The simmering feud between conservative activist organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and taxpayer-funded Arizona State University (ASU) escalated Thursday when a self-identifying queer professor apparently lunged at a TPUSA cameraman on campus and the school stood by him.
ASU Professor of English David Boyles, co-founder of Drag Queen Story Hour Arizona, was caught on video attacking a TPUSA cameraman after a reporter began asking questions about his support for drag queen story hour. In response to Boyles’ apparent attempt to hit the cameraman, the TPUSA reporter shoved Boyles who fell and quickly rose to his feet, footage shared by TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk shows. (RELATED: ‘We Apologize’: ‘The View’ Takes Back Attacks On Conservative Group)
ASU President Michael Crow was silent last week as pro-Hamas “protestors” denigrated Jewish students on campus, but he worked over the weekend and sent an official email smearing TPUSA after “queer” ASU professor David Boyles attacked our cameraman.
Here’s the video evidence,… pic.twitter.com/Bc3q9vrY19
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 16, 2023
Kirk shared overhead footage of the incident and the cameraman’s footage that concluded when Boyles attacked him. Boyles, wearing a dress, could be seen in both videos lunging at the cameraman after the TPUSA reporter asked him a question.
“Professor Boyles attacked our crew first, and our reporter, Kalen D’Almeida, pushed him off to protect his cameraman. Violence is never okay and just because Professor Boyles happens to be gay (or whatever) doesn’t give him the right to attack people because he doesn’t like the questions they’re asking,” Kirk said on Twitter.
“Our reporter used his constitutionally-protected speech to ask a taxpayer-funded employee some simple questions: Why is he the Phoenix sponsor of Drag Queen Story Hour?”
Additional ASU security footage shared on the campus police department’s YouTube channel appears to show the TPUSA reporter checking on Boyles as he gathered himself and got up off the ground.
ASU police are investigating the attack as a “potential bias or prejudicially motivated incident,” according to Arizona’s Family, a local CBS affiliate. Boyles called the TPUSA questions “horrible and incendiary” in a private Facebook post shared after the incident, the outlet reported. He did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Boyles is featured on TPUSA’s professor watchlist because of his advocacy for drag queen story hour and his apparent “obsession” with sexual education.
“Sex education is a topic I’ve been obsessed with for a while,” Boyles wrote in a May 16 blog post, according to the watchlist. “In 2021, I did a three-part ‘Queering Sex Ed’ series on the history of sex education in America and the ways in which it has traditionally erased queer people, as well as the ways in which queer people have resisted this erasure and cared for their communities by creating their own sex ed underground.” His three-part “Queering Sex Ed” series can also be found on his “Angelic Troublemakers” Substack blog.
Boyles promoted his drag queen story hour organization in another blog post written in February for a different publication. In the article, he attacks conservatives for expressing concerns about drag queens being in the presence of children.
He has been featured in multiple “Art of Drag” events including a talk he gave in September where he spoke about the history of drag queens alongside another Phoenix drag queen, according to the AZ Free News.
Boyles is teaching a class this semester about “LGBTQ+ Youth” in pop culture and politics in addition to his introductory English courses. He wrote a novel published in July 2022 about a “classic queer story” of a teenager who gets “tutored” by a queer college student and her friends, including an “aspiring drag queen,” according to the novel’s Amazon blurb.
ASU President Michael Crow defended Boyles and his work in an Oct. 14 statement addressing the campus incident with TPUSA.
“It is astounding to me that individuals from Turning Point USA would wait for an ASU instructor to come out of his class to follow him, harass him and ultimately shove him to the ground, bloodying his face,” his statement reads. Crow does not mention Boyles’ apparent attempt to attack TPUSA’s cameraman.
“This is the kind of outrageous conduct that you would expect to see from bullies in a high school cafeteria. I spoke with Dr. Boyles about what transpired when he was walking from his class to his car and I watched the video of the incident multiple times. It is stunning for Turning Point USA leadership to endorse, defend and fund such activity in the name of ‘freedom,'” Crow continued.
Crow doubled down on his request for TPUSA to remove Boyles from its professor watchlist and accused TPUSA’s database of causing attacks on his faculty, without providing evidence. Crow did defend TPUSA’s right to host events and speak on campus while pledging to protect his faculty from TPUSA activists.
“Let me assure all of you that ASU will do all that we can to end the bullying and intimidation of our faculty members by Turning Point USA and to reduce threats against the members of the ASU community which arise from such actions,” Crow concluded.
ASU referred the Daily Caller to Crow’s statement and the ASU Police Department’s security footage in response to a request for comment.
TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet accused Crow of misrepresenting what took place in a statement provided to the Daily Caller.
“What’s astounding is for President Crow to so brazenly misrepresent what’s crystal clear in the video. Professor Boyles is the one who turned this interaction violent. He lunged and hit our camera man. Our reporter moved to protect his crew member who was getting attacked. They then asked him if he was okay, and if he needed any assistance before leaving,” Kolvet said.
“Mr. Boyles and President Crow are shamefully attempting to use Mr. Boyles’s sexual orientation to play victim and skip over the fact that he was the one who attacked our crew. Self defense is not hate,” he continued.
“President Crow should be ashamed of lying to the ASU community in an official university email when a simple review of the video contradicts his every word.”
The Boyles incident escalates a conflict between ASU and TPUSA, an Arizona-based organization, that began when Kirk participated in an event in February with conservative radio host and PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager.
Kirk and Prager’s event sparked condemnation from faculty at ASU’s Barrett Honors college who wrote a letter ahead of the program attacking Kirk and Prager’s views. The letter was signed by 39 faculty members in the honors college.
READ THE LETTER:
“By platforming and legitimating their extreme anti-intellectual and antidemocratic 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,” the letter states.
Advertising from the event was scrubbed and, behind the scenes, ASU deans pressured the Barrett Honors College to drop the event, according to Ann Atkinson, former executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at ASU’s Barrett Honors college.
Atkinson wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) describing the “threats” and “scare tactics” deployed by ASU in an attempt to cancel the event.
“I ignored their threats and the event was a resounding success—1,500 people attended in person, another 24,000 joined us online. There were no protests, no disturbances, and no traumatized students. But the faculty’s illiberal tantrum was devastatingly effective on two fronts,” Atkinson wrote.
She said the intimidation by ASU scared undergraduates who might have otherwise attended and resulted in punishment for the event organizers. Atkinson was terminated in June and another staffer who organized the event was fired, she said in her WSJ op-ed.
“ASU preaches universal speech standards — but its actions speak louder,” Atkinson told the Daily Caller in a statement. “Its extensive defense of Professor David Boyles, after he struck first, while staying silent on calls for Jewish genocide, exposes a double standard. It is time for ASU leadership to act on true equality – regardless of ideology.”
ASU released a statement on Oct. 10 addressing the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel that offered students mental health support without taking a position on the conflict. (RELATED: National Organization Of Pro-Hamas Student Groups Once Expressed Support For Ilhan Omar And Rashida Tlaib)
“The recent terrorist attacks by Hamas against the people of Israel and the subsequent retaliatory strikes have understandably caused distress and concern across the globe and in the Arizona State University community,” the statement reads.
“The university has reached out to all students from the affected areas to offer support and help. ASU has resources available for members of our community who need support, including those who have family or loved ones in the conflict area,” ASU added. The school also defended its students’ right to free expression in its Oct. 10 statement.
Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel killed more than 1,000 civilians including at least 30 American citizens and an estimated 260 music festival attendees. Hamas is holding at least 199 people hostage in the disputed Gaza Strip after the hostages were abducted during the terrorist assault, according to the Times of Israel.
Hamas terrorists raped women, killed babies and left scores of butchered bodies on the streets of Israel in the wake of the terrorist attacks, according to multiple reports. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded to the Hamas atrocities by launching a counteroffensive featuring air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
Arizona State’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter released a statement on Instagram Oct. 11 expressing support for the “Palestinian freedom fighters” and the campus group mobilized for a “day of resistance” rally on campus the following day. The group is planning an “all out for Palestine” rally Saturday alongside a local Black Lives Matter chapter and other left-wing activist organizations.
Atkinson told the Daily Caller that Barrett Honors College faculty went into classrooms to ensure their students did not attend Kirk and Prager’s talk. The professors allegedly accused attendees of harboring white supremacist views, Atkinson said.
A testimonial from an ASU Barrett student accused faculty members, such as professor Laurie Stoff, of shutting down debate inside the classroom and imposing left-wing activist views onto students.
READ THE FULL TESTIMONIAL:
“In Dr. Stoff’s class I would go as far to say that she was focused on politically indoctrinating students in regards to communism, feminism, and modern DEI fundamentals. The entirety of the class was concerned with these subjects, and while she would have us read opposing arguments to these subjects, she would heavily critique these opposing materials and mockingly joke about how misguided they were,” the student said.
“An instance of political bias I experienced was during the week leading up to the Health, Wealth, and Happiness PragerU event being held by the Lewis Center. During the week leading up to this event; Dr. Stoff repeatedly told us not to go to the event, that it was for white supremacists, and that she was ‘disappointed’ by the Lewis Center being allowed to hold the event,” the student claimed.
“However when black history month came around, she created an assignment that as far as I can remember was not included in the syllabus, requiring us to go to one of the Barrett sponsored black history month events. We were told that it was mandatory and if we did not attend at least one session we would fail the assignment. These events included themes of Black Lives Matter, racism in America, institutionalized racism, etc.”
ASU’s handling of Kirk and Prager’s event led to scrutiny from Republican state senators who demanded ASU investigate the allegations of professors intimidating students to prevent them from attending the program.
Arizona Republican state legislators formed a committee in July to gather information regarding the status of free expression at Arizona’s public colleges and universities. ASU sent its internal report on the Kirk and Prager event to the committee in September and the school did not find evidence of censorship.
Republican lawmakers disputed ASU’s findings and promised further action to prevent censorship at Arizona’s colleges and universities, the Arizona Daily Independent reported. The Arizona legislature is currently grappling with a $400 million budget shortfall the state is expected to face by the end of the year.
Kirk and Prager returned to ASU in late September for part two of their “health, wealth and happiness” series. The event went for roughly 90 minutes and was live-streamed on Kirk’s YouTube channel.
“What happened last time, what 37 professors wrote, was really a microcosm of what is happening in virtually every campus,” Prager said. “The 37 professors are intellectual lightweights … and they’re cowards.”