The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has placed a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies on leave after allegations surfaced that he was formally involved in a far-left gun club.

Professor Dwayne Dixon was put on leave earlier this week following reports of his alleged affiliation with “Redneck Revolt,” an organization that describes itself as an “anti-racist, anti-fascist, community defense formation,” the Daily Tar Heel reported.

UNC Vice Chancellor for Communications Dean Stoyer told the student newspaper Dixon’s leave follows “recent reports and expressions of concern regarding alleged advocacy of politically motivated violence.”

Dixon and UNC’s media affairs division did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment.

A rally was held Wednesday on campus to defend Dixon. Images of the demonstration show about four dozen protesters holding signs calling for the professor to be reinstated.

UNC student Jack D’Entremont, a member of the UNC GOP and local Turning Point chapter, told WRAL “I’m 100% okay with this demonstration here because I’m a free speech advocate, and I think that even if it’s not something I agree with, I think everyone has a right to fight for what they believe in.”

“But you fight with words, you don’t fight with calls to violence or actual violence, and I think there’s a lot of room for education here for everyone involved.”

WRAL also reported the controversy is not the first time Dixon has made headlines:

In August 2017, he was arrested at an anti-KKK rally in downtown Durham and charged with two misdemeanor counts of having a weapon at a public rally and going armed to the terror of people. While there were rumors of a white supremacist demonstration that day, it never materialized. Durham County sheriffs amped their units up when the rumors surfaced, but no known KKK members or white supremacy demonstrators actually arrived.

Deputies at the time said Dixon was carrying a semi-automatic rifle during the demonstration. The charges were dismissed. 

In September 2018, he faced an assault charge in connection with the melee that occurred when the controversial Silent Sam statue was toppled on the school’s campus.

Before entering the courtroom, Dixon said those charges were “patently false.”

“They have been put on me by a fascist who has targeted me specifically because they think that somehow by undermining me they can undermine a movement. But it’s not about me. It’s about all of us,” he said at the time. “The people who put charges on me today are part of a larger coterie of individuals who have conspired to continually try to distort the actual facts of our shared lives.”

Two months later, a judge dismissed that charge after citing a flaw in the charging document.

Fox News reported Wednesday that Dixon headlined a panel hosted by Harvard University’s in 2018 “during which he spoke for about 30 minutes about Redneck Revolt’s presence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. He made his case for armed political action, billed as self-defense against violent Nazis, White supremacists and fascists.”

He also described the “far-right” as “filled with murderous rage.”

Dixon was placed on leave after Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet posted on X calling for his termination after John Brown Gun Club recruitment flyers were found hanging at Georgetown University, the Daily Tar Heel reported.

“The flyers, seen last Wednesday and Thursday, read ‘Hey, Fascist! Catch! The only political group that celebrates when Nazis die,'” the student newspaper reported, adding the phrase was reportedly engraved on a shell casing recovered following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University.

WRAL reports the fliers found at Georgetown “reflects the same ‘John Brown Gun Clubs’ name as the one used by Redneck Revolt for their armed community defense classes. The flyer includes a phrase the FBI says Kirk’s alleged killer inscribed on an unfired bullet casing.”

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