Muslim Woman Who Voted For Trump Wants Georgetown University To Intervene Over A Professor’s Anti-Trump Messages

A Muslim woman who voted for Donald Trump has asked Georgetown University to intervene after one of its professors got involved in an exchange of messages with her on Twitter regarding Trump. Asra Q. Nomani, a Wall Street Journal reporter and a former professor at Georgetown University herself, got involved in an exchange of messages on Twitter with a current professor at Georgetown, Christine Fair.

Nomani had written an article for the Washington Post in November, after Trump’s win, titled “I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump.” Nomani, who taught journalism at Georgetown from 2008 to 2012 had written the following in her article.

“I am a single mother who can’t afford health insurance under Obamacare. As a liberal Muslim who has experienced, firsthand, Islamic extremism in this world, I have been opposed to the decision by President Obama and the Democratic Party to tap dance around the ‘Islam’ in Islamic State.”

Christine Fair, an associate professor in Georgetown’s School for Foreign Service, had responded to the article on twitter.

“I’ve written you off as a human being. Your vote helped normalize Nazis in D.C. What don’t you understand, you clueless dolt? YOU publicly voted for a sex assailant. You have pimped yourself out to all media outlets simply because you are a ‘Muslim woman who voted for Trump.'”

After trading direct messages with Fair on Twitter and appealing to Fair’s supervisors last month, Nomani decided to make a formal complaint to her former employer, Georgetown University. Nomani filed the complaint last Thursday with the university’s Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action organization. In it, she pointed out discrimination and harassment in Fair’s messages.

“I am writing to share with you that, as a result of my column, Prof. Fair has directed hateful, vulgar and disrespectful messages to me, including the allegations that I am: a ‘fraud’; ‘fame-mongering clown show’; and a ‘bevkuf,’ or ‘idiot,’ in my native Urdu, who has ‘pimped herself out’.”

Nomani had initially appealed to Fair’s superiors at Georgetown University last month. She had sent an email complaint to the director of Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies, Bruce Hoffman, on December 2. In the complaint, she had alleged Christine Fair of “slut-shaming” her. In response to this, Fair took to Facebook on December 6, which is also mentioned in Nomani’s formal complaint to the University. Fair had accused Nomani of publishing their private messages and of attacking her First Amendment rights by appealing to her superior at work.

“She has no right to decry criticism… even criticism that is in language that offends her fragile sensibilities. ‘F–k off’ and ‘go to hell’ and ‘pimping yourself out’ for media coverage offended her… but not ‘I can grab their p—-s’ or the various misogynist, racist, xeonophobic [sic] race-baiting bulls–t espoused by her candidate of choice.”

Finally last Thursday, Nomani decided to file an official complaint to the University. Fair has called Nomani’s appeal a part in a series of dangerous trends, where complaints are filed with employers in order to silent citizens.

“I am most concerned about the increasing appeal to employers to silence the criticism of citizens made in their private capacity as citizens,” she wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “Because most of us need our jobs, as few of us are financially independent, this is the most pernicious form of bullying of critics.”

[Featured Image by Valerii Iavtushenko/Shutterstock]