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Ari Kohen, associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, reportedly was taken to task last week by a staffer for U.S. Representative Jeff Fortenberry, after he liked a Facebook photo of a defaced campaign sign for the Nebraska Republican. William “Reyn” Archer III, Fortenberry’s chief of staff, told the Lincoln Journal-Star that he called Kohen after learning that he’d liked the photo, which depicts Fortenberry with googly eyes and other unflattering changes. “It’s against the law and uses the resources of the city, and [Kohen] thinks it’s OK to like it,” Archer said. When he didn’t hear back from Kohen right away, Archer emailed Kohen’s department chair, dean and chancellor to complain about what he called Kohen’s support for “political vandalism.”
The university declined comment on the matter. Kohen reportedly returned Archer’s call last week. “It wasn’t clear at all what he wanted from me, if he wanted me to unlike it or retract it,” Kohen told the Journal-Star, saying he’d since filed a complaint against Archer with the House Ethics Committee. “He told me they could put this out publicly that I liked vandalism, and essentially, that that would be bad for me.” Archer has denied threatening Kohen and called the conversation “amicable.” The American Association of University Professors on Thursday published a petition to Fortenberry, asking him to “publicly repudiate your chief of staff’s actions to threaten and harass Kohen, and to stand unequivocally for academic freedom and free speech for all faculty.”
