Earlier this year, Davis, CA, police officer Natalie Corona was shot and killed while responding to a call about a car crash. While Corona conducted an investigation into what caused the crash, a man riding a bicycle, later identified as Kevin Douglas Limbaugh, approached the scene. He shot Corona as she spoke to someone involved in the crash. She fell, and he continued shooting her. He then began shooting bystanders. He fled into a nearby residence and, after a standoff with other officers, committed suicide, according to the Washington Post.
At the University of California-Davis, a reporter for the student newspaper the California Aggie, decided to use the officer’s death to look into rumors that a professor on campus had previously advocated for cops to be killed. Nick Irvin, the reporter, found several tweets disparaging police from professor Joshua Clover, who teaches English and comparative literature.
In January 2016, Clover gave an interview in which he said: “People think that cops need to be reformed. They need to be killed.”
On March 4, 2019, UC-Davis Chancellor Gary S. May sent a letter to California Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Nicolaus) regarding concerns about Clover’s past statements. On Thursday, May sent a follow-up to Gallagher discussing the steps the university took to address Clover.
As par of the latest letter, May wrote that while the university feels Clover’s statements are “offensive and abhorrent,” they did “not meet the legal requirements for ‘true threats’ that might exempt them from First Amendment protection.”
Further, May cited President Donald Trump’s March 22, 2019 executive order on free speech as part of the reasoning behind the decision not to punish Clover – READ MORE