The New York Times (Gift)

10/08/2025

A Rutgers University expert on antifa fled the United States with his family on Thursday night in the wake of death threats that followed President Trump’s push to characterize the left-wing antifascist movement as a domestic terrorist organization.

On Wednesday night, the expert, Mark Bray, was turned back from the gate at Newark Liberty International Airport, after getting the family’s boarding passes, checking their bags and going though security and was told his reservation had been canceled. But his flight was rescheduled and took off Thursday evening, he wrote in a post on Bluesky.

Dr. Bray, a historian who published the 2017 book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” had taught courses on anti-fascism and terrorism at Rutgers in New Jersey in relative obscurity until a few weeks ago.

In the weeks after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, he has become a target of right-wing hate, accused of being a part of the movement he studied. Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer, called Dr. Bray a “domestic terrorist professor” on X. The Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA then circulated a petition accusing Dr. Bray of being an “outspoken, well-known antifa member” and called for him to be fired.
The petition referred to him as “Dr. Antifa.”

“My role in this is as a professor,” Dr. Bray, an assistant teaching professor at Rutgers, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never been part of an antifa group, and I’m not currently. There’s an effort underway to paint me as someone who is doing the things that I’ve researched, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

The furor grew after Fox News reported on the petition. Dr. Bray’s home address was revealed on social media. He received several death threats, including one vowing to kill him in front of his students.

He notified campus and local police, but with two young children, he and his wife, who is also a Rutgers professor, decided that it would be safer to relocate to Spain and teach remotely, at least for this academic year, he said.

For years, Turning Point USA has maintained a watch-list of hundreds of professors whom the group accuses of advancing leftist propaganda in the classroom. Dr. Bray is on the list.

He is mentioned in part because he has spoken about how militancy is sometimes required to counter fascism. In the introduction to his 2017 book, he wrote that he hoped his work would promote organizing against fascism, white supremacy and all forms of domination.

He has donated half his author proceeds from the book to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund, which supports the legal and medical costs of people who face charges pertaining to antifascist organizing, including in Eastern Europe, but it is not an antifa organization, he said.