And she runs the communications department?

A University of Michigan professor, sparked a backlash among colleagues and GOP officials after writing a column titled “It’s Okay To Hate Republicans,” including a demand by the state Republican party chairman that she resign from her taxpayer-funded job.

“I can’t stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform or championing fetal ‘personhood,” wrote Susan J. Douglas, professor and chairwoman of communications studies.

Her column goes on to mention “an escalation of determined vilification” and how “dogmatism, rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity” could influence thinking.

Andrea Fischer Newman, a member of the UM Board of Regents was not pleased.

“As a Republican and a Member of the Board of Regents, I find Professor Douglas’s column extremely troubling and offensive,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “The University of Michigan community rightly supports and defends a wide variety of viewpoints and a diversity of opinion on all subjects. But this particular column, which expresses and condones hatred toward an entire segment of individuals in our society based solely on their political views, fails to observe an equally important value of our University — respect for the right of others to hold views contrary to our own. Professor Douglas’s column ill-serves the most basic values of a University community.”

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Bobby Schostak said it’s time Douglas just gets out of that community. She might not realize it, but a lot of those Republicans she hates are Michigan taxpayers who are paying her salary.

“The piece by Professor Susan J. Douglas is ugly and full of hatred, and it should not be tolerated by the University of Michigan,” Schostak told the Detroit Free Press. “… It’s inexcusable for any instructor to isolate students because of their political ideology, especially if they do not fall in line with his or her own. Not only does she further perpetuate the political discord in our nation today, but she’s completely out-of-touch and focusing on a life of politics she apparently left decades ago. …”

Twitter was abuzz at the story:

@umich Do you support Prof. Susan J. Douglas in her very public, bigoted, and harmful missive preaching hate against the GOP? #sickening

— Hector (@HectorHector502) December 18, 2014

This GOPer doesn’t hate #SusanJDouglas. I pity her trying to justify why ideological bigotry better than racial/ethnic bigotry. #tcot @GOP — eric golub (@TYGRRRREXPRESS) December 17, 2014

Daily Caller: MI professor hates Republicans & wants everyone to know. U of MI prof Susan J Douglas writes for union backed These Times.

— Joy Tiz (@joytiz) December 18, 2014

Her article concludes saying that she hates Republicans as a self-defense mechanism because, of course, Republicans started this. Her latest book is titled, “Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work is Done.”

There is something laughably ironic about a professor of communications studies being so utterly inept at communication as to publicly condemn the views of millions of Americans.

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Wayne Dupree

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