\u201cHe did not call for violence; he did not incite violence; he didn\u2019t threaten, certainly, to perform any violence himself. He just said, \u2018I do not condemn this gunman,\u2019\u201d David Carey, ACLU of Ohio\u2019s managing legal director, tells Pittsburgh City Paper. \u201cThis case is ultimately not about a protest. It\u2019s just about Guy voicing his political opinions \u2026 and, essentially, OSU expelled him for those.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christensen has been vocally pro-Palestine since at least November 2023, when he published an essay<\/a> while still in high school questioning Israel\u2019s policies regarding Palestinian and Israeli Arab citizens. His TikTok following has since ballooned to 3.5 million followers, and he continues to post leftwing and pro-Palestine content in spite of what he describes<\/a> as TikTok\u2019s \u201ccensorship\u201d of certain topics. Even before coming under criticism for his video about the D.C. shooting, Christensen says<\/a> opponents impersonated him and called in fake bomb threats to Pittsburgh-area synagogues, leading police to \u201csurround\u201d his family\u2019s home in Pittsburgh\u2019s northern suburbs.<\/p>\n Following the D.C. video, pro-Israel outlets and right-leaning tabloids including the New York Post criticized Israel, and, after discovering Christensen was an OSU student, activists and members of the OSU community began pressuring the university to intervene. Eventually, the issue caught the attention of U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), who urged the Capitol Police to investigate Christensen as a \u201cthreat.\u201d Christensen clapped back with a scathing video denouncing Torres as a \u201cZionist scumbag\u201d and \u201cAIPAC millionaire\u201d and has continued to criticize Torres.<\/p>\n The long-running Israel-Palestine conflict is a \u201csensitive issue,\u201d Carey acknowledges, and Christensen holds \u201cstrong opinions.\u201d \u201cBut the blowback of that included calls from antisemitism watchdog groups for Guy to either be expelled or investigated. They started tagging the FBI on posts about him. Senior department of justice officials started to suggest that they might be investigating him,\u201d Carey says.<\/p>\n Part of the issue with Christensen\u2019s expulsion, per the ACLU, was that he never sought to associate himself with the university, where he had recently completed his freshman year.<\/p>\n \u201cHe keeps a separation between his online presence and his student life to the extent possible,\u201d Carey tells City Paper. \u201cOne of his online critics figured out where he went to school and posted that information online. And subsequently there was a sort of letter writing campaign \u2026 demanding that he be punished, expelled, or investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOSU initially suspended him, and they told him that he could expect a meeting with them, where he would be able to explain his side of the story. He scheduled that meeting per their instructions. Before the meeting could take place, though, they decided to expel him\u201d for being a safety risk, Carey says. \u201cHe\u2019s being punished for political opinions that he voiced outside of the school context on his own TikTok page.\u201d<\/p>\n Christensen, Carey says, is not seeking to re-enroll at OSU (\u201cHe\u2019s no longer at Ohio State. He doesn\u2019t wish to be after they treated him this way,\u201d Carey says). Instead, the ACLU is seeking an injunction to have Christensen\u2019s expulsion and the reasoning behind it expunged from his records so Christensen can \u201cmove on.\u201d<\/p>\n Christensen has kept a video<\/a> condemning the D.C. shooting up on his TikTok page and has continued to condemn Israel\u2019s actions amid a fragile ceasefire<\/a> brokered in part by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration. His videos and Substack posts continue to receive many thousands of interactions, with some 800,000 views on a recent TikTok concerning the ceasefire as of presstime. As for the lawsuit, the ACLU says the parties involved are in the discovery phase, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for Jan. 12, 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cAgree or disagree with what Guy Christensen says, he has to be allowed to speak his political opinions,\u201d Carey says. \u201cAt a university, if anything, they should be more permissive and more protective of their students\u2019 rights to engage in vigorous political debate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn a time when free speech rights are under pressure,\u201d Carey adds, \u201cit\u2019s important for everyone not to comply in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n This article appears in Election Guide Oct. 8-14, 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n RELATED\t![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-08.27.37.png\")
Christensen in an Oct. 11 video Credit: YourFavoriteGuy \/ TikTok<\/p>\n