A Florida Atlantic University professor who was suspended in September over social media comments she made about Charlie Kirk will remain under investigation heading into the spring semester.

Kate Polak, an English professor in the university’s College of Arts and Letters, said her department chair informed her on Thursday that she would not be reinstated before the upcoming semester, which officially begins Saturday, despite having been scheduled to teach two classes.

Polak was one of three professors placed on paid administrative leave by the university in September over comments they made on their personal social media accounts following Kirk’s assassination. Both Polak and Karen Leader, an associate professor of art history, were investigated over comments they made aimed at Kirk himself, while Rebel Cole, an eminent scholar in the College of Business, was investigated over comments he made regarding Kirk’s opponents.

But while the university reinstated both Leader and Cole in November, citing their First Amendment rights, the investigation into Polak has continued. To her knowledge, she is the only public university professor in Florida to remain on leave over her comments, which have now prohibited her from teaching for a full academic year.

“It’s humiliating,” Polak, who remains barred from campus, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Friday.

It remains unclear why the university has not concluded its investigation. Joshua Glanzer, a spokesperson for FAU, declined to comment in response to emailed questions Friday, saying, “The university does not comment on pending personnel matters.”

Investigation expands past Kirk comments

Polak was suspended on Sept. 15, two days after Leader and the same day as Cole, after FAU received complaints about comments the faculty members had made on social media.

The university hired Alan Lawson, a former conservative Florida Supreme Court justice, to investigate all three faculty members.

Polak’s comments included replies to other people’s posts about Kirk on the social media site Threads. The University Press student newspaper published screenshots of the posts, which Polak confirmed were authentic. One of her comments said, “Delighting in the death of someone who wished death on us isn’t sick. It’s self-defense.”

In another, Polak wrote “SAME” after someone else said, “Does he have a GoFundMe yet? Wanna buy that man a bottle!”

When investigators brought her in for an interview, she said, they also asked her about posts she had made on her private Facebook page, including posts that had nothing to do with Charlie Kirk.

In particular, Polak said Lawson and other members of his firm asked her about posts she had made regarding an anti-ICE protest she attended on FAU’s campus a week before Kirk was killed.

In the posts, shared on Sept. 5, Polak criticized the heavy police presence and accused law enforcement officers of taking pictures of her.

“Our own administration treated us like enemies today because we don’t want our students (or ourselves!) hauled off into gulags,” she wrote, according to screenshots she provided, adding, “I wore my sluttiest professional attire to make sure I looked like a Fox News anchor and yet sneered at all the bootlickers checking me out.”

Polak said investigators also asked her about posts she had made after being placed on administrative leave, including one regarding having PTSD.

‘Mind-boggling’

On Nov. 18, FAU concluded its investigation into Leader and Cole, determining that their conduct was done on personal accounts outside of work hours on a matter of public interest, and that they should be reinstated with written guidance about the university’s “expectations of civility, integrity, and professionalism.”

Leader had shared others’ posts on the social media site X that criticized Kirk on matters related to race, gender, guns and LGBTQ issues, adding her own comments such as “This was Charlie Kirk.”

Cole, on the other hand, had told Kirk opponents, “we are going to hunt you down. We are going to identify you. Then we are going to make you radioactive to polite society. And we will make you both unemployed and unemployable.”

Meanwhile, Polak’s investigation continued. During a second interview held on Dec. 18, the professor said investigators had drafted an apology that they wanted her to sign, but she refused, describing it as “groveling” and saying it assigned culpability to her, which could protect the university from a lawsuit. She said she was also told that some of her statements did not pass the Pickering balance test, a legal standard that weighs a public employee’s right to free speech against their employer’s interest in avoiding workplace disruption.

Still, Polak was optimistic that she would be reinstated soon after the second interview. The English department scheduled her to teach two research writing classes; in-person spring semester classes at FAU begin Monday.

Then, on Thursday, Polak said, her department chair told her that she would remain on leave as Lawson has not yet submitted his report on her case. She has not received further information as to when the investigation might conclude.

FAU faculty Senate President Bill Trapani, a university trustee, said the fact that Polak remains on administrative leave is “mind-boggling,” adding that she is an “exceptional educator” with some of the highest student evaluations at the university.

“The fact that she’s been kept out of the classroom now for what will be an entire academic year is unheard of,” he said Friday.

Teachers at other Florida schools have faced discipline over their Charlie Kirk comments, but no public universities have gone to the same lengths as FAU. A retired University of Florida law professor lost his emeritus status. At the University of Miami, which is private, a neurologist resigned from her job.

Outside of Florida, a Tennessee professor was rewarded $500,000 in a settlement agreement after he was fired, then rehired, over his Charlie Kirk comments.

At FAU, suspensions of faculty are rare, Trapani said. The last time he recalled the university suspending a faculty member was in 2013, when communications professor Deandre Poole was placed on leave over an exercise he led that asked students to write “Jesus” on a piece of paper and step on it. The controversy attracted national attention. But Poole was reinstated after two months, while Polak has now been suspended for close to four.

While Leader and Cole are both on the tenure track, Polak is on the instructor track, and has an annual contract with FAU that renews on a yearly basis. She now worries that the university plans to keep her on leave for the spring and then cancel her contract in the summer.

“All I wanted was to go back to my job and pretend none of this ever happened,” she said.

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