Rutgers professor taken to psych hospital after tweeting about gun control
Rutgers adjunct professor Kevin Allred said he was taken to a psychiatric hospital around midnight on Wednesday after a student felt threatened by comments he made on Twitter about flag burning and gun control.
Allred said the Rutgers University Police Department reported him to the New York Police Department for making hypothetical statements about shootings in the United States, as well as flag burning. The New York Daily News confirmed that Rutgers police asked the NYPD for help.
Allred said he was taken to the Bellevue Hospital from his Brooklyn residence for evaluation and released a short time later after Rutgers police received reports that he previously made threats to kill white people, the NYPD said in a statement.
"The doctors were like, 'This is ridiculous, why did they bring you here?'" Allred told the Daily News. "And I said, 'That's what I thought but they told me they had to do it.'"
A University spokesman said Rutgers police were responding to a student complaint.
"The Rutgers University Police Department responded to a complaint from a student and took all appropriate action," he said. "We have no further comment."
Allred, who teaches the popular course "Politicizing Beyonce," said the tweet that sparked the incident was removed by Twitter. He said Wednesday that his post posed a question about the Second Amendment.
i said: would conservatives care as much abt the 2nd amendment if guns killed more white people? a question meant to expose double standard
— Kevin Allred (@KevinAllred) November 16, 2016
The incident comes as Rutgers students walked out of class and staged a protest at Voorhees Mall on the College Avenue campus.
A petition has been circulating throughout the past two days, sparked by Trump's win, calling for the University to be a "Sanctuary Campus." The petition asks that Rutgers be a place where undocumented immigrants can be safe from deportation.
On Tuesday, University President Robert L. Barchi sent an email out to students calling Rutgers a place where students of different ethnicities, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and with varying political and religious views can be safe.
Editor's note: The article was updated to include that Kevin Allred resides in Brooklyn.
Nikhilesh De is the news editor of The Daily Targum. He is a School of Engineering senior. Follow him on Twitter @nikhileshde for more.
Avalon Zoppo is the managing editor for The Daily Targum. She is a School of Arts and Sciences junior majoring in political science.
