In the immediate wake of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination on Sept. 10, 2025, depraved leftists celebrated in classrooms, in town squares, online, and elsewhere.
Some of those who publicly relished the news of the young father’s murder were publicly shamed, received reprimands, or even lost their jobs.
‘I am very pleased.’
One such radical managed to turn her encounter with accountability into a major payday.
On Sept. 12, 2025, Tamar Shirinian, a Lebanese-born LGBT obsessive then working as an assistant anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, wrote in a Facebook comment about Kirk’s assassination, “The world is better off without him in it,” WVLT-TV reported.
“Even those who are claiming to be sad for his wife and kids … like, his kids are better off living in a world without a disgusting psychopath like him,” Shirinian apparently continued, “and his wife, well, she’s a sick f**k for marrying him so I don’t care about her feelings.”
The radical’s comment soon went viral, prompting a response by the university.
University of Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman notified the radical in a Sept. 15 letter that she was being placed on administrative leave pending termination proceedings, stressing that “violence on a university campus wounds the heart of our academic mission, and no statement endorsing a campus shooting can be acceptable to an institution.”
Trent Nelson/the Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images
“By celebrating violence and murder in your social media posts, you have violated the university’s expectations for the people teaching our students,” Plowman continued. “Your decision to post incendiary comments publicly at a time of heightened anxiety reveals that you do not have the competencies necessary to be an effective instructor.”
Plowman highlighted in a subsequent letter dated Sept. 16 the policies the radical had violated warranting her termination.
In her six-page response, Shirinian blamed her nasty comment on Charlie Kirk, claiming that she made the post after seeing one of the murdered man’s quips that had made her “quite emotional” and put her “in a state of grief.” After displacing blame, she proceeded to attack the dead man for several pages.
After attributing 11 other comments to Kirk that “disgusted” her, the foreign-born radical painted herself as the real victim, identifying hate mail messages she supposedly received and complaining about the backlash over her remarks.
Plowman wasn’t buying what Shirinian was selling and saw to the radical’s termination on Feb. 11, just weeks after Shirinian asked the UT Board of Trustees in a letter to reinstate her.
In the termination letter, Plowman wrote, “Your words celebrated a gruesome murder, which horrifically took place on a college campus similar to our own, and then went on to callously demean the grief and loss felt by the widow and young children of the victim while also mocking any grief felt by others who sympathized with the surviving family.”
“The antagonizing tenor of your words makes you a target for potential retributive violence that could put our students and faculty in harm’s way, as well as irreparably damage the public’s trust in our University,” Plowman continued. “I have a responsibility to minimize any such risks.”
Months earlier, however, Shirinian — who was apparently making around $92,000 a year as of January — sued the university, once again pushing her victim narrative and denigrating Charlie Kirk.
In addition to spending roughly nine pages complaining about various things Kirk said before he was murdered, the Oct. 29 lawsuit accused the university of violating Shirinian’s First Amendment rights by “retaliating against her as a professor in a public university for expressing political speech in a purely personal capacity.”
The case was supposed to go to trial In January 2027, but the university blinked.
The university has reached a $1.9 million settlement with Shirinian — a settlement which WBIR-TV reported was approved in a meeting of the UT Board of Trustees Audit and Compliance Committee on Monday.
John Compton, the chair of the board, suggested that continuing litigation would eat up valuable time, attention, and resources that would be better invested in advancing the university’s mission.
While the radical gets a big payday, she will not have her faculty position restored.
Robb Bigelow, Shirinian’s attorney, said the agreement was a “mutually acceptable resolution.”
“We think it recognizes the seriousness of the issues presented while avoiding the time, expense, and stress of continued litigation. We wish the University, its students, faculty, and staff nothing but success going forward,” Bigelow said.
“I am very pleased with the outcome,” Shirinian told WBIR.
The settlement must now be approved by the full UT Board of Trustees and the state, including Governor Bill Lee (R).
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Charlie kirk, University of tennessee, Lawsuit, Politics, First amendment