This is part of PEN America’s ongoing “Snapshots of Censorship” project. Read more and share your story here.
Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September 2025, I was targeted as part of an insidious doxing campaign that sought to punish anyone who criticized Kirk, and subsequently put on administrative leave from Florida Atlantic University. My social media posts, primarily reposts of evidence of Kirk’s intolerance and bigotry, were undeniably protected speech, as a costly university investigation determined. I was not disciplined, and was reinstated. Was I censored?
Answering that question requires certain facts. First, the person doxing me was a former staffer to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Immediately after she publicized my social media posts, other commentators began painting me as a lunatic, genetic mutation, abhorrent, evil, vile, sick, deranged and nasty (those are just some of the G-rated terms used). One ambitious commenter added my home address, work phone number and email. FAU was repeatedly tagged, as were Gov. DeSantis and both of my senators.
Second, Adam Hasner, FAU’s recently hired, Tallahassee-approved president, posted publicly on FAU’s X account that an employee had been put on leave – a clear violation of university personnel policy. Though not named, I was easily identified. This act amplified the university’s exposure immeasurably.
At this point, the X account @LibsofTikTok (c. 4.5 million followers) reposted Hasner’s statement along with my name and faculty headshot, writing “Another one bites the dust!” Within hours, I was receiving death threats. My email, voicemail, and social media DMs exploded. I had joined LoTT‘s daily doxing docket, a strategy the account’s owner, Chaya Raichik, has profited mightily from by exploiting the algorithm’s incentivization of inflammatory rhetoric.
When I filed two police reports about the threats, the officers said they had never heard the term doxing, which describes “a form of cyberbullying that uses sensitive or secret information, statements, or records for the harassment, exposure, financial harm, or other exploitation of targeted individuals.” When virality can raise a rabble in minutes, even if the target could be easily exonerated, the damage is done through sheer force of contagion.
Prominent posters like Raichik benefit from Elon Musk’s manipulations of the X platform, which gives advantageous visibility and algorithm boosts for a price (subscription), rather than the previous model of the “earned” blue check as a mark of authentication. This, combined with Musk’s gutting of moderation, has created a marketplace of rage bait for clicks, where each comment and repost could put coins in the poster’s pocket.
The result is an act of political violence. Influencer-activists lob grievance porn for clicks to an audience of dry kindling. Fear is their fuel. But the fires they light are rarely traced back to them. This is stochastic terrorism: “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”
As a result of this doxing campaign against me and others, increased security appeared on the FAU campus, including police cars permanently stationed with lights ablaze, a surveillance tower, and highly visible, armed officers. Staff faced phoned-in threats and vulgarity-laden voice messages. Students found their classes moved online for their protection. The university was terrorized and frightened into silence. It wasn’t just me – it was the whole campus. Mission accomplished.
So yes, this was a highly coordinated act of censorship. I was among many hundreds targeted nationwide, used as an example to stifle much needed discussion.
This was never about “what” we said about Charlie Kirk, whether those posts were profane or, as in my case, primarily a reposting of Kirk’s words. Commentators scrutinized the posts, courting the controversy, rather than asking why the doxing effort was so immediate, widespread, and effective.
Fear is the tool of tyrants. Democracy cannot survive when citizens can be silenced by mob politics.
