Artist Shellyne Rodriguez has been fired from her role as assistant professor at Hunter College in New York following a confrontation with anti-abortion activists on campus. On May 2, Rodriguez was filmed approaching members of the Students For Life of America organization who were dropping off at Hunter’s Upper Manhattan campus and vocally protesting and ruffling the exhibit, which included several models and brochures of rubber fetus. As the video circulated on social media, Rodriguez said, it became the target of “despicable and hateful emails, text messages and voicemails,” culminating in an unexpected visit by a New York Post reporter this week in which she brandished a knife at the reporter.
Following the confrontation with members of Students For Life of America on campus on May 2, Rodriguez was called into the provost’s office and questioned by the provost of Hunter College and the dean of diversity and campus relations. . He was asked to apologize to his students for his use of profanity and for ruffling the display. Rodriguez says she complied with the university’s request and issued an apology, but Students for Life of America continued to pass the video around and “mobilized their members and supporters to attack [her].”
Then, on the morning of Tuesday, May 23, New York Post Reporter Reuven Fenton showed up at Rodriguez’s Bronx apartment looking for an impromptu interview. After identifying himself, Rodriguez allegedly told Fenton through the closed door to “get the f–k out…or I’m gonna cut you with this machete.” Fenton and his accompanying documentation team recorded Rodriguez finally opening the door to her apartment and taking a machete blade up to Fenton’s neck before stepping back and locking the door behind her. Additional Dash Cam Images released by the Job shows Rodriguez following Fenton and his team out of the building and down the street with machete in hand and chasing a photographer around a car.
Rodriguez says the online harassment she experienced led her to believe she was in mortal danger. Messages sent to Rodriguez and his colleagues and friends in the days following his exchange with the anti-abortion group, reviewed by Hyperallergicincluded racial and sexual slurs, death threats and physical violence.
“All of this has taken a toll on my mental health, robbing me of my sense of security and creating a reasonable fear that they will show up at my house to cause me physical harm, as has happened with so many other women who have had the same their personal information exposed as a form of politically motivated harassment,” Rodriguez said in a statement shared with Hyperallergic.
The May 2 video was widely shared in college correction and other right-wing sites that have been reported by independent groups monitor news outlets contributing to the targeted harassment of US college professors. Students for America’s Life board of directors includes representatives from several conservative groups, including the Federalist Society, which was contributed to the appointment of right-wing judges to the Supreme Court; the American Life League, one of the oldest pro-life Catholic associations in the country; and the Republican National Committee.
“Even though this incident has stakes for my life, it is ultimately only part of a larger political struggle unfolding across the country,” Rodriguez said. “Right-wing media organizations weaponize and sensationalize this case to advance their agenda, and use me as a prism through which to project their attacks on women, trans people, black people, Latinx, migrants and beyond. .”
In response to HyperallergicIn his request for comment, Vince DiMiceli, Assistant Vice President of Communications for Hunter, provided the following statement: “Hunter College strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez and has taken immediate action. Rodriguez has been relieved of her duties at Hunter College effective immediately and will not be returning to teach at the school.
Rodriguez is also an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan. A spokesperson for SVA said Hyperallergic that although Rodriguez is not currently teaching any classes, the school is “evaluating to determine potential next steps.”
In the wake of the fallout after the May 2 confrontation, Rodriguez was met with an outpouring of support from members of the Hunter community, including the student- and faculty-led group CUNY for Abortion Rights, which circulated a petition in his support. “His actions to end the filing were fully justified and are part of a long and famous CUNY legacy of confronting groups such as military recruiters who spread misleading information,” the petition reads.
Others expressed their solidarity with Rodriguez on social media. New York artist Danielle de Jesus, with whom Rodriguez had a duo exhibition in 2021offered a personal perspective when reached by Hyperallergic for his reactions to Rodriguez’s firing.
“Shellyn [Rodriguez] and I met through the Puerto Rico Liberation Movement, and she quickly became sort of a mentor to me,” De Jesus said. “She helped me keep a cool head when the art world starts to weigh heavily on me, but more importantly, she reminds me that I’m not alone. As a Nuyorican from the New York neighborhood, it’s easy to feel like you don’t quite fit the art world’s idea of a good artist, but Shellyne taught me that’s okay, because we don’t want to fit in a box anyway.”
A longtime artist and activist based in the Bronx, Rodriguez earned her MFA in Studio Art at Hunter College in 2014 and has worked there as an adjunct professor since 2017. Rodriguez is known for her grassroots activism and interdisciplinary art practice that draws attention to his South throughout his life. The Bronx community’s modes of survival, decolonization, and resistance to subjugation and erasure through displacement and state-sanctioned violence. In 2020, Rodriguez produced a series of paintings and drawings who expanded the definition of “essential workers” to include activists and organizers who were protecting his community during an increase in police presence following an incident in which NYPD fired their guns at 19-year-old Adrian Napier in a subway car for jumping a turnstile. Earlier this year Rodriguez got it first personal exhibition at the PPOW Gallery in Manhattan, with 22 colored pencil drawings documenting the diversity and solidarity of its community and its strengths. This spring she was one of five winners recognized at the anniversary celebration of the Latinx Project at New York University, an initiative that promotes the work of American artists of Latin American and Caribbean descent.
