Legal Insurrection and Judicial Watch investigate attacks on UCF Prof. Charles Negy
The Negy case is a particularly egregious example of cancel culture that is purging academia and imposing uniformity of opinion. The Legal Insurrection Foundation and Judicial Watch have filed a public records request and retained Florida counsel for possible records access litigation.
Charles Negy is the University of Central Florida professor who found himself in the crosshairs of online and street mobs demanding his termination after early June 2020 tweets disputing the concept of “systemic racism” and asserting that “black privilege is real.”
Negy became something of a poster child for cancel culture in the age of BLM, with the president of UCF participating in protests, an organized email and petition campaign, physical protests at his home, and an alleged administrative enouragement of complaints that now form the basis for an intense investigation of him. Because Negy has academic freedom and tenure, the UCF administration appears to be seeking grounds to argue he committed misconduct in the teaching of his classes.
We covered Negy’s saga on August 16, 2020, The administrative torment of UCF Prof. Charles Negy:
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.
In that post, we detail what is public about the efforts to attack and fire Negy. Read it for more background.
But the public record usually is just a small slice of what is happening. So Legal Insurrection Foundation has teamed up with Judicial Watch to obtain documents from UCF pursuant to Florida’s relatively broad public records laws. We have jointly retained one of the premier Florida law firms on public records access, including as to future litigation should that prove necessary.
The Records Request (pdf.) is below:
Legal Insurrection Foundation and Judicial Watch Public Records Request to UCF Re Charles Negy by Legal Insurrection on Scribd
We are grateful to have Judicial Watch involved in this effort, with its vast experience on public records (e.g. FOIA) investigation and litigation. You may recall that Judicial Watch helped us with litigation against the D.C. Attorney General regarding the failure to charge David Gregory with gun law violations, and the investigation of the cancellation of a conference in Israel by the Virginia State Bar.
“Freedom of speech is under attack at the very institutions that should be encouraging it,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Intellectual discourse on college campuses has now been replaced by angry mobs trying to silence and end the careers of professors who present nuanced views.”
We have received an initial batch of redacted documents pursuant to our request, and it already is enlightening as to the swarm of complaints that flowed into UCF from alumni, students, other faculty and administrators, and the general public. But we have only started our review, and most of the categories of documents requested remain to be produced.
The scourge of cancel culture won’t be cured in a matter of days, weeks, or even months. But sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we are committed to shining a light on the Negy case and other cases as well. It is the direction you will see a lot more of from the Legal Insurrection Foundation moving forward.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Good news, there needs to be more action like this.
I have thought from the time the scheme teams started their propaganda campaign and systematically violated Zimmerman’s and lots of other people’s civil rights,that there need to be organized backlash. If we had of addressed those cases early on, things would be different today.
These sleaze bags need to be held accountable.
This good news would not be news if it weren’t for academics like William Jacobson and Jordan Peterson.
The irony is not lost on me that I am praying for a gay atheist to win his case.
Academic freedom depends on good scholarship and presenting valid arguments, not on popular opinion founded on emotions and virtue signalling.
Transgender and atheist, huh. As long as he doesn’t seek to normalize his dysfunction and indoctrinate his faith on school grounds.
Or rather not insidiously under mischaracterization of liberalism (i.e. divergence), misqualification of progressivism (i.e. monotonic), and em-pathetic (i.e. appeal to emotion fallacies) euphemisms.
He has serious mommy issues.
It’s not emotions or virtue-signalling; those would be bad enough, but they’re actually a veneer, a disguise, a fluffy pillow Trojan horse with sinister stuff inside. It’s deliberate Stalinism—systematic suppression of Things Which Must Not Be Said regardless of either their probity or their realism.
Isn’t this is what tenure is all about?
I support tenure even if it results in people advancing unpopular opinions. A university is not like a widget factory. When a faculty member is awarded a tenured position at a elite university, his career and his academic department’s success become tightly linked. At Cornell, less than half of scholars on tenure track positions actually earn tenure.
If you read the latest faculty demands, you will see that the system is being attacked from both ends — fire people who oppose anti-racism AND guarantee promotions to all current black faculty. (They also want to end color-blind hiring.) The problem is that at some point in the future, the current fever will break and people will be left to confront the substandard scholars that were hired or retained during this craziness. Now is not a good time for either the left or the right to push for big reforms of academia. Any change made in today’s climate will be crazy and will not be viable in the long run.
“…left to confront…” a lot of good that has done all these years. Everything is getting dumbed down and yet there are no adjustments being made. Idiocracy has taken hold and it’s here to stay thanks to the wait-and-see approach from the right. Nothing is changing in academia that isn’t FORCED on them.
You have to start somewhere, sometime. Perhaps President Trump ‘s Constitution Day address, his “1776 Commission “ will help fuel the pushback against the daily attacks on our Constitution, our history, our culture.
What if the colonists had given up before the fight?
But now profs are selected by ideology so eventual tenure solidifies it.
All the colleges and universities started ditching true “tenure” 30 years or more back.
Don’t mistake the “97% of College employees who donate to the Democrat Party” as having true tenure.
When they are all miles deep into group think, and exile all who don’t think to the nth degree with the approved Democrat Party propaganda, there is no tenure.
The traitor colleges have proven that this year with all their firing of anyone who even disagrees with their official party line.
Tenure exists to protect views that are congruent with the dominant viewpoint of academe. Being far Left. Anti-American , anti Christian, anti white –especially heterosexual white male. Etc.
Hear. Hear.
The actual thing that gives you a university is the promise that anybody can say anything in public in pursuit of what is true. That’s what makes a professor a professor.
That promise has been withdrawn, so it’s no longer a university, just a collection of bad actors.
The legal arguments will be circling around that but only a huge administrative change would restore university status.
Curiously, online learning with only the best professors surviving cuts out the promise as well. All those second rate and third rate teachers that don’t make the cut actually provide breadth to the search for truth. They’re silenced by the cut.
RE:
“..but only a huge administrative change would restore university status.”
Considering the #1 problem with all educational “institutions'” management is that entire administrations are “un-educated” in the truest sense of the word…..
Literally they DO NOT know how learning takes place – and no amount of “educational research” can cure that.
However, technology can replace virtually 100% of all educational institutions “management.”
Even the presidents should basically serve for free – as a figure head – for $1 per year. There are more than enough retired executives that could fill those roles.
“I request, on behalf of my clients the Legal Insurrection Foundation and Judicial Watch, Inc. . . .”—wow, LI gets top billing!
When Prof. J. vested himself in this endeavor by creating “Legal Insurrection”, it’s rewarding to see him and all those on his staff receive national name recognition. Andrew Breitbart predicted that when “average people” started to become journalists, the MSM news cycle would be turned upside down. As was “L.I.” in reporting of Oberlin; As will be USC. Good Going Prof. J. !!!
And what good did that do?
By the way, what I don’t understand is why the incoming Trump administration didn’t immediately instruct the USA for DC to bring charges. Or had the statute already run by then? (I would imagine it must surely have run by now, so it’s impossible to charge him, but three years ago it may still have been within the time. But I don’t know, I’m just guessing.)
It appears not even DJT thought he was going to win this, otherwise he would (and should) have had some KEY assignments lined up immediately for vital positions, not the least of which is the DOJ. A new OUTSIDER AG should have been step one. Everything should have been frozen in time – nothing moved nothing touched nothing destroyed, yet he allowed Mueller to slide in, destroy most if not all documentary evidence of the corrupt Obama admin under the guise of an “investigation.” Yes, I voted for Trump, yes, I’m voting for him again, but good grief, he could have made his admin much more effective in draining the swap, from day one. Oh well, such is our luck on the right.
Hindsight is always clearer. It is reasonable that Trump would underestimate the depth of corruption in the Beltway. It is so vast that it is hard to grasp.
Lets get him re-elected, so that he can use what he has learned to clear out more of the swamp.
No good. But, in the scheme of things, that was a gnat. Had Gregory been named Limbaugh, or something like that, he would have been perp walked. That is the world we live in.
Trump had the whole swamp laying perjury traps, etc. From before day one. Going after one axe hole among many, many I can understand as not being worth the effort.
JW pointed it out. That was about all that was likely, at best.
I hope Prof. Negy has the mental and physical stamina to endure this assault on his career and reputation. The same thing would have happened at the school where I taught if anyone had the effrontery to question systemic racism or BLM or other Marxist organizations.
I kept my mouth shut and quietly accepted a golden parachute to retire. Sometimes I wish I had Negy’s courage, but maybe it was for the best. If a mob of rioters had showed up at my house threatening to assault me and my family, there is a good chance that I would have responded with my riot gun. That would have been ugly.
This is fantastic.
One thing that would interesting to find out: How many complaints about Negy were made prior to his tweets?
Right now in California, the legislature is considering race-based subsidies for pregnant women that are black or pacific islanders.
I submit the privilege is real.
That won’t survive its first trip to court.
California court? I wouldn’t bet on a loss. SCOTUS? Pretty likely it loses, unless Roberts finds a penumbra somewhere.
Milhouse, with respect, you are living in a dream world. Virtually no court is deciding anything based on law, prececent, or anything else but for how the judge(s) are feeling that morning. That, or decisions are based on whoever bought the judge.
California, New York, Illinois, and other state courts are deeply infested with the poision of leftist our outright communist judges. Or, they are quota-hires like Sullivan who make decisions based on race.
Trust me: benefits for the Exalted Classes will easily survive any challenges in court. Our judicial and legal system is not what you think it is.
My Alma Mater…
SMH
BSCE ’91
For the record, Florida records are public, and available via the “Sunshine Law”, and other than redactions provided for by the law, everything should be made available.
Negy’s comments don’t jibe with the atmosphere of “inclusion” the university wants to create.
Of course, “inclusion” never includes ideas outside of leftist ideology.
That’s not very inclusive.
Inclusion translates to “shut up, whitey!”.
Bravo!
Thanks to Prof Jacobsen and Tom Fitton. Without them, we are doomed. On a whole, the GOP Congress is a feckless pack of corrupt fools.
Of course with the FBI showing the world how it’s done – FOIA requests are to be treated as a joke. Ignore, wait for a lawsuit to trudge thru the system, finally reply telling the court you’ll get to it. Delay more, wait for an order compelling production, produce in dribs and drabs slowly, make excuses re “staffing because of Covid” and then accidentally destroy key evidence. I’ve been in litigation for 20 years, this is how it’s done when you’re cornered. Corrupt scum take advantage of the system. This is why when the FBI wants documents, they bust down your door and grab everything with no warning – they don’t want you having the time to rummage thru and pulling the same sh-t they do.
Those who want to use FOIA should seek out the FOI-L list server. They will help anyone who asks navigate the process.
FOI ListServ | National Freedom of Information Coalition
http://www.nfoic.org
The FBI has been corrupt since the get go. Read any bio of J Edgar Hoover. His name is on their building.
I agree that Hoover was a nasty character, but he was dealing with even nastier characters. And crooked politicians were very much part of the problem.
My career was very much dominated by well healed nasty characters. The lesson I learned from it was that one often has to join an adversary in the gutter to prevail.
They really disliked me, something I viewed as an indication of my worth.
One case involved a CEO asserting that I had a mole in the company, I truthfully told him I did not have a mole, there were many moles, and when the dust settled he was canned, and he was replaced by someone I had made aware that there was about to a job opening.
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people” Oops!
Another great reason to follow and support Legal Insurrection.
Off topic, slightly, but only in the sense that it’s about a different aspect of the cognitive dissonance of the left in general and the virtue signaling members of the academy who revel in the public displays of groveling and white-guilt masturbation that they love to perform to please their SJW dominatrices (if there’s one thing that makes leftist professors even happier than feeling miserable about being white, it’s making their white students feel miserable about being white).
Trump has gone into full beast mode. Not only does he want to Barr to prosecute the mayor of Seattle for abandoning the residents of that CHAZ or whatever to the whims of a ravening mob, thus violating their 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law, and charge protestors with sedition (how do they defend themselves against that charge since not only do they shout it to the rooftops when they riot, plunder, and pillage #BLM has on their homepage they want to overthrow the US government and our constitutional order) but he is taking college administrators at their word when they capitulate to the demands of their SJW tormenters and proclaim that their institutions are racist and white supremacist to the core.
Periodically they have to certify that they are not racist nor white supremacist to qualify for federal funding under title IX. Are they lying now, or were they lying then?
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=390281
“Princeton University Declared That It Was Thoroughly ‘Embedded’ With Racism and White Supremacism. So the DOJ Has Taken Them At Their Word and Opened a Civil Rights Investigation…
President Christopher L. Eisgruber published an open letter earlier this month claiming that ‘[r]acism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton” and that “racist assumptions’ are “embedded in structures of the University itself.’
According to a letter the Department of Education sent to Princeton that was obtained by the Washington Examiner, such an admission from Eisgruber raises concerns that Princeton has been receiving tens of millions of dollars of federal funds in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964…
The title at AOShq says it’s the DoJ conducting the investigation, but it’s clearly the DoE.
“…Finally, the Department is further concerned Princeton’s many nondiscrimination and equal opportunity claims to students, parents, and consumers in the market for education certificates may have been false, misleading, and actionable substantial misrepresentations in violation of 20 U.S.C. � 1094(c)(3)(B) and 34 CFR 668.71(c). Therefore, the Department�s Office of Postsecondary Education, in consultation with the Department’s Office of the General Counsel, is opening this investigation.”
I’ve never believed Barr is as spineless as he’s some conservatives who expected and still expect have portrayed him. He is nominally in charge of a department full of lawyers hell bent on derailing him and DJT. Betsy DeVos has the same problem.
But these two aren’t the kind of people to let a little problem like that stop them. As we see with these spineless college professors who blow with the wind while pretending they are standing on some sort of principle, leftists only act tough in permissive environments. They get pushback and they curl up into the fetal position and start sucking their thumbs and crying.
They really must be masochists given how much they enjoy being punished in public and humiliated. Well, daddy just got home, beeotches.
That needs to be applied to all those communist Traiter colleges.
Re: Universities must certify that they are equal-opportunity institutions to qualify for federal loan assistance.
Princeton made those assurances last in 2013.
But Princeton is now admitting that it is a racist institution, despite previously certifying that it wasn’t.
That’s perpetrating a fraud on the US government.
Ibib.