Michigan university fires professor for antisemitic, racist social media posts

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — Ferris State University, a public research school in Big Rapids, Michigan, fired a professor last week for using antisemitic, racist, homophobic and other inflammatory language on social media.
Thomas Brennan, a physical sciences professor, had tweeted about a “Jewish mafia” and called the COVID-19 pandemic a “Jewish revolution,” according to an article last fall in the university’s newspaper further reported on by USA Today, the Detroit Free Press and other outlets.
Brennan also used the N-word in talking about the prominent Black physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“My defense is that I was acting out and speaking out of despair caused by a personal crisis involving extremely painful migraines, emf sensitivity and a series of repeated break-ins into my home,” Brennan tweeted in response to his firing this weekend. EMF refers to electromagnetic field.
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