Emily Taylor #
Introduction #
Emily Taylor is an associate professor of English and the director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program at Presbyterian College, a private Christian college of about 1,000 undergraduates in Clinton, South Carolina, where she taught English courses including “Women’s World Literature,” “Postcolonial Literature and Film,” and “Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism.” On September 11, 2025 — the day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead at Utah Valley University — Ms. Magazine published her essay “Dying to Be Men: American Masculinity as Death Cult,” which argued that the “violent discourse espoused by Charlie Kirk” and others contributed to his own killing. The essay made her a target of the post-Kirk revenge purge: she was doxxed and received death threats, South Carolina’s lieutenant governor called for her tenure to be revoked, and four state lawmakers threatened to pull state funding from her college. Taylor resigned her tenured position in December 2025 to protect the school, and in March 2026 the ACLU of South Carolina filed a lawsuit on her behalf against the four lawmakers.
Background Information #
Taylor built her career at Presbyterian College, teaching English and world literature and directing the Women’s & Gender Studies Program. “I was a first-generation college student, and I worked my entire life to be an English professor,” she later told The Intercept; she earned tenure, supported her family and her mother on a professor’s salary, and was raising a son and a daughter. She was waiting for her children to finish piano lessons on September 10, 2025, when she heard that Kirk had been shot while answering a question about the conspiracy theory he perpetuated suggesting there is an epidemic of transgender mass shooters. His final words — “Counting or not counting gang violence?” — came moments before the gunman fired.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #
Allegations. The claims in this section come from Taylor’s own account and The Intercept’s reporting on the post-Kirk purge. No one involved was criminally charged and nothing here has been adjudicated in court; the lawmakers’ funding threat and the doxxing campaign are reported events, and the lawsuit’s claims remain pending.
The morning after the shooting, Taylor sat down to draft a response. “My initial reaction to it was just so angry that the students on campus were subject to another school shooting,” she said. “I was also sad that he died because I don’t believe in violence, and I don’t think anybody should be murdered.” In “Dying to Be Men: American Masculinity as Death Cult,” she argued that the violent discourse espoused by Kirk ultimately led to his shooting. She wrote that Kirk had “built his career on racism and misogyny.” “White male insecurity from the losers currently governing has fueled attacks on Black federal workers, girls and women, immigrants, children and the elderly,” she wrote. “I’m sorry for Charlie Kirk and all the other men like him that have been raised in this America and with these ideals of masculinity,” Taylor wrote. “I’m sorry that he decided to adopt this hateful ideology and to profit from it. And as the mother to a boy and a girl, my heart breaks for the America these children are growing up in. Here’s hoping we can save ourselves.” She sent the piece to an editor at Ms. Magazine, and within hours it was online. The hate began to roll in.
Public Reaction and Consequences #
Republican state Rep. Thomas Beach targeted Taylor on social media, and Republican Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette called for Taylor to lose her tenure; people began to dox her online. Presbyterian College had to hire an outside firm to manage crisis communication and student safety. “They were telling me I needed to get personal security for my home,” said Taylor, “which you’ll be surprised to hear I couldn’t afford on a professor salary.” She bought security cameras, and after she received a death threat, local police began regularly checking her house; she called the principal of her children’s school to talk about what to do in case someone tried to harm her kids. On September 18, 2025, Republican state Rep. Luke Rankin called for the state to pull its funding from the small private Christian college, and his colleagues co-signed a letter to formalize the threat — a blow that Taylor said would devastate a school with only about 1,000 undergraduates. “One of the things that was really interesting and very destructive about the post-Charlie Kirk purge was how coordinated and manufactured the outrage was,” said Allen Chaney, legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina, who represents Taylor. “I don’t think any other era has had the tools to do the sort of purging that is available now.”
Current Status #
Taylor resigned her tenured position in December 2025 to save the college from the funding threat, walking away from a job that could support her family and offer future tuition benefits for her children. “I also support my mom. So, walking away was really hard,” she said. “But I also couldn’t have lived with myself if they had taken away money from students.” That winter “was the first time in my entire life that I didn’t go back to school,” she said, and she has spent most of the year since scrolling bare job boards: “The chances that I ever have tenure-track employment again doesn’t seem likely.” In March 2026, the ACLU of South Carolina filed a lawsuit on her behalf against the four state lawmakers who threatened to deny funding to her college, asking a court to declare their actions unconstitutional, force them to rescind the letter and threats, and provide compensation for back pay, lost benefits, and compensatory and punitive damages; in response, Rankin and the other lawmakers denied having an impact “on her quote employment status,” arguing that she chose to resign. In June 2026, Rankin — Taylor’s lead antagonist in the affair — lost his primary reelection by roughly 20 percentage points.
Impact on Their Career/Life #
A year after publishing the essay, Taylor remains out of academia and still unemployed, one of the more than 600 people whose lives were upended in the post-Kirk purge. The grief she had held at bay finally washed over her in January, when the fall semester started without her for the first time in her adult life. Her lawsuit is pending, and whatever it yields will come after a career already forfeited: it seeks back pay and damages, but it cannot restore the tenured professorship she gave up to keep her college whole.