All options are on the table in dealing with the Fresno State professor who called Barbara Bush "an amazing racist" shortly after the former first lady died, university president Joseph Castro said Wednesday. 
 
 "A professor with tenure does not have blanket protection to say and do what they wish," he said. "We are all held accountable for our actions." 
 
 Castro declined to comment specifically on how the university may handle Randa Jarrar's case, citing personnel matters. But he did say the next steps for the university include reviewing all the facts, as well as the faculty's collective bargaining agreement. 
 
 Within an hour of the official announcement that Bush, the wife of former president George H.W. Bush, died Tuesday at age 92., Jarrar took to social media to call the former first lady an “amazing racist” who raised a “war criminal.” Jarrar also expressed no concern that she could be fired or reprimanded for her outspokenness. 
 
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 “Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal,” Jarrar wrote on Twitter. “F--- outta here with your nice words.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 Castro said he shares the shock and horror many people expressed after Jarrar, an associate professor in the English department, tweeted about Bush. 
 
 "This was beyond free speech. This was disrespectful," Castro said. 
 
 The backlash on Twitter was immense on Tuesday night, with thousands of comments pouring in to condemn Jarrar for what she had said. Jarrar eventually made her social media accounts private. 
 
 Castro said he is grateful Jarrar chose to change her settings, and that her tweets are ultimately a way to educate the campus on social media use. 
 
 "One set of tweets, as horrible as they were, do not define us," Castro said. 
 
 Jarrar did not returned requests for comment by phone and email. But she did return to Twitter Wednesday to thank her supporters. 
 
 "I'm still fabulous, thanks for checking in. Love to all of you who have sent support," she wrote. 
 
 A tweet from Jarrar on Wednesday indicates that she is out of the country. Twitter 
 
 In one of her tweets on Tuesday night, Jarrar said she is a tenured professor and makes $100,000 a year. 
 
 “I will never be fired,” Jarrar tweeted. 
 
 
 
 
 
 At a news conference Wednesday, Provost Lynnette Zelezny also disagreed with the professor's contention she can't be fired because of tenure. 
 
 Asked at the news conference about that tweet, Zelezny said: "Does tenure mean that you, technically, cannot be fired? The answer to that is no." 
 
 The university had not been in contact with Jarrar, who is on a leave of absence this semester. 
 
 Protected speech? 
 
 Ari Cohn of FIRE, an organization that advocates for free speech on university campuses, said Jarrar’s initial tweet was protected speech under the First Amendment. 
 
 Even subsequent tweets in which Jarrar tagged the official Fresno State account do not indicate that she was speaking on behalf of her employer instead of as a private citizen, he said. 
 
 Instead, he believes she was reacting to the mob that wanted to see her fired, a trend that he said is growing in the last year. 
 
 “The desire to see someone fired because they said something you disagree with or was offensive to you is childish and unproductive and it needs to stop,” Cohn said. “It can so easily be turned around on someone you agree with so it's ultimately self-defeating.” 
 
 Last year, Fresno State professor Lars Maischak came under fire for a tweet saying President Donald Trump “must hang." 
 
 Maischak was ultimately reassigned for the next school year. 
 
 Cohn said if a professor felt a reassignment was a demotion, it could be a violation of their First Amendment rights and grounds for a lawsuit. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Abre' Conner, staff attorney for ACLU of Northern California, said Jarrar's statements are part of her First Amendment rights to express a political opinion. 
 
 "It appears the professor was involved in protected speech on her own time," Conner said. "If Fresno State administrators are reviewing her based on this political speech, that is troubling." 
 
 Hotline number 
 
 Jarrar also tweeted a phone number Tuesday, claiming it was her own. But the number actually led to an Arizona State University's suicide hotline, a fact that drew additional vitriol online. 
 
 Lori Prentice, who runs an in-home homeless ministry in Madera County, said tweeting out the number was like a "kick in the teeth" for those who work with individuals in crisis. 
 
 "There is a strong probability that someone who finally found the courage to contact the suicide hotline couldn't get through due to Jarrar's caustic misdirection," Prentice said. 
 
 Prentice said her daughter had been considering attending Fresno State, but her decision will depend on how the university handles Jarrar's case. 
 
 An Arizona State University official who asked not to be identified said the tweet did lead to unusually high call volume. 
 
 However, the call center brought on more staff, and he does not think anyone with a legitimate call did not get through. 
 
 The staff realized what must have happened when people calling were all angry at the same person. 
 
 Mixed reactions 
 
 Fresno State alumna Jasmine Leiva, who tweeted in support of Jarrar, said she thinks it's awful that the professor is being harassed for her comments. 
 
 "People are attacking her for stating something valid," Leiva said. "It's the pure vitriol that is usually directed at women of color on public platforms like Twitter." 
 
 Leiva wasn't a student of Jarrar's during her time at the university, but met the professor through classmates and the community. She tweeted Tuesday night that Jarrar is "a gem," and that Fresno State is lucky to have her. 
 
 "Dr. Castro said her views and comments are contrary to the core values of the university which values respect and empathy," Leiva said. "I would like to see those values afforded Professor Jarrar because we value critical thinking as well." 
 
 Blake Zante, president of Fresno State Associated Students, said that said Jarrar's comments did not reflect Fresno State's values. 
 
 "As president of the student body, I will work with the university to ensure that the student voice is heard and that appropriate action is taken," Zante said. 
 
 Maria Angelini, Jarrar's former sister in law, said her comments were shocking to her former in-laws. 
 
 "She was not this way when we knew her," Angelini said. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Angelini learned of the comments when news started to break online. She has not spoken to Jarrar in years. 
 
 Jarrar was born in Chicago and grew up in Kuwait and Egypt. In addition to her teaching, she has been involved in the local literary scene. 
 
 She was scheduled to appear at this weekend's LitHop, but told the event's organizers and Fresno City College that she will not be a participant. 
 
 "Fresno City College and LitHop 2018 support her decision to withdraw," a statement from Fresno City College read. ||||| FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A Fresno State lecturer who says he was demoted after posting a tweet that Donald Trump "must hang" says the university president is again failing to defend academic freedom, this time over a professor who called former First Lady Barbara Bush an "amazing racist." 
 
 In an opinion posted Thursday by The Fresno Bee, Lars Maischak says university President Joseph Castro is siding with attackers of English professor Randa Jarrar instead of standing up to the "fascist threat to academic freedom." 
 
 Writers and free speech advocates also called on California State University, Fresno on Thursday to end its investigation of Jarrar's tweets. Meanwhile, critics continued to slam Jarrar on social media for being insensitive so soon after Bush's death was announced Tuesday. 
 
 "Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal," Jarrar wrote on a Twitter account Tuesday that has since been made private. In response to critics, she said she was a tenured professor who could not be fired. 
 
 Jarrar is on leave this semester and scheduled to return in the fall. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt and moved to the United States after the Gulf War, according to her university faculty page. 
 
 She describes herself in her Twitter messages as an Arab-American and a Muslim-American woman. She did not respond to requests for comments from The Associated Press. 
 
 Jarrar further enraged people when she posted as her contact information a phone number that serves as a crisis hotline for Arizona State University. 
 
 Castro said Wednesday that the university would review the facts and look into the faculty's collective bargaining agreement. 
 
 "A professor with tenure does not have blanket protection to say and do what they wish," he said. "We are all held accountable for our actions." 
 
 In the case of Maischak, the history lecturer's classes were converted into online courses after the university discovered in April 2017 a tweet that said in part, "to save American democracy, Trump must hang." 
 
 University spokeswoman Patti Waid did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. 
 
 Fresno State is the university's popular name. ||||| Bestselling authors across the country are voicing support for Fresno State professor Randa Jarrar, and say the fallout of her tweet, which called Barbara Bush "an amazing racist," is an unfair overreaction. 
 
 "We stand with (Jarrar) and are excited to welcome her to the summer workshop this July, where she will be free to say anything she damn well pleases," the prominent literary magazine, Tin House, posted to Twitter on Thursday. 
 
 After the former first lady died on Tuesday, Jarrar, an award-winning author and professor at Fresno State's English department, said online that “Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. F--- outta here with your nice words.” 
 
 Jarrar, who is on leave and out of the country, was unapologetic about her remarks, arguing with those who said they were insensitive, even in the face of an investigation and news conference held by Fresno State officials, who condemned her words on Wednesday. 
 
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 But Jarrar has supporters — many who say her claims about Bush are not wrong. They point to controversial remarks made by Bush in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina, about those who had been devastated by the storm and were seeking refuge in the Houston Astrodome. "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them," Bush said then. 
 
 SHARE COPY LINK Lynnette Zelezny, Fresno State provost, leads a news conference about English professor Randa Jarrar's controversial Twitter post on Wednesday, April 18, 2018. 
 
 Bush also received criticism for casting doubt on Anita Hill, a black attorney who became a national figure after calling out U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas for sexual harassment in 1991. 
 
 The leaders of the Women's March were criticized for their tribute to Bush, who died at 92, with followers raising the same concerns about her past controversial comments. 
 
 "In calling Barbara Bush 'a racist,' (Jarrar) said bluntly what newspaper obituaries disguised when they wrote that Mrs. Bush was 'never shy about expressing her views,' or that, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, her 'candor got her into trouble," Laila Lalami, a novelist and Los Angeles Times book critic, posted to Twitter on Thursday. 
 
 Supporters of Jarrar are urging people to buy her books in a show of support and are criticizing Fresno State's reaction to her tweet, saying it is not a fireable offense. 
 
 "Death doesn't excuse racism. Calling out racism isn't an invitation for violence. The vitriol flung at her is the epitome of white fragility," Fresno writer Steven Sanchez said on Twitter. "The 'diplomacy' of Fresno State & others massages white fragility." 
 
 John Beynon, a fellow English professor at Fresno State, called Jarrar "a fierce, outspoken woman of color" who is unafraid to criticize what she perceives as America's injustices and its international relations — and often uses Twitter to do that. 
 
 "That commitment to justice is at the root of her thinking and her actions ..." Beynon said. "What you’re going to find is harsh criticism of parts of our society that Randa feels exasperated with." 
 
 Some supporters are pointing to the fact that Jarrar is an Arab-American and Muslim as reasons for the public's strong response to her words, saying a white man would be granted more freedom of speech. 
 
 "It just doesn't add up. We're in a very precarious moment," award-winning author Jericho Brown said. "And it's a moment when we really do have to protect voice like Jarrar's." 
 
 The ACLU of Northern California and the National Coalition Against Censorship have also called on Fresno State to end its investigation of Jarrar's conduct, calling it protected free speech. "We must all support (Jarrar) not because she’s such a talented writer (which she is) but because she has the right to have a political opinion and the right to express that opinion without being threatened with violence or loss of employment," Moustafa Bayoumi, award-winning author and columnist for The Guardian, said on Twitter. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ||||| SHARE COPY LINK In an August 2017 interview with the Collegian, Fresno State's student newspaper, professor Lars Maischak talks about the reaction to a tweet he posted that read, in part, that "Trump must hang." Chueyee Yang The Collegian 
 
 In an August 2017 interview with the Collegian, Fresno State's student newspaper, professor Lars Maischak talks about the reaction to a tweet he posted that read, in part, that "Trump must hang." Chueyee Yang The Collegian ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
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– Free speech activists are lending support to a Fresno State professor threatened with possible disciplinary measures after referring to Barbara Bush as an "amazing racist," who is "still fabulous, thanks for checking in." Randa Jarrar on Wednesday tweeted "love to all of you who have sent support," per the Fresno Bee. And there are apparently several. In an opinion piece at the Fresno Bee, a Fresno State lecturer who says he was last year demoted for claiming President Trump "must hang" argues university President Joseph Castro should be standing up to the "fascist threat to academic freedom" rather than investigating the tenured associate English professor currently on a leave of absence. Both the ACLU of Northern California and the National Coalition Against Censorship also say the investigation of the Arab-American should be closed. Jarrar, who is to return to the university in the fall, "said bluntly what newspaper obituaries disguised when they wrote that Mrs. Bush was 'never shy about expressing her views,' or that, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, her 'candor got her into trouble,'" says Los Angeles Times book critic Laila Lalami. Guardian columnist Moustafa Bayoumi says Jarrar has "the right to express that opinion without being threatened with violence or loss of employment." Fresno writer Steven Sanchez adds "the vitriol flung at her is the epitome of white fragility." The AP reports that critics have continued to bash Jarrar for being insensitive after Bush's death. Castro said her words went "beyond free speech," per the Bee. Jarrar—who grew up in Kuwait and Egypt—has also taken flak for implying the phone number of Arizona State University's crisis hotline was her own.