Mizzou Muscle Prof: We want people to take chances, don’t we?
Melissa Click defends herself in WaPo Op-Ed, as national academic group threatens Mizzou censure.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) serves as a de facto authority on academic freedom, having published the guidelines by which most higher education institutions agree to abide, at least in principle if not legally.
AAUP, however, has no legal power to enforce its guidelines. The most it can do is put an institution on a “Censure List,” which supposedly impacts the ability to recruit top faculty. I don’t know whether it actually has that impact, but that’s what’s claimed.
The University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign (UIUC) was put on AAUP’s Censure List after it refused to give a tenured position to controversial hate-tweeting Prof. Seven Salaita. There was a lawsuit by Salaita that was settled for less than the cost of defense without any job. AAUP now is considering whether to remove UIUC from its Censure List.
AAUP is jumping to the defense of Melissa Click, the world-famous “muscle prof” who recently was terminated by the University of Missouri after she was caught on video bullying a student journalist and calling for some “muscle” from the crowd to deal with him.
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She also was caught on video aggressively confronting police.
(Language Warning)
In early February AAUP demanded Click’s reinstatement.
AAUP claims that Mizzou was required to have a faculty committee determine Click’s fate, not the university administration, and is backing Click:
Here is a portion of a statement issued by AAUP on March 7, 2016, which includes a threat of censure:
Julie Schmid, executive director of the American Association of University Professors, today authorized a formal investigation in the case of professor Melissa Click at the University of Missouri. In February, the board of curators of the University of Missouri system summarily dismissed Click from the UM faculty. Normative practice among American institutions of higher education is that a faculty member with indefinite tenure—or a probationary faculty member within the term of appointment—may be dismissed only following demonstration of cause in an adjudicative hearing before a faculty body….
The investigating committee will submit a draft report of its findings to the AAUP’s standing Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. If Committee A approves publication, the AAUP will send the draft text to the principal parties (including Professor Click and the administration) with an invitation for comment and corrections of fact. After being edited to take into account the comments received, the final text will be published online and in the AAUP’s Bulletin. At its June 3–4 meeting, Committee A will determine, on the basis of the published report, whether to recommend that the Association censure the UM administration at its June 18 annual meeting. Censure can be imposed only by vote of the delegates to the annual meeting.
The censure list is published for the purpose of informing Association members, the profession at large, and the public that unsatisfactory conditions of academic freedom and tenure have been found to prevail at the listed institutions. Censure thus serves as a warning to prospective faculty members that their rights may not be respected at the university.
AAUP’s letter is here.
Mizzou, which just rejected Click’s administrative appeal, has rejected AAUP’s accusations and threatened censure. (h/t Alex Smith Twitter)
Mizzou’s letter reads, in part:
Your correspondence has complained that Dr. Click did not receive “an adjudicative hearing before an elected faculty body.” It has asserted that the Board’s dismissal of Dr. Click without such faculty hearing is “fundamentally at odds with basic standards of academic due process as set forth in the joint 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings.”
We disagree. On the contrary, the Board’s action in this matter was fundamentally consistent with the key principles of the 1940 Statement and 1958 Statement. Those Statements do not establish an absolute right or requirement for a faculty hearing. Rather, their core principles – and your organization’s standard for censure – concern protection of academic freedom and tenure. This was not a case about Dr. Click’s academic freedom and the Board’s action does not undermine the principle of tenure (which Dr. Click did not have).
While the Board endorses the normative practice of faculty hearings in cases of mid-term dismissal, the Board found it necessary to act on its own in this singular instance when existing Universityprocedures failed to address the seriousness of Dr. Click’s conduct. The Board acted on essential facts that were not in dispute and applied University standards that are consistent with those of your organization’s expectations for a faculty member. It addressed conduct by Dr. Click that was contrary to those basic expectations and at odds with principles of free expression that animate the 1940 Statement. Indeed, by calling for physical intimidation or violence against a student Dr. Click engaged in conduct that, if tolerated, would pose a risk to the safety of students and faculty and fundamentally endanger the University’s academic environment. Ultimately, the decision of terminating a faculty member’s employment rests with a governing board, as the 1958 Statement recognizes. In this instance, it was incumbent on the Board to establish that Dr. Click’s conduct is not compatible with shared principles and expectations of faculty members. In reaching that decision in Dr. Click’s case, the Board provided her with fairness and due process.
The Board’s action did not threaten academic freedom or tenure and does not warrant censure. Rather, it serves as an occasion to review existing practice and processes in an effort to ensure that any future instance of faculty misconduct will be addressed with faculty review and without the need for the Board to act on its own.
Click, for her part, is on a charm offensive with a rather more flattering photo provided by her to accompany an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post:
Click writes that she was just stressed that day and Social Justice!
In What would our world be like if no one ever took a chance?, Click writes in part:
Getting out the door with a young family on a Saturday morning however, can be a bit of a struggle and my thoughts that morning were dominated by the usual worries of anyone rushing out to the door to a much-anticipated event. Grateful to have found a spot that would accommodate us just moments before the parade began, we were frustrated when the candy throwing and band marching unexpectedly stopped.
When I walked the block between us and the impasse and found myself suddenly in the presence of an unfolding political demonstration, I was immediately faced with a question of conscience. A question I hadn’t anticipated when I hurriedly got ready that morning: Would I remain a spectator, or would I stand with these students enduring disparagement from the bystanders who wished the parade to continue unhindered?…
Among the debates and judgments the video footage of my mistakes has attracted, few have sincerely grappled with the sudden choices I had to make in challenging circumstances, and fewer still have earnestly asked whether my protected right to speak out as a US citizen requires that I must be perfect while doing so.
As a Media Studies scholar, I understand how the increased surveillance resulting from advances in technology like digital recording and wireless broadband has come to mean that our mistakes will be widely broadcast — typically without context or rights of rebuttal — exposing us to unprecedented public scrutiny.
But I do not understand the widespread impulse to shame those whose best intentions unfortunately result in imperfect actions. What would our world be like if no one ever took a chance? What if everyone played it safe?
Sites like YouTube and Twitter host forums in which everyday people are subjected to the kinds of excoriation we have typically reserved for politicians and celebrities — those whose public and private actions, due to their vocations, are judged within the public sphere.
In recent years, however, earnest mistakes made by ordinary, unknown people have increasingly become national topics, their errors invoking astonishing amounts of political fury and having unanticipated impact on their careers, families, and futures.
Reaction to the footage containing my errors has resulted in months of scrutiny and most recently the loss of my job….
Whose interests are served when our drive to combat societal imperfections is defeated by fears of having our individual imperfections exposed?
And what value do our rights as citizens have in a culture increasingly ruled by snap judgments and by regulations that are easily rewritten to suit changing political interests?
We should all be concerned about the larger issues my situation raises.
I don’t want to live in a world where citizens are too afraid of public scorn to take a chance. Do you?
Uh huh.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit compares Click’s Op-Ed to Otter’s defense of Delta House in Animal House:
(Language Warning)
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Comments
This is worse than the afluenza defense with the teen who killed four people here in the DFW area a year or so back.
I can see it now. “I robbed that bank because I was stressed out after watching the nightly news. Those damn Republicans cause me so much grief!”
I just don’t think ‘white privilege’ is going to help her here.
Somebody get the hook and drag this red-headed woodpecker off the stage. Her days of glory are over.
This woman taught communications? Yikes!
I can’t help but think that the solution (if there is one) to this woman’s issues lie in a therapists office. With five or six years of intensive psychotherapy she has a shot at just being a oddball.
We are institutionalizing too many of the mentally ill on University Campuses. Some of these Institutions need to change their mission into active treatment and therapy.
Melissa, Melissa . . . “taking a risk” is not nearly the same as a really futile and stupid gesture done on somebody’s part.
http://youtu.be/_h4DZeBleLs
But that’s you, Melissa Click. Calling in “muscle” on the media? Really futile. And really stupid.
Hey Melissa, we were a LOT smarter than you, back in the 60s. A lot.
Ace noted the similarity between Click’s jibber-jabber and this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PYb_anBMus
Oops, sorry. Not Ace, but Ed Driscoll at Insty. I had both pages open.
Maybe it’s my age, but I don’t seem to recall AAUP protesting the loss of “academic freedom” for anyone expressing nonviolent conservative or religious beliefs and opinions. They do seem to approve of all the leftists who hate America, Israel, Christians, and Jews, and defend their “right” to advocate violence against the objects of their ire.
But that can’t be right, can it? Unless it’s just another phony leftist front group.
Pardon me, but when has any university professor been fired for expressing nonviolent conservative or religious beliefs and opinions? Since that hasn’t happened, when exactly should AAUP have protested?
And tenured professors, whether of the right or the left, do have the right to advocate violence against the objects of their ire. (So does everyone, of course, but not everyone has the right not to be fired for doing so. Government employees who don’t interact with the public do, and so do tenured professors.)
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=conservative+professor+fired
but if even that’s too hard:
Robert Klein Engler–a conservative professor at Roosevelt University
The Dean of Marquette University has told conservative professor John McAdams that the university has begun the process of revoking his tenure and firing him
Climate McCarthyism has claimed another victim. Dr Caleb Rossiter
If you click the link above you can find a lot more, but you know, you could google it yourself.
Paging Nobel laureate Sir Tim Hunt….Please set Ms. Click straight on what it’s really like to have your career destroyed over something silly.
To summarize Click’s op-ed:
I’m innocent!
Whine!
Poor, persecuted me!
More whine!
Leave me alone!
My progressive world sucks!
So, the stress of ushering your family out the door warrants thuggish aggression? Maybe Child Services should investigate what else goes on in that household? To suggest this woman is unstable seems an understatement.
“fewer still have earnestly asked whether my protected right to speak out as a US citizen requires that I must be perfect while doing so.”
_________________________
LOL. Your protected right to speak out is not unlimited, Ms. Click. You do not have the right to use your speech to put other people at risk of physical harm, or to call for “muscle” to shut down the protected speech of another.
It was not your “imperfection” that got you shamed and fired, it was your blatant stupidity and obvious unfitness for your job as a teacher.
Sounds like she wants to be able to take a chance without risking negative consequences.
How’s that taking a chance at all?
“As a Media Studies scholar,. . .”
A scholar, you say? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Hmmm. “We want people to take chances.” The concept of “chance” implies some risk. Without risk, a “chance” would be identical to a “sure thing”. In this case, she risked getting tossed out of her job by virtue of her grossly inappropriate behavior. Maybe she’d get away with it, maybe she wouldn’t. As it turned out, she wouldn’t. So … what’s the problem, again?
[…] MIZZOU MUSCLE PROF ATTEMPTS OTTER’S ANIMAL HOUSE DEFENSE IN THE WASHINGTON POST. Link safe; goes to a post at Prof. William A. Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection blog titled “Mizzou Muscle Prof: We want people to take chances, don’t we?” […]
Huh?
Somewhere along the line, a whole lot of people got the erroneous idea that “free speech” and protesting means that you have the right to interfere with, hinder, and preferably prevent other people from speaking and conducting their lawful activities.
Take a Chance. Start a race riot. It’s the new American way.
I could see a progressive ad saying just that.
Might I suggest a more personal risk taking activity for Ms. Click … Russian roulette
Please start posting photoshops of this woman at historic events.
Cultural revolution comes to mind.
Also, Millhouse, she didn’t have tenure. Actually, I believe she acted up like this in the year she was up for tenure.
“…fewer still have earnestly asked whether my protected right to speak out as a US citizen requires that I must be perfect while doing so.”
No, you don’t need to be perfect. But you are in a perceived position of authority, and publicly called for the abrogation of another’s protected right to speak. Stating that respecting and honoring that right is not an automatic thing with you, that you wish you had taken time to think about it, is further evidence that the Board made the correct decision in dismissing you.
“But I do not understand the widespread impulse to shame those whose best intentions unfortunately result in imperfect actions.”
Neither do we, Professor, neither do we. You might bring that up in your next groupthink session.
What I remember about her publication record, tenure would have been a tough slog — no book, not even an inane one and a thin publication record generally. That likely wouldn’t have cut it at an R-1 school.
Finally, an explanation. I wondered what she had against the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
Yes, Melissa “take a chance on stalinism” Click, we want people to take chances.
That’s why we’re coming down on the side of the student journalist who took his chances against Click and her “muscle” enforcing safe spaces.
Kick all those children out of those safe spaces and tell them to take chances.
And kick Click out of Mizzou.
Yup.She wants wants absolute accountability for others and no accountability for herself. By “take chances” she means it is YOUR skin that is in the game — literally when she called for “muscle.”
“When I walked the block between us and the impasse and found myself suddenly in the presence of an unfolding political demonstration, I was immediately faced with a question of conscience. A question I hadn’t anticipated when I hurriedly got ready that morning: Would I remain a spectator, or would I stand with these students enduring disparagement from the bystanders who wished the parade to continue unhindered?…”
If she really has a “family” then she deserted her responsibility of their safety to moronically tilt at windmills. You failed mel.
“I don’t want to live in a world where citizens are too afraid of public scorn to take a chance. Do you?”
No mel, that’s why I’m in favor of having the police restrain violent thugs masquerading under the guise of a “protest” and threatening everyone around them.
“AAUP claims that Mizzou was required to have a faculty committee determine Click’s fate, not the university administration”
Someone at AAUP needs to look up the definition of an “employee”. Basically what they are saying is that a body of employee’s, who were not hired to administrate, should have the final say if another employee is fired, instead of the administration, who was hired to administrate. Unbelieveable.
The relationship of a faculty member (especially a tenured faculty member, which Dr. Click was not) to a university is more complicated than a traditional employer-employee relationship. Faculty members, including those without tenure, have a far wider latitude when it comes to determining how and when they perform their job duties…how they teach, what they teach, when they will be in their office, etc. They also run their own departments on campus, so many of them are part of the administration in a sense. And after tenure, they have very strong job protections — it’s very hard to fire them. It is more proper to think of faculty members as stakeholders in a university. They are not employees merely, like janitors and secretaries.
As for your comment about administration, the historical relationship between university faculty and administrators has been that the latter serves the former, not the other way around. The whole point of administrative staff was to do things that faculty didn’t have the time or the interest to do. This relationship has reversed somewhat, and now the administrators indeed have more control of the school — they have the final sign-off for any faculty member seeking tenure, for example — but the vestiges of the historical relationship have left faculty with real power. A motivated faculty can force an administration to change policy far more thoroughly, and with far less effort, than any other group of “employees” you could name. They usually participate in the selection of their “boss,” and at some schools, can effectively “fire” him/her through a vote of no-confidence. (See also: Summers, Lawrence.) How many employee groups do you know of that have that much power?
Just so we’re clear, none of this is a defense of Dr. Click. She strayed from areas where she was protected. It is impossible to claim either First Amendment protection or an academic freedom defense when you are caught attempting to violate someone’s First Amendment rights (and doing a fine job of it) outside of a classroom or other academic setting.
I understand what you are saying, however, in my view the historical relationship you mentioned was simply poorly designed and fatally flawed, which is probably why you see it so rarely in use. Also I would presume that is why it is changing.
We had much the same in medicine, I have been a nurse for 20 years, for a good couple of centuries until people started figuring out that Doctors and Nurses were just covering for each other or perfectly good Doctors were being sanctioned for no more reason than they were more talented than their peers and were a threat to peoples positions or had ideas that were to radical for “mainstream medicine”. The net effect was that we had Doctors that were more butcher than physician and people that even after education were still completely unqualified.
Such a system is the equal of having the inmates run the asylum. It is also the reason there is such a corrupted and insular core in academics. The reason the shift is fought is because it is realized that, as happened in medicine, eventually that shift means that the snobs who control the circle will actually have to defend themselves and be held responsible to someone other than themselves.
Now I am not saying that Administrations should control how or what a educator teaches, unless it is unethical or abusive. But Mrs. Click is a perfect example of why these decisions should be made by someone other than faculty, Unless you are naive enough to believe that the “faculty review” would have been anything that completely in her favor. That is the very reason that the “professional organization” in question is whining.
Whether the historical relationship was poorly designed or not, the fact remains that it existed — and for good reasons. Guild systems, of which universities are one, rely on those with proven subject expertise (which you seem to believe equates to “snobs”) to certify their successors and find them places. This is something that most administrators are not qualified to do.
You suggest that no jury of her peers, so to speak, would have punished Dr. Click for her actions. I disagree. If you take a look at the CHE forums, where faculty from all across America go to vent anonymously, the prevailing opinion is that the university did the wrong thing in failing to adhere to their written procedures…but that Dr. Click, having bullied a student by violating his First Amendment freedoms, is not exactly a sympathetic victim. Would she have been fired outright? Probably not. Instead, she would have been reprimanded. And then in a year or so, as many other people on this thread have suggested, she would have been quietly denied tenure — officially because of her scant publication record, but really because she had become an embarrassment to the university. Then she would have found it near-impossible to get a job at a decent college again. Is that the quick, satisfying retribution of a dismissal by the Board of Trustees? No. But it’s quite effective. The mills of the faculty grind slower than those of the administration, but they grind exceeding small.
You suggest that administrators *should* be in full control of universities, because the alternative of faculty control is akin to “having the inmates run the asylum.” While the insularity you mention is an obvious risk of such a system, may I point out that there are already many systems run by administrators (not faculty) in this country — to wit, primary and secondary schools. And while American colleges are still the envy of the world, our K-12 schools are…not. The wide latitude and significant powers possessed by faculty are not the only reason why our colleges are among the best in the world, but they are a major factor. This is an educational advantage we have over the rest of the world, where university faculty find themselves far more regulated. It is not something we should throw away lightly.
You claim you are not saying that administrators should interfere with the curriculum. But that is what administrators will do if they are given more power. They’ll see it as “administrating” — i.e., doing their jobs. They are already trying to do it in colleges and universities across the country, hoping for the near-total environmental control that their counterparts in lower education have. Further, being “held accountable” to someone else is a good thing only if that person possesses the knowledge to hold people accountable. Otherwise, you’ll simply get mindless metrics based on “outcomes”…the plague of our secondary schools today, and rapidly gaining a foothold in higher education, precisely *because* administrators are gaining more control. (Further still, there is already a way to hold universities accountable for what you deem to be faculty misbehavior. It’s called “not attending the school, and not sending your kids there.” This is, after all, the driving force that led to Dr. Click’s removal — financial pressures.)
I wrote initially only to tell you that you fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the faculty-administration relationship at a university. I write now to tell you that your “cure” will be anything but. As administrations on our college campuses have grown in size and scope, they have: dramatically driven up the cost of a college education; instituted a wide array of largely leftist programs; and been the primary force behind “diversity” movements and other campus efforts to chill free speech. All of this has been well-documented elsewhere. And most administrators are far less susceptible to public pressure than your average faculty member. So, if you want to increase costs and “soft” leftist influences — while at the same time decreasing educational quality, overall accountability, and freedom of speech — then you’re certainly advocating for the right thing.
No it isn’t some beautiful system that has survived the ages or whatever the point of your overly wordy response was. It is an outdated archaic mechanism use by a group to ensure their own positions and power regardless of whether those positions are deserved.
It is no different than public sector unions and unfortunately much as in cooking the scum always rises to the top. It is a system that keeps poorly preforming and/or just plain bad people in positions that they should not have and do not deserve and in doing so blocks those positions from being opened to people who actually want to be there and perform well. No group can be trusted to police itself and remain uncorrupted, period, history is replete with examples, from the church to our own government.
It is a system that allows so called academics like Mrs. Click remain on the public doll even when their body of work clearly indicates she would be more qualified for being on Anita Sarkeesian’s YouTube video staff. (Maybe Anita could actually make a deadline or make a video for less than half a million dollars). She certainly had no business in higher education.
Whether a teacher of any level should keep his/her job should be based on performance and adherence to the rules of conduct for the institution and profession. If you want to be an activist then go be an activist, if you want to be a teacher then be a teacher, but don’t whine to me when someone ties to do both and it bites them in the ass.
She got exactly what she deserved and it was done in a professional, logical, and ethical manner. She was given a fair investigation, multiple opportunities to defend herself by the people who’s job it is to evaluate her performance and they found it lacking, system worked, move along.
My apologies for not responding sooner, Gremlin — it’s been a hectic week. Also, my apologies for my length. It takes more effort to correct an error than it does to make one. And you seem to have made quite a few more errors in your last response. But instead of giving them the full treatment they deserve, I’ll simply bulletpoint them for you:
1) The guild system is indeed archaic. It is not necessarily outdated. Not every humna effort is best organized like a factory, or a modern corporation.
2) Your criticism of academia as a system that ensures the power and position of those already vested into it could be made against almost any type of human system.
3) Academia is very different from a union. The whole point of unions was to protect the jobs and wages of unskilled laborers, who could easily be fired and replaced with a younger unskilled worker. Scholars are certified experts in their field.
4) Your contention that academia keeps bad people in their positions and prohibits them from being replaced — which I assume is a criticism of tenure — is silly. First, the general point could as easily be made against the top members of the corporate world. Second, tenure is not granted immediately, and has to be earned. Third, we started by talking about Melissa Click, who did not have tenure and likely wouldn’t have received it.
5) Plenty of people want to be in academia, and would perform the jobs well. There is, in fact, quite a fierce competition for both tenure-track jobs and tenure.
6) Your implied idea that an administration is needed to police faculty at a university is facially silly. First, as I explained before in my “overly wordy” post, the administration is often the source of the problems that bother you. Second, putting non-experts in charge of telling experts what to do is fraught with problems.
7) Your contention that “no group can be trusted to police itself and remain uncorrupted,” if extended to its fullest, would indict the concept of American democracy itself, as well as a number of its most important features, such as the citizen juror.
8) Again, regarding Dr. Click, I agree with you that her body of work is quite poor, and I am telling you that her poor CV is the reason she would likely not have had her job at Missouri for long in any event — even before she publicly embarrassed herself and her school. In other words, the system you hate so much would have deprived her of her job due to her lack of merit. I can’t stress that enough.
9) Just as you don’t understand that a faculty member at a college of university is not simply an “employee,” so you also do not seem to understand that they are not just a “teacher.” Teaching is only part of what they do. They also must research, publish, and seek opportunities to serve their university and community. Those other efforts, collectively, count for more than their work in the classroom when it comes to tenure. You may disagree with that emphasis, but that is the system.
10) Following from point 9) above, many faculty members see activism as a way to serve the community. That is, in fact, the unstated premise behind Dr. Click’s self-defense — that she was doing her job. I agree with you that her defense is patently ridiculous…given the facts of this case. But had she been truly advocating for free speech and the rights of ALL people to make themselves heard, she would have been doing her job.
11) Dr. Click did get exactly what she deserved, and I said as much. That is not the question we have been discussing. That question is: Are her actions an indictment of the whole system of academia? There, we disagree.
12) There is one other question I have not addressed, but you have, multiple times. That is: was her firing accomplished in the right way? You seem to think it was just fine. I, on the other hand, am not sure. While I think the Board of Trustees had the power to do what they did, the fact remains that the situation would have resolved itself in a little while with Click’s denial of tenure. I regret that the system in place wasn’t given a chance to work, if only because it would have denied people like you — plainly ignorant of higher education and its purpose — to say that the system in place doesn’t work.
13) Again, you seem not to understand even the basics of what you have chosen to discuss. You also, as I said in my last response, have posed a “solution” that would end up being worse for your stated goals that the current system. So no worries, I will “move along.” I see no profit in continuing this discussion for me, and no prospect of correcting your mistakes.
Go ahead and push for more administrative control. The sad part is that when costs keep going up, educational quality drops, and freedom of speech is increasingly infringed on — all as a result of the actions of those you champion — you still won’t realize you were wrong. But c’est la vie.
@DemosthenesVW
No I understand your points perfectly, I just disagree with them.
Universities and increasingly Secondary and Elementary education has become polluted and turned those institutions into places that teach people what to think in stead of how to think, which is far more valuable, but if they were taught how to think then they would reject the left wing progressive indoctrination.
I appreciate the discussion, but I think we will just have to agree to disagree. Best wishes and God Bless my friend.
Had to stifle my gag reflex when reading her piece; let’s hope she remains unemployed or, at the least, no longer in a teaching position. Jeez.
The problem with peaceful protests as envisioned by the Left is that they are ineffective. People ignore them and go on with their lives just as they ignore most sidewalk preachers or abortion protesters. The difference with the Left is they feel entitled to force people to pay attention through disruption if necessary. They feel that their opinions and viewpoints are simply too important to be ignored by others even if they are more than happy to see the viewpoints of those with whom they disagree disparaged and ignored. In consequence, we get planned disruptions at Trump rallies and planned disruptions of public events such as parades.
No, Ms. Click – The question is, what if everyone in the world violated everyone’ else’s civil rights and freedom of speech? Indeed. Which is what the members of the Board asked themselves. Dopes!
Well, the a-hole took her chance, bet everyone else’s house but would up losing hers.
Adios.
Oh, poor, poor, silly girl…!! She got fired while attempting to shut down the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS of others and now she’s complaining that actions have consequences..??!!
Nice try….but you’re still FIRED girlie…!!
The irony is obvious. Leftists demand for themselves what they consistently deny to others. “People should be able to take a chance!” Oh, like, you know, expressing opinions not in line with the progressive Zeitgeist? I hear it on NPR – politicians and pundits very neatly articulating almost exactly what “conservatives” (maybe, or classical liberals) have been trying to say in this Age of Obama. Click’s arguments are truly ironic. And these “look how calm, earnest, and rational I am” photographs are rather transparent. Please don’t run the picture of me acting like a barbarian!
My God,this self-aggrandizing, self-styled “martyrdom” posture is nauseating. And, Click’s inability to take responsibility for her conduct is in keeping with Leftist attitudes, where there is always an excuse to blame, an external actor or condition who is culpable. Make no mistake, though; Click is undeniably shrewd. Click’s actions in calling for intimidation or violence to be visited upon a student were utterly indefensible, so, Click doesn’t bother attempting a defense of her actions, much less accepting responsibility. It’s all about her place as a martyr for the Revolution.
I’m waiting for AAUP to come to Andrew Pessin’s defense as a prof at Connecticut College. He posted a message on facebook calling Hamas animals. It’s a shame how he’s been treated since.
The real schadenfreude here is that using an isolated video clip to publicly shame another is part and parcel to the cry-bully’s MO.
Inciting violence is the purview of Donald Rodham Trump.
Otherwise, it’s totally not acceptable.
Just what chances can one take while sheltered in their safe space?
Not a bit of difference between this prof and tRump.