One of the items is a portrait showing House Speaker Mike Johnson and swastikas morphing into Christian crosses. 
ETSU has more than 10,600 undergraduates on its Johnson City campus.
Before the new report on university president Brian Noland announcing the Fletcher Exhibit will stay on campus, AFN talked with apologist and author Alex McFarland about the display.
"It's very unfortunate that a university would display 'art', that is very politically charged, but is very inaccurate, and I would say unfair."
Campus Reform says it received a written statement from Noland that said in part he cannot in good faith censor this exhibit because it would counter both the duties of the Office of the President and Tennessee's own state laws.
Other pieces on display in the Fletcher Exhibit include what appears to be a Ku Klux Klan hood made out of an American Flag, a picture of Donald Trump with the face of a pig and a bloody knife in one hand hugging the U.S. Constitution, and at least one other portrait.
President says he's upholding state law
In another statement, Noland says he finds viewpoints shown in the exhibits to be despicable, but that as president of a public university, he has to abide by state laws.
Noland maintains the exhibit is protected under The Tennessee Campus Free Speech Protection Act, which allows for the presence of "offensive" and "immoral" exhibits to stay on display on campus, despite public outcry at the display's potential to be "construed as hate speech".
The displays will be partitioned off with content warning signs posted, and people will have to sign a waiver to see it.
McFarland referenced the Fletcher Exhibit.
“One may only speculate what was going through the, the mind of the artist, but the implication is clear that Christianity and US constitutionalism, because Speaker Johnson stands for both, that's fascism to this artist, apparently. That's Nazism.”
McFarland said many on the Left are confused about the origins of freedom of expression.
“The very same left likes to denigrate Christianity and the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution, even though it's the Constitution that gives them the legally protected freedom to express such contorted, twisted views. They don't know what they're talking about."
Lacking in history
McFarland said young people and even grownups are just so ignorant about what America is and what our history has been.
"Any artist that would come up with such an inane, vacuous representation, they don't know about Christianity. They don't know about the American Constitution. Far from being fascism and genocidal, it's been American Judeo-Christianity, constitutionalism, that has given people more freedom than any other nation in world history. So, East Tennessee State University, the fact that they would display this art, it's just showing that they are not committed to education, but to ideology."
The Fletcher Exhibit is scheduled to be on display through December 6.
