It seems university professors can actually remember real history when it suits their agendas.

However, one Colorado State-Pueblo professor is now realizing that dramatic analogies to yesteryear’s events can have consequences today.

On Friday, many at Colorado State University-Pueblo nervously awaited word from administrators on exactly how many jobs would be eliminated there. Officials had warned that the number could be as high as 50 — a prospect that angered many students and professors at the university who dispute administrators’ assertions that the institution faces a deficit requiring layoffs.

Timothy McGettigan, a professor of sociology, sent out an email to students and faculty members in which he urged them to fight the cuts. His subject line was “Children of Ludlow,” referring to a 1914 massacre of striking coal miners in southern Colorado. McGettigan compared the way the central system administration was treating Pueblo to the bloody way coal mine owners treated their workers 100 years ago. He went on to say that, just like a century ago, those without power were being mistreated.

He said that the announcement that afternoon would reveal who was on Chancellor Michael Martin’s “hit list,” and said that the chancellor was “putting a gun to the head” of those who would lose their jobs, “destroying the livelihood of the people that he is terminating” and “incinerating the best opportunity that southern Coloradans have to earn their own little piece of the American dream.”

There is no doubt that there are violent images in the email, but they are historic, McGettigan’s metaphors for what he thinks the administration is doing. His call to action was to urge people to oppose the cuts and attend a rally against them.

Hours after he sent the email, the university system removed his email account. A memo he received in printed form stated that the university had determined that he had violated a rule banning use of email to “intimidate, threaten, harass other individuals or interfere with the activity of others to conduct university business.”

The letter — from the deputy general counsel of the university system — stated that administrators had determined that his “Children of Ludlow” email was “one in which immediate action must be taken,” so McGettigan was not given a chance to argue that he had done nothing wrong