Two members of a conservative group followed and harassed a queer Arizona State University professor who founded a drag story hour, starting an altercation that ended in the two people shoving the professor down and “bloodying his face,” the university president told faculty and staff on Saturday.
Security footage from the altercation last Wednesday shows two people — one with a camera — from the right-wing group Turning Point USA following and questioning professor David Boyles. After the professor appears to try to grab the camera or push it out of one of the men’s hands, the other knocks Boyles to the ground.
Boyles is the co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona, which features drag performers reading children’s books to kids. Drag story hours across the country have become a frequent target of right-wing attacks and anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation.
In video of the incident posted by Turning Point USA, the two men confront Boyles on campus and pepper him with questions implying that his work with Drag Story Hour makes him a groomer.
“If I ask you how long you’ve been attracted to minors, or how long you’ve fantasized about minors having sex with adults and why you write about it in children’s books, what are you going to tell me?” asked one of the Turning Point USA members.
ASU police did not respond to a request for comment, but they told KPNX that the assault is being investigated as “a potential bias or prejudicially motivated incident.”
Turning Point USA, which was founded by then-19-year-old Charlie Kirk, told KPNX that the person with the camera plans to press charges against Boyles for assault.
Both Turning Point USA and Boyles did not immediately respond to a request for comment from HuffPost.
On his Facebook page, the professor spoke out about the incident and said he was shoved down after he “moved to block the camera.”
“My physical injuries are relatively minor and I’m doing ok,” Boyles wrote the post alongside a photo of his face with a large cut. “But I’m also feeling angry, violated, embarrassed, and despairing at the fact that we have come to normalize this kind of harassment and violence against anyone who tries to support LGBTQ+ youth (ironically the topic of the class I had just finished teaching) or just LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups in general.”
Arizona State University President Michael M. Crow wrote in his email to faculty and staff that Boyles is “part of an academic community that appropriately engages” students across the “entire spectrum of human experience and expression.”
He called the two Turning Point USA members “cowards.”
“It is astounding to me that individuals from Turning Point USA would wait for an ASU instructor to come out of his class to follow him, harass him and ultimately shove him to the ground, bloodying his face,” Crow wrote. “Cowards that they are and so confident in the legality and appropriateness of their actions, the Turning Point USA ‘reporter’ and ‘cameraman’ then ran away from the scene before police arrived.”
A 2019 HuffPost investigation revealed that Turning Point USA’s national organization hired several racists to its national staff, including former national field director Crystal Clanton, who once texted a fellow employee: “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.”