Fri 19 April 2019
Illinois

Kevin Pummill

The "Undercover Academic" Exposed


"We are the teachers of your children" - Undercover Academic

This article was contributed by WANaziWatch.

On March 6, 2019, the non-profit media organization Unicorn Riot released more than 770,000 messages from the Discord chat server of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. Subsequently, anti-fascist groups from around the country have been identifying individual Identity Evropa members. On April 4, 2019, Eugene Antifa identified school teacher Stephen William Arnquist as a member of Identity Evropa. Stephen was subsequently placed on leave. Unfortunately, Steven Arnquist wasn't the only high school teacher in the Identity Evropa chat. Another member of Identity Evropa, using the screen name Undercover Academic - IL, made it well-known he is also a high school teacher. Undercover Academic is actively using his position as a high school teacher to advance white nationalist ideas and myths with the children he is entrusted to teach.

Identification

On the same day the Unicorn Riot article was released, Undercover Academic deleted his social media and attempted to scrub his entire internet presence. Unfortunately for Undercover Academic, it was too little too late. With almost 1,000 messages since July 2018, we had plenty of information to identify Undercover Academic.

On December 15, 2018, Undercover Academic revealed his general location when he mentioned a crime in his area. He exclaimed "Three black men stole a car with a 13 month old child in it, in the small rural town (2,000 population) my wife teaches at." A quick search finds the incident took place in the small town of Farmington, Illinois. In actuality, this crime was a hoax perpetrated by an 18 year old Caucasian man named Mitchell Dutz.

We also know that Undercover Academic and his wife were married two months after the white nationalist American Renaissance conference (AmRen) in 2018. Undercover Academic stated "Dude Amren was the best weekend of my life until I got married 2 months later." AmRen 2018 occurred April 27-29, 2018.

With this information we had no trouble finding Undercover Academic. We first looked for a female school teacher in Farmington, Illinois that is married to another teacher. Farmington, Illinois has only one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. Conveniently, the teachers of these schools are listed on one page. As we mentioned, we also know that our female teacher got married two months after AmRen. We discovered an archived page of Farmington teachers in 2018 and compared it to the current list of teachers. We noticed a Melissa Palma in 2018, who is named Melissa Pummill in 2019.

We then found that Melissa is married to Kevin Pummill and their wedding took place on June 17th, 2018. Using the Illinois teacher database we found that Kevin Pummill is a high school social studies teacher.


married June 17, 2018 - two months after AmRen

Kevin Pummill conveniently confirmed this identification by posting an Instagram screenshot in the chat room that included his wife's username.


Notice "Liked by palmtree1094"

Kevin spoke of his wife frequently in the chat room. He stated that although his wife is rather apolitical she is sympathetic to his beliefs and in fact Melissa provided cover for him.

White Nationalist Teacher

Kevin spoke openly about spreading white nationalist ideas in the classroom. He stated that he attempts to "redpill" children on immmigration telling them, "we are being invaded" and advocating an unsupported claim that immigrants reduce wages. Kevin also uses the classroom to spread the white nationalist myth about South African farm attacks that has been thoroughly debunked. Unsurprisingly, Kevin is also the sponsor for Pekin Community High School's Politics Club.

Kevin Pummill gives many more examples of his bigotry throughout the chat. From homophobia to anti-semetism to even disparaging non-white children trick or treating in the community.

Kevin is planning to attend graduate school shortly--financed by the school district. We believe that Kevin is entirely unfit to teach children. Not only does he promote white nationalist ideas in the classroom but he's a virulent bigot. His ignorance and intolerance should in no way be tolerated in the classroom. We demand he be suspended immediately and ultimately fired.

We ask that you call the superintendent of Pekin Community High School District 303 and the principal of Pekin Community High School to respectfully ask them if its appropriate for an adult to teach children hate and lies.

Contacts


Unite the Right tiki march

Additional Links:

Melissa Pummill Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissa.e.palma archived