A Rutgers University expert on antifa was fleeing the United States with his family on Wednesday in the wake of death threats that followed President Trump’s push to characterize the left-wing antifascist movement as a domestic terrorist organization.
Mark Bray, a historian who published the 2017 book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” taught courses on anti-fascism and terrorism at Rutgers in New Jersey in relative obscurity until a few weeks ago.
Then, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer, called Dr. Bray a “domestic terrorist professor” on X. The Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA circulated a petition accusing Dr. Bray of being an “outspoken, well-known antifa member” and called for him to be fired.
The petition referred to him as “Dr. Antifa.”
“My role in this is as a professor,” Dr. Bray, an assistant teaching professor at Rutgers, said in an interview on Wednesday, hours before his planned departure. “I’ve never been part of an antifa group, and I’m not currently. There’s an effort underway to paint me as someone who is doing the things that I’ve researched, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The furor grew after Fox News reported on the petition. Dr. Bray’s home address was revealed on social media. He has since received death threats, including one vowing to kill him in front of his students.
He notified campus and local police, but with two young children, he and his wife, who is also a Rutgers professor, decided that it would be safer to relocate to Spain and teach remotely, at least for this academic year, he said.
Rutgers officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Dr. Bray said that the university had offered to provide security for his classes, but that he still felt his family would be at risk. He and his wife were approved to teach remotely as a result of the threats, he said.
On a Rutgers Reddit page, students expressed sadness and shock that he was leaving. Faculty members, at Rutgers and beyond, have sent messages of support, he said.
“There is no place in American higher education for death threats against professors,” Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors and a Rutgers faculty member, said in a statement. “We stand with Professor Bray against this gross assault on academic freedom and freedom of speech.”
Several days after publishing the petition calling for Dr. Bray’s dismissal from Rutgers, the Turning Point USA chapter added an update saying that it did not support harassment or the doxxing of him or anyone else.
“I think that all death threats and doxxing are unjustified and not how political disputes should be resolved in civilized society,” Ava Kwan, a Turning Point USA chapter member, said in an email on Wednesday.
But she defended the broader point of the petition, saying, “I think Dr. Antifa, who believes in violence as a political tool, should be fired, of course. Taxpayer money should not fund the salaries of terrorists.”
For years, Turning Point USA has maintained a watch-list of hundreds of professors whom the group accuses of advancing leftist propaganda in the classroom. Dr. Bray is on the list.
He is mentioned in part because he has spoken about how militancy is sometimes required to counter fascism. In the introduction to his 2017 book, he wrote that he hoped his work would promote organizing against fascism, white supremacy and all forms of domination.
He has donated half his author proceeds from the book to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund, which supports the legal and medical costs of people who face charges pertaining to antifascist organizing, including in Eastern Europe, but it is not an antifa organization, he said.
“I consider myself an antifascist so far as I’m against fascism, but I’m not part of any of these groups,” he added.
A rival Change.org petition began circulating on Sunday, calling on the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA to be disbanded, accusing it of inciting violence and promoting hate speech. As of Wednesday, that petition had about 1,800 signatures, several hundred more than the original petition calling for Dr. Bray’s firing.
In addition to his work on antifa, Dr. Bray is a historian of modern Spain. His latest book, “The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists and Martyrs in Spain and France,” explores activism that emerged in response to a wave of repression unleashed by the Spanish state to quash anarchist activities at the turn of the 20th century.
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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