After a New-York based Black Lives Matter chapter held a “blacks-only” Memorial Day party, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political commentator Lisa Durden got into a sparring match during a “Tucker Carlson Live” show.
“You White people are angry because you couldn’t use your White privilege card to get invited to the Black Lives Matter’s all-Black Memorial Day Celebration,” Durden said.
Carlson said that the celebration promoted segregation, and called Durden and BLM “hostile, separatist and crazy.”
The exchange was a fiery one, but Durden never thought that it would have any impact on her employment as an adjunct professor at Essex County College, an open-access, two-year community college headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.
“I had no concept that when I came to school after the appearance that I would be suspended and subsequently fired,” Durden told Diverse a phone interview on Monday.
Yet when Durden arrived on ECC’s campus to teach two days later, she said that she was intercepted by an administrator who escorted her to her classroom and instructed her to inform her students that she would not be holding class that day. She was then immediately taken to the HR office, where she was handed a suspension notice. Two weeks later, she was fired.
“They never gave me any reason in the paperwork when they decided to fire me,” Durden said. “From what I understand the president has made statements about why he’s not inviting me back, but I’ve not seen any of that.”
