A college in Massachusetts has fired a professor who joked on social media that Iran should add Mall of America and other sites to a list of cultural targets in the United States after President Donald Trump threatened to attack cultural sites in the Middle Eastern country.
Babson College, a private business school in Wellesley, Mass., announced Thursday that it fired adjunct professor Asheen Phansey for a post he wrote on Facebook calling for Iran's leader to tweet a list of American sites to attack, including Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.
"In retaliation, Ayatollah Khomenei should tweet a list of 52 sites of beloved cultural heritage that he would bomb. Um ... Mall of America? ... Kardashian residence?" Phansey said in the since-deleted post on his personal Facebook profile.
The school investigated the post and quickly moved to terminate Phansey's employment.
"Babson College conducted a prompt and thorough investigation related to a post shared on a staff member's personal Facebook page that does not represent the values and culture of the College. Based on the results of the investigation, the staff member is no longer a Babson College employee," the school said in its statement. "As we have previously stated, Babson College condemns any type of threatening words and/or actions condoning violence and/or hate."
Phansey expressed regret for the post, which he called a "bad attempt at humor" in comments to WBZ in Boston. However, Phansey suggested the school overreacted in firing him.
"I am disappointed and saddened that Babson has decided to abruptly terminate my 15-year relationship with the college just because people willfully misinterpreted a joke I made to my friends on Facebook," Phansey said in a statement to CNN.
The Bloomington megamall, which receives an estimated 40 million visitors annually, has been the subject of terror threats in the past, notably in 2015 when east African terror group al-Shabab named it specifically in a video threatening attacks on Western shopping malls.
