Knox News: UT Profs 1std Amend Trial on right to comment on the demise of a fascist set for 19 Jan

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Judge sets trial date for Tennessee professor's Charlie Kirk comment suit

Keenan Thomas

Knoxville News Sentinel

Dec. 25, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET

A federal judge has set a trial date in the lawsuit filed by suspended professor Tamar Shirinian against the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, but the parties involved won't meet in court until 2027 as Shirinian fights to retain her job following a crass comment she made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Judge Katherine Crytzer has scheduled the trial for Jan. 19, 2027, at the Howard H. Baker Jr. United States Courthouse in downtown Knoxville with a pretrial conference set Jan. 5, 2027.

Crytzer expects the trial to last five days, and she's laid out a checklist for Shirinian, her attorney Robb Bigelow, UT's lawyers and UT leaders including Chancellor Donde Plowman and UT System President Randy Boyd to complete throughout 2026.

Shirinian and Bigelow filed the lawsuit Oct. 29, saying the university and its leaders violated Shirinian's rights to free speech under the First Amendment and retaliated against her in a discriminatory fashion over her Facebook comment.

Cryzter denied Shirinian's emergency request to return to the classroom, using the "Pickering-Connick test" to determine whether Shirinian's speech was protected and whether a disruption occurred on campus. Shirinian and Bigelow have asked the judge to reconsider her ruling.

 

Tamar Shirinian's lawsuit against the University of Tennessee

Shirinian maintains she was unaware a Sept. 12 comment she made on a friend’s private Facebook post about Kirk - which said, in part, the "world is better off without him in it" and referred to his wife Erika Kirk as a "sick f---" for marrying him − would cause what Boyd, in a Sept. 15 email to the UT System Board of Trustees, called a “firestorm” of public reaction.

That same day, Plowman suspended Shirinian with pay and notified the professor of plans to fire her swiftly over the “incendiary nature” of her Facebook comment. Plowman followed up with Shirinian in a Sept. 16 letter outlining the grounds for her plans to fire the professor as a tenure-track faculty member.

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Shirinian became the center of controversy after her comment was shared widely by conservative social media provocateur Robby Starbuck. In a Sept. 14 post to X, Starbuck posted a screenshot of the comment, along with a screenshot of Shirinian's UT biography urging his more than 800,000 followers to pressure UT System leaders to fire her.

Shirinian made her case to UT before involving the courts. She and Bigelow told Knox News that attorneys from both sides met in attempts to reach a solution, but the conversations “were unsuccessful.”

“I am surprised that even after my appeal that they didn’t reinstate me – that they had the chance of making it right and they didn’t,” Shirinian said Dec. 5.

In her Sept. 22 appeal letter to the chancellor, Shirinian apologized to Plowman and the campus community for what she acknowledged as her "ineloquent and heartless" words.

Shirinian, who has worked five years for UT, was making $89,808 as an assistant professor as of Nov. 1, 2024, according to the UT System employee salary database. Bigelow, her attorney, told Knox News on Dec. 5 the professor was continuing to be paid during the ongoing lawsuit.

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Shirinian wants to return to the classroom and is seeking compensation for back pay, emotional distress, “loss of enjoyment of life” and damages.

“I was frankly shocked by the university’s actions against me,” Shirinian told Knox News on Dec. 5. “I don't understand how they could possibly justify terminating a faculty member for expressing her own private opinions in her own private life.”

Keenan Thomas is the higher education reporter for Knox News. Email: keenan...@knoxnews.com.

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