Remarks on Barbara Bush draw backlash

Professor who called her a racist claims she can’t be fired

In the hours after Barbara Bush died Tuesday, people from around the world began expressing their condolences and sharing their warm memories of the Bush family matriarch, even if they didn’t share her political views.

Former president Bill Clinton, the man who once campaigned against her husband, called her “a remarkable woman” with “grit & grace, brains & beauty.” Another former president, Barack Obama, said she had “humility and decency that reflects the very best of the American spirit.” But a creative writing professor at Fresno State University had a message for those offering up fond remembrances:

“Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal,” Randa Jarrar wrote on Twitter, according to the Fresno Bee.

Jarrar’s words, and others that she used as she argued with critics during an overnight tweetstorm, sparked a backlash on social media that would soon prompt the university to distance itself from her remarks. More than 2,000 people had replied to her, the Bee reported. Many tagged Fresno State and the institution’s president, Joseph Castro, demanding that the professor be fired.

According to the Bee, Jarrar taunted them, sharing a contact number that was actually that of a suicide hotline, and said she was a tenured professor who makes $100,000 a year.

“I will never be fired,” she said, according to the report, which noted that Jarrar describes herself as an Arab American and a Muslim American in her Twitter messages.

Some people, of course, took issue with what Jarrar said about Bush. Others were upset at what they viewed as Jarrar’s incivility about a woman widely regarded as genteel.

Jarrar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The contact page of her website said: “I do not read or respond to messages about Barbara Bush” next to a heart emoji.

People found other ways to strike back at her, though. The rating on the Amazon page for Jarrar’s book took a precipitous drop after it received a slew of bad reviews in the wake of her comments. “

Fresno State responded to the controversy Tuesday evening, tweeting a statement by Castro that said Jarrar’s words are “obviously contrary to the core values of our University” and they “were made as a private citizen.”

In a Wednesday morning news conference, Provost Lynnette Zelezny said the university had put in place “additional security,” a common action “when we feel that there’s a spotlight on us.”

Despite Jarrar’s tweet about her tenure, her future interactions with students may be in question.

In Wednesday’s news conference, Zelezny did not detail any disciplinary actions against Jarrar, saying only that the next step was to sit down with “all represented parties.”

But she put to rest one of the biggest questions: Whether Jarrar’s tenure at the university meant she could say whatever she wanted on the Internet.

“To answer the technical question: Can she not be fired? The answer is no.”