One brave student is sounding the alarm after receiving a class assignment where her openly anti-Trump professor, Dr. Marija Bekafigo, asked her students to explain if “President Trump’s immigration policies align with America’s cultural values of liberty, equality, and democracy.”
“My American politics teacher is literally setting anyone up who doesn’t agree with her to fail. Awesome,” Sienna Knox, a Criminology and Criminal Justice major at Northern Arizona University, tweeted on Tuesday.
My American Politics teacher is literally setting anyone up who doesn’t agree with her to fail. Awesome ???? pic.twitter.com/CldzC1EvkG
— Sienna? (@sienknox) January 24, 2018
Bekafigo has some tweets of her own, including ones where she calls Trump an “orange buffoon” and a “#loser,” asking Congress to impeach him for “mental illness.” There are other tweets where Bekafigo says, “I hate Republicans,” and calls Republicans “a bunch of fools.”
Ironically, Bekafigo is published on the topic of negative Twitter usage and even authored a chapter of a textbook on the subject. The chapter is titled “Do Campaigns Go Negative on Twitter?”
Knox is understandably concerned that Bekafigo’s disdain for Republicans and Trump will impact the way she grades assignments like the one she assigned that’s due Jan. 28.
“I’ve only had one class with her so far. School started last week and we only meet once a week. But she set the tone on the very first day, bashing Trump the first chance she got,” Knox told Red Alert Politics. “I want to know if I get a good grade … but I also don’t know if I’m going to stay in the class because she found my tweets.”
The full assignment reads:
“Do President Trump’s immigration policies align with America’s cultural values of liberty, equality and democracy? Who or why not?
“In answering this question you must first know what his immigration policies are. Some key policies/positions that illustrate his views on immigration are the executive order ‘Protecting the Nation from foreign terrorist entry’ that was signed in January, his emphasis on border (The Wall), and the recent pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Your answer does not, and indeed should not, contain a summary of each of these policies. I will know if you understood his immigration stance by your answer to the question.”
After Knox sent out her original tweet, Bekafigo changed her account status to private. Both Bekafigo and Northern Arizona University did not respond to request for comment in time for publication.
