{"id":148455,"date":"2026-02-28T16:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/148455\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T16:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:29:08","slug":"nutty-professor-who-held-machete-to-post-reporters-neck-rambles-in-defense-of-her-407k-taxpayer-funded-art-installation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/148455\/","title":{"rendered":"Nutty professor who held machete to Post reporter\u2019s neck rambles in defense of her $407K taxpayer-funded art installation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The unhinged ex-CUNY professor who savagely held a machete to the neck of a Post reporter went on a rambling tirade after being called out<\/a> last week for her new $407,000 taxpayer-funded monument critics ripped as \u201cjunk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tone-deaf Shellyne Rodriguez painted herself as a victim, whining in a Hyperallergic.com column about \u201cviolent fascist\u201d oppressors<\/a> out to get her.<\/p>\n

She never mentions \u201cmachete\u201d or shows remorse for her 2023 assault <\/a>on Post scribe Reuven Fenton.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis is not my first encounter with the tabloid, but a continuation of a targeted attack, which has everything to do with the fascist seizure of life that is all our reality now, but for Black, Indigenous, and colonized people globally has always been present, albeit at simmering temperatures,\u201d the 48-year-old wrote.<\/p>\n

Shellyne Rodriguez \u2014 the unhinged ex-CUNY professor who savagely held a machete to a Post reporter\u2019s neck in 2023 \u2014 went on a rambling tirade after the newspaper called her out on the front page last week for her $407,000 taxpayer-funded monument monstrosity in The Bronx. New York Post<\/p>\n

In her column, titled \u201cWhy My Public Art Drives the Right Nuts,\u201d she claims her media \u201ccrisis was not born yesterday, and since its inception, my permanent public artwork has kept the score,\u201d referring to her 23-foot-tall brick, steel and terracotta Marxist monstrosity called \u201cPhoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was unveiled in November\u00a0along Grand Concourse and Morris Avenue \u2014 a little more than two years after she\u00a0copped a wrist-slap plea deal with Bronx prosecutors\u00a0<\/a>for her assault on the veteran journo.<\/p>\n

The monument\u2013 which already has cracks along its foundation \u2014 was first commissioned in 2018 through the city\u2019s\u00a0Percent for Arts\u00a0<\/a>program \u2014 which sets aside 1% of the budget for city-funded construction projects for new artwork \u2014 as part of a $62.5 million reconstruction of the Grand Concourse.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez\u2019s 23-foot-tall brick, steel and terracotta Marxist monstrosity called \u201cPhoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx.\u201d .<\/p>\n

Rodriguez, a self-proclaimed black Marxist,<\/a> pocketed $81,400 of the project\u2019s $407,000 budget as an \u201cartist fee.\u201d<\/p>\n

The polarizing piece is adorned with images of the phoenix, a mythological symbol of rebirth; a series of piercing eyes; four clenched fists signifying black power\/socialist solidarity, and the home-borough letters \u201cB\u201d and \u201cX.\u201d On top of the structure is an ascending black ladder without an end.<\/p>\n

It is supposed to be testament to the borough\u2019s resiliency after the arson spree during the tumultuous 1970s.<\/p>\n

However, many\u00a0neighborhood residents ripped it as an eyesore, including Frankie Santiago, who told The Post last week, \u201cIt looks like a piece of junk.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the column, Rodriguez claims she became a \u201ctarget\u201d of \u201cright-wing media\u201d only after making headlines as a\u00a0then-Hunter College adjunct art professor in May 2023 for\u00a0flipping out on pro-life students<\/a>\u00a0at the Manhattan-based CUNY campus.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez made the front page of the New York Post in May 2023 for attacking Post reporter Reuven Fenton.<\/p>\n

She failed to mention she menaced Fenton, who was simply doing his job and knocking on her Bronx apartment door to ask about the incident.<\/p>\n

She also bizarrely claimed \u201cWhite Christian supremacy is on the fascist march and carrying out a race cleansing campaign\u201d and that \u201cdespite these obstacles\u201d she was somehow able to complete Phoenix Ladder in November \u2013 seven years after being commissioned.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is an homage to the people of the Bronx, a lighthouse for our collective futures, and our witness.\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no surprise that these reactionary forces are appalled by it. They understand that this monument is built on their ruins.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, which oversees the program, has refused to comment about Rodriguez\u2019s outrageous, headline-making past or whether it considered pulling her budget after she threatened to \u201cchop\u201d up a reporter.<\/p>\n

The nutty professor was immediately fired by Hunter after the attack. In February 2024, she was axed from another\u00a0teaching gig at Cooper Union for anti-Israel screeds.\u00a0Her website doesn\u2019t highlight any current projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The unhinged ex-CUNY professor who savagely held a machete to the neck of a Post reporter went on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[1149,3456,357,128,8869,59695,57,9,24,63,87,129,131,130,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-148455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-artists","10":"tag-assaults","11":"tag-bronx","12":"tag-fascism","13":"tag-hunter-college","14":"tag-metro","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-the-bronx","20":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","21":"tag-the-bronx-news","22":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}