Exclusive | Nutty professor who held machete to Post reporter’s neck rambles about ‘violent fascists’ in defense of her $407K taxpayer-funded artwork
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 last week for her new $407,000 taxpayer-funded monument critics ripped as “junk.”
Tone-deaf Shellyne Rodriguez painted herself as a victim, whining in a Hyperallergic.com column about “violent fascist” oppressors out to get her.
She never mentions “machete” or shows remorse for her 2023 assault on Post scribe Reuven Fenton.
“This 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,” the 48-year-old wrote.
In her column, titled “Why My Public Art Drives the Right Nuts,” she claims her media “crisis was not born yesterday, and since its inception, my permanent public artwork has kept the score,” referring to her 23-foot-tall brick, steel and terracotta Marxist monstrosity called “Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx.”
It was unveiled in November along Grand Concourse and Morris Avenue — a little more than two years after she copped a wrist-slap plea deal with Bronx prosecutors for her assault on the veteran journo.
The monument– which already has cracks along its foundation — was first commissioned in 2018 through the city’s Percent for Arts program — which sets aside 1% of the budget for city-funded construction projects for new artwork — as part of a $62.5 million reconstruction of the Grand Concourse.
Rodriguez, a self-proclaimed black Marxist, pocketed $81,400 of the project’s $407,000 budget as an “artist fee.”
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 “B” and “X.” On top of the structure is an ascending black ladder without an end.
It is supposed to be testament to the borough’s resiliency after the arson spree during the tumultuous 1970s.
However, many neighborhood residents ripped it as an eyesore, including Frankie Santiago, who told The Post last week, “It looks like a piece of junk.”
In the column, Rodriguez claims she became a “target” of “right-wing media” only after making headlines as a then-Hunter College adjunct art professor in May 2023 for flipping out on pro-life students at the Manhattan-based CUNY campus.
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.
She also bizarrely claimed “White Christian supremacy is on the fascist march and carrying out a race cleansing campaign” and that “despite these obstacles” she was somehow able to complete Phoenix Ladder in November – seven years after being commissioned.
“She is an homage to the people of the Bronx, a lighthouse for our collective futures, and our witness.” she wrote.
“It’s no surprise that these reactionary forces are appalled by it. They understand that this monument is built on their ruins.”
The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, which oversees the program, has refused to comment about Rodriguez’s outrageous, headline-making past or whether it considered pulling her budget after she threatened to “chop” up a reporter.
The nutty professor was immediately fired by Hunter after the attack. In February 2024, she was axed from another teaching gig at Cooper Union for anti-Israel screeds. Her website doesn’t highlight any current projects.
