Anthony Scaramucci, who served as the White House communications director for a brief ten days this past summer, has stepped down from another role, resigning from a Tufts University’s Board of Advisors after weeks of students and faculty calling for his removal.
Scaramucci’s resignation also comes after a controversy in which he threatened legal action against a Tufts graduate student and the school’s student-run newspaper, The Tufts Daily, claiming defamation.
The letter sent by attorneys on Scaramucci’s behalf to the student and the paper resulted in the university postponing a scheduled event at which Scaramucci was supposed to speak to students at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy about his background, his experience and about the petition that was calling for his removal from that school’s board.
On Tuesday, Tufts announced Scaramucci’s official resignation.
“This morning, Anthony Scaramucci informed The Fletcher School that he is resigning his position on the school’s Board of Advisors, effective immediately. We thank Mr. Scaramucci for his past service to Tufts and wish him well,” Admiral James Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School, said in a statement.
Scaramucci has defended his actions both on Twitter and in an interview with the Tufts Observer, a student magazine.
He spoke to the Observer about why he threatened to sue the Tufts Daily and Camilo Caballero, the graduate student who wrote op-eds in the Daily about Scaramucci in which Scaramucci was described as “unethical” and “a man who makes his Twitter accessible to friends interested in giving comfort to Holocaust deniers.”
“I view this school as a campus that [has] a long-standing association with free speech,” Scaramucci told the Observer. “[Caballero] can say I’m short, he can say I’m fat, he can say I’m balding, he can say he doesn’t like my politics, he can express any opinion that he wants, but what he can’t do is…challenge factually my business career.”
Scaramucci also said that the criticisms against him for threatening a school newspaper and a graduate student with legal action are “baby-ish.”
Scaramucci also addressed the controversy in an open letter to Tufts students and faculty, published on the Scaramucci Post, in which he addressed the descriptors given to him in the op-eds, like that he is a “hypocrite” and an “opportunist.” You can read that letter in full here.
The ACLU of Massachusetts is representing Caballero and filed on Tuesday a response to the letter sent by Scaramucci’s lawyers in which the ACLU argues that Scaramucci’s legal threat is without merit, as opinions are constitutionally protected. You can read the ACLU’s full repsonse at aclum.org/scaramucci-response.
