Ken Parker, a 37-year-old Navy veteran who once served as the great dragon, or top-ranking leader, of the Ku Klux Klan in Jacksonville, Florida, was initially suspended after posting a photo of himself on Facebook holding an assault rifle and calling out students who challenged his beliefs, saying he will "Shut them down." In the photo, Parker revealed a tattoo of a swastika on his chest.
"They completely misconstrued my quote. I never said I was ever going to shoot anybody," Parker told The Washington Post on Wednesday.
"I did not make any threats on the campus, I left my politics at home, and I went to school, and I attended my classes and then went home." The lifting of Parker's suspension comes at a time when universities across the country are wrangling with how to handle the presence of white nationalists on campus and walking the fine line between defending constitutional rights and protecting the safety of their students.
Conservatives have also criticized universities for infringing on students' rights to free speech.
The University of Michigan is considering allowing white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on its campus, although Spencer's views are "Antithetical to everything we stand for at the University of Michigan," the school's president, Mark Schlissel, wrote in a letter to the campus Tuesday.
Parker left the KKK two years ago, said he, to join the National Socialist Movement, one of the largest and most notable neo-Nazi groups in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
His Facebook account was deactivated soon after he posted his photo, Parker said, in part because of the photo and because of a "History of getting myself thrown in Facebook jail for comments." Outside the doors of a hearing Monday to determine Parker's fate at the University of North Florida, about 80 students and faculty members rallied to send a message to the university that Parker's beliefs were unwelcome.
Among them were members of the grass-roots activist organization Students for a Democratic Society, whom Parker had specifically challenged in his Facebook post, he said.
Members of the group could not be immediately reached.
The counterprotest was held by Parker's four friends, who he said included a member of the KKK and two members of the League of the South, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a neo-Confederate group.
Authorities with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and the university's police department stood watching during the protests.
University President John Delaney said in a statement that a panel composed equally of students and faculty and staff members decided to lift Parker's suspension after meeting with him during his hearing.
To protect students' safety, Parker has been prohibited from stepping on campus with the exception of attending his second hearing, for which he will be escorted by a police officer, Delaney wrote.
Parker's second hearing, set to take place in a month before the end of the semester, will address several conduct violations with which he is charged.
"I have reasonably foreseen that this student's unsupervised presence on campus would be a risk to his personal safety and would cause a substantial disruption of, and material interference with, the University's learning environment as well as the rights and safety of other students, staff and faculty, "Delaney wrote.
Parker's ban from campus means he will have to take his classes off campus or online, he said.
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