An outside view of Macky Auditorium, which houses the Center for Humanities & the Arts. (Ainsley Coogan/CU Independent)
Last year, when Jennifer Ho, the director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, met with then-Provost Russell Moore to discuss the Trump Administration’s potential impacts on her department, there was one question at the very top of her mind.
“I asked him whether I, as director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts, could make statements that I believe to be true based on my area of expertise, because I have academic freedom,” Ho said.
There was an important distinction that allowed her to: Ho is not an officer of the university, meaning she is not at the administrative level of a regent, dean, provost or chancellor.
According to the CU system’s policies, other university employees may express their opinions, so long as it is done in accordance with other relevant regulations and clearly marked with a disclaimer that they are not speaking on behalf of CU.
“I’m the director of the CHA, but I don’t speak on behalf of the CHA, or I don’t speak on behalf of the (university),” she explained. “This is actually a critical legal distinction.”
So, she spoke out, writing monthly — and sometimes twice-monthly — newsletters. While the letters always generally concerned the CHA, they didn’t shy from discussing hot-button topics as they related to work within the department. One letter from last November opened with a mention of Project 2025’s Presidential Transition Project, while another from April 2025 talked about gender fluidity.
But trouble came on the heels of Ho’s January 2026 letter, in which she talked about the United States’ recent intervention in Venezuela.
“This is not the newsletter I thought I would send,” the letter began. “I wrote a version on January 2, and then I woke up on January 3 and learned that the US had taken control of Venezuela (insert stronger language as you wish).”
The letter continued on to call the U.S. federal government a “fascist authoritarian regime,” hyperlinking viewers to further reading on the definition of the term “fascism.”
“Specifically, the kind of authoritarianism we are experiencing is ‘competitive authoritarianism,’” Ho wrote.
Initially, the newsletter did not include the required disclaimer, so a second version was sent out, clarifying in all capital letters that “comments by Dr. Ho are not to be confused as commensurate with or reflective of comments by the university or the Center for Humanities & the Arts.”
Now, in the days since both letters were published, Ho says she’s faced backlash in the form of racist and demeaning email responses, including the use of various slurs. But even this, she said, was “relatively minor,” considering her past experiences.
“Maybe it’s because I have a thick skin,” she said. “I’m an Asian-American woman who lived through COVID… so I’m not going to let that stop me.”
Articles about the newsletter have also cropped up in conservative news outlets like Campus Reform and Complete Colorado. In the latter, CU Regent Frank McNulty, a Republican representing Colorado’s fourth congressional district, called Ho’s statements “backwards and dangerous thinking.”
In his statement to Complete Colorado, McNulty also referred to Ho as “Ms. Ho,” rather than “Professor Ho,” a distinction that she called “insulting.”
“It’s all meant to demean,” she said.
In a statement to the CU Independent, McNulty called Ho’s statements “dangerous and divisive.”
“If she wants to hold those views personally, so be it,” he said. “She cannot use the University of Colorado as a platform to air her backwards views.”
Ho said that much of the backlash she’s received elsewhere has come from those who believe she was being a “partisan” educator.
“That’s part of the pushback — people saying ‘Oh, you’re inappropriately being against the Trump administration and the GOP, and that’s partisan, and that’s illegal,’” she said. “If you actually read the newsletter, I do not talk about a single political party… I’m a registered Independent. I am not a registered Democrat, although I’m also not a registered Republican.”
She also emphasized her agreement that educators should not lobby in their classrooms or express their own political affiliations.
“Professors cannot say in the classroom, ‘here’s who I’m voting for and here’s (who) you’re voting for,” she said. “I agree with that.”
But the letter, Ho argued, wasn’t a partisan political statement; it was, in her words, “patriotic.”
“What I thought I did was to say, ‘I am worried about U.S. democracy. I am worried that we are seeing U.S. democracy disappear,’” she said. “This isn’t a political party issue. This is a national issue.”
Contact CU Independent Special Investigations Editor Jessi Sachs at jessica.sachs@colorado.edu
