building, and administrators had offered students amnesty if they left. Students heard rumors that the police were planning to raid the building early in the morning.

Then, at about 12:30 a.m., they saw Mr. Povey walking toward the brick building with bolt cutters, flanked by six other people whom he has declined to identify to the university.

“It was pretty terrifying to see him at the top of the stairs and not know who he is,” said Andrea Fraser , 27, a graduate student who joined the sit-in. “Our first question was, ‘Who are you?’”