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Multiple professors’ reactions to the 2024 presidential election have been shared by conservative social media personality Chaya Raichik, who goes by Libs of TikTok online and whose posts about left-wing educators have previously been linked to bomb threats and other harassment.
Raichik posted screenshots of professors’ emails to their classes in which they expressed dismay at Donald Trump’s re-election and, in some cases, said they would cancel class to give students time to process their feelings.
In one email shared by the account, a Michigan State University professor said she would be canceling class “to grieve” the results: “As a queer, immigrant woman of colour, I cannot, in good conscience, go on about my day like everything is alright.” She ended the email by noting that all students were welcome in her class regardless of their own political beliefs. That professor’s public contact information has since been removed from the university’s website, MSU’s student newspaper, State News, reported. Another MSU professor, Alexa Veenema, was also targeted by Raichik, but her contact information is still public.
State News reported, and Inside Higher Ed confirmed, that some students reported to MSU officials that they were uncomfortable with their professors expressing their negative feelings about the election results. Soon after, Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education Mark Largent restated certain policies around class cancellations to the university’s top faculty and academic administrators, stressing that professors must inform their units of class cancellations and that they did not need to express their feelings about the election in order to cancel class.
