In a scathing Monday letter to the governing body of the Arizona university system, the former events manager at Arizona State University’s auditorium, who was fired after booking Dennis Prager and other right-wing speakers, accused the school of conniving to censor speech and punish employees who stood in its way.
The saga began in January when ASU faculty learned that the T. W. Lewis Center for Personal Development within ASU’s Barrett Honors College had invited right-wing pundits Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager and economist Robert Kiyosaki to speak at the center in the coming weeks.
Ann Atkinson, the now former executive director of the center, spearheaded the event with the help of ASU Gammage theatre events manager Linda Blake.
Both women were fired shortly after the event, prompting Blake to file the complaint with the Arizona Board of Regents, the governing body of the state university system.
Atkinson told National Review that she brought in new diversified donor funding, “contingent on maintaining the intent of the Lewis center, that included traditional American values of personal responsibility, hard work, civic duty, faith, family and community service.”
After the “Health, Wealth, and Happiness” event was publicized, 39 honors-college faculty organized a petition asking the dean to disassociate it from the honors college. The letter claimed that Kirk and Prager were “purveyors of hate” who target women, people of color, and LGBT individuals. Kiyosaki, the co-signers also alleged, was guilty of making “sales schemes” out of his public-speaking engagements on wealth generation.
“By platforming and legitimating their extreme anti-intellectual and anti-democratic views, Barrett will not be furthering the cause of democratic exchange at ASU, but undermining it in ways that could further marginalize the most vulnerable members of our community,” read the faculty letter, obtained by AZ Free News. “Our collective efforts to promote Barrett as a home for inclusive excellence demand we distance ourselves from the hate that these provocateurs hope to legitimate by attaching themselves to Barrett’s name.”
In response to faculty backlash, on-campus marketing of the event was halted on Barrett dean Tara Williams’s orders, Atkinson said. Williams pressured Atkinson to read a warning to the audience during her opening remarks before the keynote speeches informing them that they were about to be exposed to potentially offensive content, she said. Vice Dean Kristen Hermann told Atkinson that the speakers had to stick to the themes listed in the event’s title and avoid anything that could be deemed political as well as the topic of higher education.”
“The Vice Dean stressed this is important for the Lewis Center, which I perceived as a threat,” Atkinson said.
At a small meeting with Williams, Hermann, and the honors-college crisis-management team, Atkinson was asked “what would stop the Lewis Center from inviting the KKK to campus,” she said. After the event, Williams expressed concern to Atkinson that she was not successful in ensuring the speakers did not discuss anything political.
When Atkinson informed the ASU provost that honors-college deans were attempting to censor speech at the event, the provost’s staff allegedly told her in a meeting: “It was handled. We know it needed to be handled. That might have appeared as though we were trying to suppress.”
Regarding the retribution from faculty that Atkinson faced, the provost allegedly told her: “We allowed the speaker, but you then have to take the consequences.”
Faculty who supported Atkinson’s project, namely ASU professor of philosophy and religious studies Owen Anderson, were also bullied. When Anderson spoke out about the event, Dean Todd Sandrin of ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences directed him not to talk to media without permission, he said.
Miriam Mara, director of the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies within the New College, then asked to meet with Anderson to ensure his press activity was approved.
“This is contrary to my first amendment rights,” Anderson told National Review. “I appealed to FIRE, who got involved and wrote a letter to ASU’s provost, who then backed down and agreed I can speak as a private citizen as long as I say ahead of time I am not representing ASU.”
Then, the university shut down the T. W. Lewis Center, ousting Atkinson. Longtime millionaire philanthropist Tom Lewis – the namesake of the center – told Fox News on Wednesday that he discontinued his approximate annual $400,000 donation to ASU after the scandal. April Miller, an Honors Faculty Fellow, blasted Lewis in a since-deleted tweet after the speakers were announced, saying the college sold its “soul to the ‘highest’ bidder.”
“The majority of the honors-college faculty launched a national condemnation campaign against the center because they didn’t like the opinions of the speakers invited,” Atkinson said. “The faculty slandered these speakers, called them ‘white supremacists’ without substantiating that, and then the faculty uses mandatory classes to tell their students not to attend our program and condemn our program as ‘hate speech.”
When the dean let Atkinson go, she said the removal was strictly due to financial considerations. Atkinson doesn’t buy it, pointing out that she was fired soon after the event along with Blake, the theater coordinator she asked to help host the high-profile guests.
Blake felt compelled to write to the board to correct the record after it issued a response to Republican Arizona state representative Austin Smith concluding that Blake’s firing was independent of the event.
“After speaking with ASU staff, I am satisfied the separation was not related to the Health, Wealth, and Happiness event held earlier this year,” the letter read.
“The facts and circumstances of the case, however, require my first-hand account — which is at great difference with the narrative you provided — and it is my hope the Arizona Board of Regents will take them seriously,” Blake said. “Why did no one from the Arizona Board of Regents contact me about what happened? Why did the board simply accept the account provided by ASU administrators at face value? The board would have seen this is far from a mere ‘personnel action.’ What took place was retaliation.”
Addressing the Arizona Board of Regents, Blake recounted how she faced hostility from the honor’s college leadership after booking the speakers. The intimidation mounted until she was suddenly terminated.
ASU declined to comment on the specifics of the case and directed National Review to the university’s statement expressing support for free speech.
In the Monday letter obtained by National Review, Blake told the board members that she was always regarded as the MVP of the auditorium staff – until she agreed to help Atkinson organize the controversial event.
“For nearly three years I was praised for exceptional performance,” she said. Her supervisor at the time, Jeff Rollins, lauded her as a “rock star.”
“I received accolades from my clients as well as Mr. Rollins for executing two large successful events with little to no help,” she said. “But immediately following these events in February 2023, everything changed.”
Unlike the previous events she organized at ASU, these events were relentlessly scrutinized and challenged, she said. Senior staff wanted to know who secured and approved the speakers, she said. Blake’s judgement was questioned especially after the Barrett faculty spoke out and Barrett dean Tara Williams voiced her concerns. Yet, months earlier in the fall of 2022, the executive leadership responsible for signing off on all speaking contracts had no objections to the event, Blake said.
While Barrett faculty were making a fuss, so were Blake’s event staff colleagues. Colleen Roggensack, the vice president of Cultural Affairs and executive director of Gammage, asked Blake’s manager at the time: “Why would we allow a white supremacist to speak in our theatre?” Even though Blake did not select the speakers or have any role in choosing the topics, she was berated by her supervisor for booking events that were in conflict with the values of Gammage, she said.
Blake’s impression was that, from the event’s inception, her superiors were looking for an opportunity to get rid of her. After facing many weeks of micromanagement and nitpicking of her performance for small mistakes, Blake attended a Broadway production at Gammage as a patron – not in a professional capacity.
“Here, one of my disgruntled colleagues was tending bar and accused me of purchasing a drink for my twenty-year-old daughter,” she wrote in the letter. “Not only did I not make any purchases at the event, which a review of the credit card transactions would prove, but any review of security tapes would prove my innocence.”
The next Monday, Rollins said he needed to speak with her about the incident. After grilling her about her conduct, which she insists was appropriate, at a non-work function, Rollins said he “would handle the situation, review the security footage, then get back to me in a couple of days when he expected things would blow over.” He encouraged her to take some time off to unwind.
The conversation was casual, Blake said, “and was by no means an investigation.”
“I was not led to believe that anything was wrong and was certainly not led to believe there would be consequences,” she said.
Yet the very next day, her supervisor Rollins sent Blake a meeting request with human resources. Blake told him she was unable to attend as she was out of town, per his recommendation to her. On Wednesday, Blake’s team disseminated emails university-wide announcing she would no longer be serving in her role. She was told at her termination meeting on April 3 that she was “no longer a good fit” for her position.
“ASU and ASU Gammage are free to say that because the event went on, and the speakers spoke, it proves they support free speech,” Blake said. “But if speech was truly free at ASU, producing events with unpopular viewpoints would not have cost my job. There is no freedom of speech when it comes with the punishment of job loss for those who administer it.”