After Firing by Hunter College, Artist Shellyne Rodriguez Says School Has ‘Capitulated’ to ‘Racists, White Nationalists, and Misogynists’
On Tuesday evening, New York’s Hunter College fired artist Shellyne Rodriguez, an adjunct professor with the school, after video circulated online showing an incident in which she confronted a group called Students for Life of America on the school’s campus on May 2.
Rodriguez had taught in the art department at Hunter, which is part of the City University of New York system, since 2017. She is known for work that deals with “strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation,” according to an artist statement on her website.
In a statement sent to ARTnews, Rodriguez said that the May 2 incident had involved the “use of profanity” and the “tossing [of] the postcards and the metal container of rubber fetuses” that the students had at the table.
In the video that was circulated by Students for Life of America, a nonprofit group that identifies as “one of the leading pro-life advocacy organizations in the world,” and was subsequently picked up by right-wing outlets like Breitbart and the Citizen Free Press, Rodriguez appears to tell the students, “You’re not educating shit. This is fucking propaganda.” The students do not appear to have been harmed in the incident, according to the footage.
