The administrative torment of UCF Prof. Charles Negy
After Negy questioned claims of ‘systemic racism’ and asserted ‘black privilege is real,’ there has been a university-wide pile-on, with Negy alleging UCF is soliciting complaints against him and conducting an abusive investigation in an effort to justify firing him.
I had heard of Charles Negy, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Florida (UCF). What I heard seemed like a particularly egregious example of cancel culture that is purging academia and imposing uniformity of opinion, particularly with regard to the Black Lives Matter movement. Having looked into it more, it’s worse than I realized.
Negy’s alleged crime that sparked the controversy was two tweets questioning the orthodoxy of systemic racism and white privilege.
One tweet, which no longer is available,said:
“If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?”
A second tweet, also no longer available, said:
“Black privilege is real: Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback.”
Rather than debate the merits or lack of merits in his opinions, a particularly aggressive attempt to get Negy fired ensued.
There was a Change.org petition with over 30,000 signatures, a Twitter hashtag was launched (#UCFFireHim) that trended, the student Senate passed a resolution, and there were protests on campus in which the President participated:
#UCFireHim | UCF President Alexander Cartwright, interim Provost Michael Johnson and interim Chief Diversity officer Kent Butler talk about #CharlesNegy with students during the protest organized by @theyoungba at UCF on Sunday.
Previous ?: https://t.co/BE6k22vcNi pic.twitter.com/DjYswmXnbK
— UCF Knight News (@UCFKnightNews) June 15, 2020
#UCFireHim #UCFProtest | During the protest, UCF President Alexander Cartwright asked about how “we change this institution to be a more inclusive one?” pic.twitter.com/bJ6YH6VaXy
— UCF Knight News (@UCFKnightNews) June 14, 2020
UCF tweeted that Negy’s statements were “counter to UCF’s values” (hmmm, the claim that statements are counter to the school’s “values” seems vaguely familiar, must be in the universal higher ed senior administrator’s handbook):
Being actively anti-racist means calling out and confronting racist comments. We are aware of Charles Negy’s recent personal Twitter posts, which are completely counter to UCF’s values. We are reviewing this matter further while being mindful of the First Amendment.
— UCF ? (@UCF) June 4, 2020
Students protested in front of his home, a clear act of intimidation we are seeing more and more frequently:
A protest Saturday in front of his home drew carfuls of students and prompted police protection, according to the professor.
“The cars drove by with a megaphone shouting ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Negy must resign’ while blowing their horns nonstop,” Negy told The College Fix in an email Monday. “That went [on] for 30 minutes. That’s not ‘protesting.’ That’s bullying, harassment, and intimidation. That occurred after they had spent three hours on foot at the entrance of my neighborhood.”
He said several sheriffs were called out to protect his house.
As the Tampa Bay Times reported, some of the UCF football players demanded his firing:
Some of the UCF football team’s biggest stars are demanding the university fire Charles Negy, a psychology associate professor who has sparked protests with his controversial social media posts.
Senior running back Greg McCrae was the first to express his outrage on Twitter and was joined by other players, including redshirt senior quarterback McKenzie Milton….
As bad as all the above was, there is an additional factor that takes this to another level. Negy alleged that UCF was soliciting complaints against him. From the Tampa Bay Times article:
Negy has worked at UCF since 1998 and earned tenure in 2001, a status that can make it harder to fire him.
During an on-campus protest on June 13, UCF president Alexander Cartwright noted Negy had First Amendment rights to share his viewpoints.
At @UCF, we do not tolerate hate speech and must be unequivocally anti-racist in our words, actions and online behavior. Whenever we find discrimination in our community, we will take decisive action to stamp it out. https://t.co/XQvm01exzM
— Dr. Alexander N. Cartwright (@UCFCartwright) June 1, 2020
“Your opinions matter, and we will to look into this,” Cartwright told protesters. “But we have to go through a process. We will not make a decision until we have enough information.”
Negy said he has been the subject of a witch hunt.
“They’re actively soliciting complaints against me because I’m a political inconvenience for them at the moment,” Negy said.
Based on President Cartwright’s tweet, is certainly would seem that UCF is trying to find a reason to fire Negy. That suspicion is supported by NY Times reporting about statements by the President Cartwright and UCF Interim Provost:
Michael Johnson, the interim provost, said that tenured faculty members at the public university can generally be removed only for incompetence or misconduct, which would have to be proved through a careful investigation.
“We can act when people’s conduct is in the course of their job, when it’s in their classroom, when it’s with their colleagues,” he said during an online meeting with students angered by Dr. Negy’s comments. “People’s behavior is something we can act upon. But we can’t act on people’s speech outside the university.”
Mr. Johnson urged students to report racist, intolerant or demeaning behavior in any professor’s classroom.
He also said that even though the Constitution and the principle of academic freedom protect the right of faculty members to hold and teach unpopular views, “that does not make what Dr. Negy said on Twitter any less vile.”
“The classroom must be a level playing field for all students,” he said.
Dr. Cartwright called Dr. Negy’s remarks “racist and abhorrent” and said that the university would take action if it found evidence of discrimination in the classroom or on campus.
The active solicitation of complaints is something familiar to any employment lawyer.
A big piece of my practice before joining Cornell Law School was representing terminated or departed employees (“stockbrokers”) against stock brokerage firms. There was a familiar dance: After termination (whether voluntarily or not), the firm would immediately contact the departing employee’s clients, and ask about whether the clients had any problems with the departed employee. People who never thought to complain, or who didn’t understand the ulterior motive behind the question, might say things they considered innocent gripes. But those innocent gripes in many instances, became reportable customer complaints that were reported to regulators by the firm. The purpose of soliciting reportable complaints was to make it more difficult for the employee to find a new job, or if the employee found a job, to create regulatory red flags that slowed the employee’s license transfer. That would buy the firm timr to convince the clients not to follow the employee to a new firm, allowing the firm to retain the business.
So this tactic of soliciting complaints as an employment tactic is familiar to me. The new complaints, that no student ever reported before Negy became controversial, could form the basis for UCF firing Negy.
This reporting was confirmed in a column by Negy’s lawyer, Samantha Harris, in Quillette, The Floridian Inquisition:
I’m an attorney representing a professor at the University of Central Florida who is being subjected by the university to what can only be called an inquisition after expressing opinions on Twitter that led to widespread calls for his firing. UCF is a public institution—an instrument of the state—and is now bringing its full power to bear against a man who dared to question the prevailing orthodoxy that has quickly descended over so many of this country’s institutions. I cannot bear witness to what the university is doing to this man without speaking out against it. If we do not challenge this egregious abuse of power, things will only get worse….
UCF president Alexander Cartwright understood, but was clearly disappointed, that the university could not fire Negy for his constitutionally protected tweets, telling the Orlando Sentinel: “The Constitution restricts our ability to fire him or any other University employee for expressing personal opinions about matters of public concern. This is the law.”
So Cartwright chose a different strategy: He publicly announced a witch hunt into Negy’s classroom speech. A June 4th message posted to UCF’s website from the president, provost, and chief diversity officer addressed the content of Negy’s tweets directly and then stated: “If any student, current or former, believes they may have experienced abusive or discriminatory behavior by any faculty or staff member, we want to know about it. UCF takes every report seriously. Concerns can be reported to UCF’s IntegrityLine, which also takes anonymous complaints.” (Emphasis added).
UCF’s clarion call worked. Since June 4th, a litany (we don’t know the exact number, because they won’t say) of complaints has been lodged against Negy for his classroom pedagogy, for speech that allegedly occurred over a 15-year period from 2005 to 2020. The university charged Negy with discriminatory harassment on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, sex, gender identity/expression, and disability—it is worth noting here that Negy himself is both an ethnic and sexual minority—while providing him with only a handful of “examples” of his alleged wrongdoing. Negy begged for more information prior to his investigative interview so that he might prepare to defend himself, but UCF refused.
Instead, last Friday the university subjected Negy to an “investigative interview” that was one of the most Kafkaesque things I have seen in my 15 years advising students and faculty about campus disciplinary matters. For four straight hours, UCF’s investigator grilled Negy about accusations stemming directly from his classroom pedagogy, having made no effort to weed out the countless accusations that were obviously just critiques of his choice of teaching material. UCF also made no effort to consolidate allegations, repeatedly asking Negy variations of the same question, ad infinitum. And again, virtually all of these questions related directly to Negy’s pedagogy, which deals with unavoidably controversial subjects. When Negy, physically and emotionally exhausted after four hours of interrogation, asked if the interview was almost over, we learned that the investigator had not even gotten halfway through her list of accusations. Since he could take no more, another five-hour inquisition was scheduled for the following week.
This investigation was obviously undertaken in retaliation for Negy’s protected tweets….
Harris provided me with the following few examples, out of many more, of the topics about which Negy was interrogated:
- Class discussions of research on gender identity citing research that an increased number of young adults are reporting that they are gender fluid, and suggesting that more research is needed to establish whether this simply reflects greater openness or suggests that it is currently en vogue to identify as gender fluid.
- Expressing his view, during course discussions of race, that America does not suffer from systemic racism.
- Expressing his view (during course discussions of sexual orientation), as a gay man born in 1960, that some of today’s young gay people may exaggerate their victimhood, not recognizing how much the culture has changed in favor of sexual minorities since he came of age.
- Being frank with students, during lectures relating to religion, about his own atheism.
- Expressing his view, when he covers Islam in Cross-Cultural Psychology, that Muslims who state that Islam is a “religion of peace” are choosing to overlook a number of violent verses in the Koran.
Harris also provided this statement to me:
“From the beginning, this investigation has been a pretextual effort to get around the inconvenient fact that the university can’t simply fire Charles Negy because he expresses unpopular views. So instead, the university has called for an inquisition and subjected him to 9 hours of interrogation about 15 years of classroom teaching – something that no reasonable person should have to endure simply for speaking their mind, and something that will chill the speech of anyone else at UCF who might wish to express views out of step with official university orthodoxy. This egregious violation of his free speech and due process rights cannot stand.”
If true, the picture emerging of UCF behavior is a paradigm of bad faith retaliation for Negy expressing his protected viewpoints. It doesn’t matter that his views are unpopular, they are protected and there can be no retaliation for those statements.
The administrative process and the soliticitation of complaints, is the punishment in itself, though termination or other adverse employment action would increase the damage. It has a chilling effect on people who do not have protection.
Prof. Jonathan Turley wrote about Negy’s situation and the chilling effect:
Negy has faced protests at his home and on campus, according to news reports. He has explored the concept of “white shaming” as an academic, including a book entitled “White Shaming: Bullying Based on Prejudice, Virtue-signaling, and Ignorance.”
Negy’s work is highly controversial and his tweets have inflamed critics. In a now deleted tweet, he wrote “Black privilege is real: Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback.”
He has also written, again on Twitter, “If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?”
Again, the question is not the merits or tenor of such writings but the right of academics to express such viewpoints. There is little comparable protests when professors write inflammatory comments about white culture or white privilege. Indeed, I have supported academics who have been criticized for such statements. However, the silence of other academics in these countervailing cases is deafening.
Indeed, many faculty like those at Cornell are pledging to combat what they call “racism masquerading as informed commentary.” When done through their own right to free speech, this is perfectly appropriate. However, there are now a variety of cases where faculty are supporting efforts to force colleagues to retire or to fire colleagues for expressing opposing views.
I reached out to President Cartwright and UCF media relations people specifically asking them to provde me with their side of the story and a response to the allegations in the Quillette article. Here is the only response I received, from UCF Assistant Vice President for Communications Chad Binette, as follows:
We appreciate your interest in this topic. The university takes the matter seriously and is conducting a fair-minded, detailed and robust review. We will be happy to share the findings with you when that process is complete.
This is a fairly unusual response. Usually when I write to universities or institutions about an employment matter, there either is no comment or a comment that the institution does not comment on personnel matters. I’ve never received a promise to share internal investigative findings. So whatever the result is, and I think we can predict it, it seems likely there will be another public shaming of Negy by the administration, at a minimum.
I have seen this movie before in the employment cases I handed against big institutions. As brutal as the interrogation of Negy is, it is nothing compared to how brutal the discovery of internal and external communications between and among UCF administrators, faculty, students, alumni, and the community will be if this case ends up in court. Whatever the case seems to UCF as it gears up, the case may look very different when it gets to trial.
I think many more people will be hearing about Charles Negy if he has the staying power. His attorney is affiliated with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), but don’t underestimate the stress of one person standing alone against the mob and a multi-billion dollar institution.
[Featured Image: Charles Negy Twitter Profile Pic]
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Comments
I’ll just note that UCF is a state university.
Where is the republican legislature?
Where is the republican governor?
The only thing republicans ever do is talk big when the marxist party has control. Once the R’s are in control they do nothing to roll back the progs agenda.
In my opinion, the reason your conclusion is correct is because this country is past its peak, including most Republicans of today being similar to the Democrats of 1960.
There is no “Republican Party” – it is the DNC-lite. They’re in on the scam.
Until we purge the GOP of the rats infesting it, forget it as a party to have faith in.
Instead, follow the conservatives like Louis Gomert, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and the like – Trump, in particular. Give your donations to them instead, and starve the GOP into a skeleton so we can rebuild it, or abandon it for a new party.
There is a g o p member of the judiciary Committee that is not going to seek re-election and is on his way out who wants to subpoena Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe and Susan Rice. Guess who is blocking that attempt to subpoena the people involved in the Russia hoax? I can tell you it’s not the Democrats in the committee…
RE: “university-wide pile-on”
That is the action of a tyrannical dictatorship full of evil, hatred, and bigotry.
Psalms 112:8
His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see his desire upon his enemies.
UCF tweeted that Negy’s statements were “counter to UCF’s values”
__________________
Of course they are. They are truths. And obviously UCF does not value truth.
Yet again we see it. In The Coming of the Third Reich (2003), historian Richard J. Evans explains how, in the early days of National Socialist Germany, Stormtroopers (Brownshirts) “organized campaigns against unwanted professors in the local newspapers [and] staged mass disruptions of their lectures.” To express dissent from Nazi positions became a matter of taking one’s life into one’s hands. The idea of people of opposing viewpoints airing their disagreements in a civil and mutually respectful manner was gone. One was a Nazi, or one was silent (and fearful).
Today’s fascists call themselves “anti-fascists.” Just like the Nazis, they are totalitarian: they are determined not to allow their opponents to murmur the slightest whisper of dissent. Forcibly suppressing the speech of someone with whom one disagrees is a quintessentially fascist act.
To be further exact, the Brownshirts of the Third Reich you identify were officially known collectively as the SA — for Sturmabteilung, literally, Storm Detachment, and thus the (Star-Wars reiterated) synonym, Stormtroopers.
The even more ruthless, murderous, lawless and notorious SA faction, the SS, broke away from the mother lode SA in 1933, particularly in carrying out, under Hitler’s orders, the co-called Night of the Long Knives, in which many founding SA members and the earliest of German National-Socialists activists were cold-bloodedly murdered, and eliminated from future power-wielding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
Antifa’s tactics today are strongly redolent of SA’s tone and tenor, even more their M.O. — yet, their are Communistic in nature and ideology, entirely opposite of their strongly Nazi SA tactical forebears. It’s a distinction in Socialist-Leftist political history with a clear and certain, real difference.
Watch, then — I’m speculating — for an even more evil, totalistic, and murder-hungry faction, perhaps more neo-Nazi in spirit and aim, to emerge from and overtake the Antifa leadership, just as the SS, all at once, revolted against and annihilated the SA.
IOW, it’s possible that “we ain’t seen nothin’ yet”!
Ask and ye shall receive.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/minneapolis-john-thompson-video-bob-kroll
This guy is a candidate for the state house and he was endorsed by the sitting MN governor!
The violence he proposes hasn’t started…yet…but this is where it begins.
Out of control.
Without irony I point out that Antifa arose in 1930’s Germany as the Communist (International) counterpart to the SA.
There was an internecine struggle between two forms of (totalitarian) Collectivism as to who would control Germany: the National Socialists or the (Moscow friendly – international oriented) Communists. We know who prevailed that time.
Today’s Antifa echoes the “anti-Fascist” theme, and in so doing displays its historical ignorance (they are products to today’s educational, I mean indoctrination system). Anything that is not aligned with their anarchy-Communist intended outcome is mislabeled “Fascist,” including the United States of America as founded.
In historical context, Antifa and the SA (and Mussolini’s Black Shirts) are largely mere “brands” of street enforcers within emerging totalitarian movements.
Follow the money:that’s what it’s all about.
Even fascists and communists are greedy pigs. Where else would the teachers of this sh*t and the bums joining them get jobs except as teachers of this sh*t?
Correct. The Nazis and the communists were not on opposite ends of the political spectrum (right and left, respectively), as is often stated. They were two shades of collectivism – socialism and communism. Hitler created the National Socialist German Workers Party to provide a German alternative to the communists, who you correctly identified as International Communism, i.e. Soviet-dominated and directed communism. Germany had just fought a war against Russia – Hitler did not want Russia (in the form of the USSR) interfering in German politics.
An instructive highlight on Antifa’s most concise history and its so-called, wholly paradoxical “anti-fascist” agenda. Well made, thanks.
The original German stormtroopers were special troops in WW I. The term is a literal translation of “Sturmtruppen.” Sturmtruppen, also translated as “assault troops,” were specially-trained and equipped German infantry in WW I, created to act as the tip of the spear in ground operations during advances against a literally well-entrenched enemy.
“Forcibly suppressing the speech of someone with whom one disagrees is a quintessentially fascist act.”
In a sane world, that would make an excellent tweet. Right now, it could result in significant personal injury or property damage.
The left are not content to disrupt your life, they are fully engaged in the politics of personal destruction so they remove your ability to make a living and take away everything you have.
The idea that any one who questions the real motives behind the terrorist organization of BLM and Antifa are targeted for cancellation. It isn’t just history these terrorists want, they are going after all those who question the goals and ideology behind this violent movement.
It won’t be just professors. It will be everyone who might hold a different view of things than the dictates of this current insurrection going on against our country. Imagine if this were a staff member, not a tenured Professor, do you think that person would still have a job? And good luck finding another job with anyone when they see you were fired for racist reasons, bogus though they may be.
This is creating more racism to spring up. People who never before were racist are seeing the destruction and demands of these terrorists and it is shaping opinions against BLM. Looting, burning things down, destroying property, shootings, killings, muggings, demands for graft, these are not protests, this is no different than revolution against our government.
Defund all non-STEM higher education! IMMEDIATELY!!! There is no reason the American taxpayer should be spending even one more dollar to subsidize this kind of horse hockey, not limited to and including the systematized attempt to undermine this country and the values that made it great!
This isn’t basket weaving or women’s studies, it’s psychology. While not a hard science like chemistry or physics, it is a science.
On par with voodoo.
It’s voodoo with the legitimacy of a doctorate and a state license.
Although the concept of “infringement” only appears in the 2a, this case makes clear the understanding of the term as used by the founders.
The prof’s observations merely reflect common sense. Does a country that allegedly boasts “systemic racism” offer preferential treatment on the basis of sex and race in school admissions, contract awards and job hiring, with the latter two categories representing official attitudes of the private sector, and, state and federal governments? Does a country that is allegedly brimming with “systemic racism” elect a bi-racial, pathological narcissist, empty-suit, Leftist radical hustler possessing no substantive private sector achievenment, named “Barack Obama,” to the presidency, twice?
Is there anything that we, and other people who value free speech and academic freedom, can do that will help Prof Negy to weather this storm? I suspect GoFundMe would cancel any effort to help him, since they only support politically correct causes.
GFM is not the only crowdfunding platform, they just want you to believe they are.
I don’t see anything wrong with his tweets.
The left’s reaction proves him right.
Professor J., I hope you team up with Professor Negy, too.
I feel the same way. fscarn and GatorGuy hit the mark in the similarities between the general climate of the BLM/Cancel Culture/Antifa movements.
The pushback against “All Lives Matter” and the scenes of whites kneeling, washing feet, wearing scarves, etc. is stranger than Alice in Wonderland. The way BLM is acting is purely racist. No ifs, ands or buts. And the Democrats are the fuel for their fire.
The younger generations have been fed garbage by our public schools and public/private colleges and universities since the mid-70’s. They have been bombarded with lies and also taught how to act (or not act) and obey. Brainwashing 101.
I support Prof. Negy 110%
Florida’s sunshine laws may require them to share the findings with you.
Google it…it is your friend and you can use it to get all kinds of dirt for all Florida institutions that they don’t want you to see. However, they will be required to share it if you ask for it specifically.
Depends. Personnel records can be excluded from Sunshine law.
*some components of personnel records, that is.
But they will have to handle the requests, so send ’em in.
Healthguy is correct. Florida is an open records state. However, as with any resisting bureaucracy, they will slow-walk that response; and if your question is too specific, you will only get ‘exactly’ what you asked for, and more.
…and no more.
I had a pinko commie ex friend from High School who is a V-P at CFU. A few years ago Billie Clinton was campaigning on campus for Obummer and my ex friend was posting on FB of how she got to shake Ole’ Billy’s hand. I asked if it was the same hand that had diddled Monica Lewinsky. That was when she unfriended me.
Then you should be glad you wouldn’t ever have to shake her hand again!
The criticisms that anger people the most are the criticisms that are valid. Negy’s tweets were painful because they are so obviously true. The point of “hate speech” prohibitions is to prevent the statement of facts which are self-evidently true but cause those criticized to feel worse about themselves.
The sad fact is that Negy is right, that the massive exercise in self-deception that is the defining feature of the systemic racism meme, contributes to the continuation of the problems that lead to the claims in the first place.
Prof. Jacobson noted:
“UCF tweeted that Negy’s statements were “counter to UCF’s values” (hmmm, the claim that statements are counter to the school’s “values” seems vaguely familiar, must be in the universal higher ed senior administrator’s handbook):”
Absolutely right. We have heard the same language from Cornell’s President.
So UCF is doing all this to a gay man? Hmmm.
This could be a possibility for his legal team.
.
I’ve been thinking/saying for at least a half decade that the modern academe/campus is the petri dish for what is coming from the “progressive” movement across the globe. It is plain to me that due to success and lack of balance (resisting force), the current campus culture feels emboldened to go to the full extreme they can conceive – in what we are now calling cancel culture.
But it’s more than that now. It’s an effort to make sure ANY deviation from doctrine, even in thought (!!!), has to be the most uncomfortable experience and, as possible, it has to be very costly in both money and reputation. To call it fascist maybe works in the academe. But in our modern culture it is something different. There isn’t really a top down control like on campus, yet it is becoming quite effective as a grass roots effort, thanks mostly to a compliant social media (Big Tech) landscape. To me, bottom up is MUCH harder to reverse or calm once it becomes ingrained. Which it is close to being now.
During the protest, UCF President Alexander Cartwright asked about how “we change this institution to be a more inclusive one?”
______________________
For starters, you could try to INCLUDE more voices on your campus that don’t merely parrot the latest Marxist/leftist load of b.s. about this country.
But that would require some actual intelligence, critical thinking skills, and a backbone, which you obviously don’t possess.
First they came for the professors …
UCF is conducting a “fair-minded, detailed and robust review” and anyone who dares to question their self-assigned “noble brag” is engaging in hate-speech.
I don’t dare tell you that I hate artichokes because that is hate speech, pure and simple.
From Oberlin College: For those interested in seeing how to do a “protest” the right way see https://oberlinchaos.com/history/an-outsmarting-protest/. JD even teases Prof Jacobson just a bit in this post.
/s/ JD Nobody, OC ’61
Giving African-American youths “much needed feedback” that the knockout game is something bad is racist. Even when it kills people:
“Teen charged in deadly Great Frederick Fair assault to serve probation”
https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/crime_and_justice/teen-charged-in-deadly-great-frederick-fair-assault-to-serve-probation/article_41b07e8c-e97c-56f7-96bb-7da5be46de9d.html
I guess the faculty at UCF can no longer claim academic freedom exists if they don’t support Nagy!
Professor Nagy makes good points. Maybe, the student population of UCF is too ignorant to understand what he said. Let “Free Speech” prevail.
I recall a story in which a mining foreman, upon learning that a new miner had been involved in a fight said three words: “Don’t want him.” He didn’t want a potential troublemaker in his crew, period. And the UCF faculty and students who are trying to get Nagy fired are all, in my opinion, potential troublemakers to whom any prospective employer or colleague can rightly say “Don’t want him” (or her). He could do the same thing to me or anybody else in my organization if he didn’t like what somebody said. (The new miner was, by the way, taken on by another foreman who took the time to learn that the man had not instigated the fight in question, but that does not apply here.)
I would have reservations about bringing on board or working around anybody who tries to damage another person’s career for disagreeing with him or her on a political issue. I would believe there is a strong chance that the individual in question could bring the same divisive practices into the workplace to create a morale issue. Others might be reluctant to associate or collaborate with such a person lest he or she try to “cancel” them over a disagreement.
The same could be said of the people at Cornell who demanded Professor Jacobson’s dismissal (as opposed to just arguing against him). If I saw their names come up in this context, my first inclination would be “Don’t want them.”
Not all, but many of the signatures on that petition are probably available for public viewing.
The University of Central Florida is a cesspool of corruption: mismanaging state funds, take bribes to award doctoral degrees.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-ucf-house-probe-other-schools-20190227-story.html
The last president was forced to resign; there was talk in the legislature about defunding it. The legislature, which is heavily conservative, will not like the way the university is treating a conservative professor.
The legislature, which is heavily conservative, will not do jack shit.
FIFY
See the first comment in this thread.
Gee, I thought that USF was the most corrupt. USF has had some really nasty characters.
It seems like today’s campus disturbances have been simmering for decades. There was enough awareness that the following appeared forty-five years ago – almost half a century – when Tom Wolfe wrote the following in his book ‘Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.
‘ In 1974, in one of his last speeches, the late Lionel Trilling, who was probably the most prestigious literary critic in the country and had been a professor of English at Columbia for thirty-five years, made what falls under the heading of “a modest proposal.” He suggested that the liberal-arts curriculum in the universities be abandoned for one generation.
His argument ran as follows: Children come to the university today, and they register, and they get the student activity card and the map of the campus and the health booklet, and just about as automatically they get a packet of cultural and political attitudes. That these attitudes are negative or cynical didn’t seem to be what worried Trilling. It was more that they were dispensed and accepted with such an air of conformity and inevitability. The student emerges from the university with a set of ready-mades, intact, untouched by direct experience. What was the solution? Well – why not turn off the packaging apparatus for a while? In time there might develop a generation of intelligent people who had experienced American life directly and “ earned” their opinions.’
I hope he’s been saving his money.