Rebel Cole #

Introduction #

Rebel Cole is a tenured professor of finance at Florida Atlantic University who became one of the most prominent academics caught in the wave of employment actions that followed the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025. After posting on X about people who celebrated Kirk’s killing — warning that he would “hunt you down” and make them “radioactive to polite society” — Cole was placed on administrative leave in mid-September 2025. He responded by filing a federal First Amendment lawsuit against FAU and its president, Adam Hasner. Roughly two months later, an independent investigation led by former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson concluded that his posts were protected speech, and FAU reinstated him.

Background Information #

Cole taught finance at FAU’s Boca Raton campus and held tenure, which made the university’s decision to remove him from the classroom all the more striking. His case sat inside a larger purge: after Kirk was shot and killed on September 10, 2025, during an event at Utah Valley University, President Donald Trump and his allies sought to punish anyone who made public comments about Kirk that could be perceived as critical, and numerous universities fired or suspended professors. At FAU, three faculty members were placed on leave: Karen Leader, an associate professor of art history; Kate Polak, an English professor; and Cole. Unusually, Cole’s posts ran in the opposite political direction from his colleagues’ — Leader and Polak had criticized Kirk, while Cole’s comments were directed at people celebrating Kirk’s murder. He was the second FAU faculty member placed on leave, days after Leader.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

The posts at the center of the controversy showed Cole responding to an account that, according to his lawsuit, was “celebrating” Kirk’s murder. He replied in part: “This is NOT free speech. It is inciting a riot… someone should shut his mouth.” When another user challenged him, Cole escalated: “Be very afraid. 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.” WPTV reported that the comments troubled students and faculty members who reached out to the station, and FAU placed Cole on administrative leave in mid-September 2025, barring him from teaching or even entering campus until further notice. He was not fired; he was sidelined with his tenure intact while the university weighed his fate.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

Cole chose to fight rather than wait out his leave. In mid-November 2025 his legal team filed an 18-page federal lawsuit against Florida Atlantic University and six top officials, including President Adam Hasner, arguing that FAU’s actions were “retaliatory” and targeted him because he “chose to confront people on social media who celebrated the murder of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.” The suit contended that FAU went after a conservative-leaning professor in part “to give Defendants a safe harbor to claim that they also acted against a professor with conservative views.” Cole was represented by the firm of Edward H. Trent, the same practice handling other free-speech cases funded by Elon Musk. Reaction among his colleagues was complicated: Leader, whose own leave had come first, told WPTV that although she disagreed with Cole’s comments, she commended him for fighting for First Amendment rights. Both Cole and FAU declined comment while the litigation was pending, and the FAU Faculty Senate also objected to the university’s outside investigation.

Current Status #

Cole is back at FAU. The university hired Alan Lawson, a former Florida Supreme Court justice, to investigate the three professors’ comments, and Lawson concluded that Cole’s and Leader’s posts were protected by the First Amendment and recommended that both be reinstated. The independent review applied the framework of Pickering v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court’s test for public-employee speech, and found that both men’s posts qualified as speech by private citizens on matters of public concern. “The findings reflect that each professor’s social-media statements, though provocative to varying degrees, were authored in a personal capacity on matters of public concern,” Lawson wrote, adding that the university had “preserved constitutional rights while upholding its responsibility to ensure professionalism, civility, and safety within its academic community.” FAU reinstated Cole on November 18, 2025, and the reports announcing the move did not record a final resolution of his federal lawsuit. While Cole and Leader returned, Polak remained on leave pending the continuation of Lawson’s investigation.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The episode cost Cole roughly two months of his classroom and put his name in national headlines, but it ended without the career-ending outcome that many professors caught in the post-Kirk purge suffered. His tenure held, his posts were formally found to be protected speech under the governing constitutional test, and his lawsuit framed what happened to him as a warning to public universities that removing faculty for social-media speech invites First Amendment liability. The case also acquired a symbolic twist: Cole, a conservative-leaning professor punished for posts defending Kirk, ended up sharing a lawyer-adjacent cause — and ultimately a reinstatement — with two left-leaning colleagues whose posts had attacked Kirk, with Leader publicly crediting him for pushing back on FAU’s behalf. His reinstatement, alongside Leader’s, became a reference point in the national debate over where universities’ duty to maintain campus civility ends and employees’ free-speech rights begin.