New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | October 26, 2004

Cathy Young wants to know why mocking American war dead is free speech but drawing a dumb cartoon on a whiteboard is not.

Comments

|10.26.04 @ 6:21PM|#

Circling the drain with academia leading the parade.

|10.26.04 @ 6:29PM|#

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The only way to deal with this sort of thing is through a well-funded activist group with aggressive lawyers who serve notice on university administrators that limitations on free speech for any reason risks a ruinous lawsuit. The individual administrators need to be the targets for the lawsuits. Suing the universities is useless, since that is simply suing the taxpayers.

|10.26.04 @ 6:46PM|#

I was first person to post on the original thread regarding Tillman's death. I remarked that he was a fool. (For which I received about a dozen death threats.) In light of the fact that the Army has subsequently concluded that Tillman was killed by his own men, I stand by my original assessment.

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A444-2004May29.html (detailed account of the report on the "friendly fire" incident).

|10.26.04 @ 6:56PM|#

Sorry, that should be "I was the first..."

|10.26.04 @ 6:58PM|#

NCDan,

I understand the temptation to subject college administrators to personal liability for these actions. However, I teach in the evenings at a small private college. The last thing academia needs is even more threats of lawsuits.

Every faculty meeting includes a discussion of things we need to do to avoid lawsuits from students, the wrath of accreditors (you can lose accreditation for things that have zero connnection to the quality of instruction), and even fines from federal regulators. I have already been threatened with a lawsuit over a grading issue (I backed down because I'm not a tenured professor who can afford to fight). The last thing we need is even more lawsuits. Academia is suffering some serious problems, but outsiders with lawyers won't make it any better. I strongly disagree with administrators who infringe the free speech rights of students, but a solution imposed from the outside by lawyers will only be a short-term fix.

Then again, maybe my institution is an exception. It's one of the few for-profit private colleges out there, and the deeper pockets make us a natural target. This results in administrators micro-managing even more to make sure we aren't doing anything that could cause a lawsuit. But more micromanagement means more chances to break a rule, and once you do that the lawyers have you by the jugular for being inconsistent. So we get even more micromanagement, etc. etc. Fortunately, I'm about to get a new day job in another state, so I'll be looking for a new teaching job as well.

|10.26.04 @ 7:21PM|#

NCDan,

I would suggest a more grass roots, 60's activist approach. We could organize what I would call a "barf-in", in which thousands of college students show up on the quad at a certain time and start chanting power words.

|10.26.04 @ 7:45PM|#

I was first person to post on the original thread regarding Tillman's death. I remarked that he was a fool

Thanks for the reminder that you're an ignorant asshole. Not that we needed reminding.

Your belief that being killed by friendly fire qualifies the *victim* for "fool" status is certainly unique, though.

|10.26.04 @ 8:32PM|#

I always appreciate an opportunity to agree with Dan.

SR,

How, exactly, does getting accidentally killed by your own comrades make one a fool?

It's sad that you got death threats. I don't believe any amount of arrogant, ignorant stupidity warrants them.

|10.27.04 @ 2:23AM|#

I'm still trying to understand what went on here.

Okay, so Patrick Higgins was accused of being a racist because he opposed set-aside seats for minorities in the student government association. (Calling someone a racist for this reason is disgusting, but since I graduated from UMass-Amherst only two years ago, I'm hardly surprised it happened.)

Then at an SGA party, someone drew a picture of Higgins as a Klansman who claims to love ALANA (ie, minority) students. This seems to me like something one of his enemies would draw - it depicts him as a racist who claims to love minorities, presumably for political purposes.

But the article makes it sound like this drawing was made by one of his friends. Why the hell would a friend of his depict him that way? Was he busting his balls? Was he ridiculing the students who view Higgins as a Klansman? Seems like a pretty strange way to do that.

If it weren't mentioned in the article that the drawing of the Klansman was clearly a derogatory one, I almost understand why students would think Higgins was a racist. Whatever the motivation behind this was, it's pretty damn strange.

|10.27.04 @ 9:06AM|#

Strange yes, Jake. But hardly unusual.

We live in a society where anyone discussing ending quotas is automatically deemed a "racist". The future bodes no better: soon even this discussion of such topics will be forbidden in universities, schools, and the workplace, under the threat of lawsuits because such discussions create a "hostile environment" to those who back such policies.

|10.27.04 @ 9:25AM|#

The New York Post columnist is Matt Taibbi, not Mike.

|10.27.04 @ 9:26AM|#

Jake,

The fact that the cartoon doesn't make any sense is just cow-pie icing on this smelly brown cake.

|10.27.04 @ 10:50AM|#

"We live in a society where anyone discussing ending quotas is automatically deemed a "racist"."

If people think that you are a racist for holding that view, then they have the right to call you a racist. Remember: free speech.

fyodor|10.27.04 @ 1:25PM|#

a,

Agreed, one has the right to call someone else a racist, for whatever reason.

But three important points:

One, it's stupid and vile to call someone racist for wanting to end quotas. It may be that person's right to say and think something I consider stupid and vile, but it's just as much my right to call what he said stupid and vile.

Two, the "vile" part derives from the fact that calling someone "racist" has a chilling effect, at the least. That doesn't take away someone's right to call someone racist, but it means that it is a right that a responsible person will be especially careful about exercising, but of course people are instead often quite reckless about tossing around this exceptional accusation. They may have that right, but it's still not right (to use the same word with different albeit related meanings).

Three, and perhaps most importantly, as the article and some of the posts here express, one can face quite tangible consequences for being called a racist, making it more than just free speech going back and forth (although that said, if the university in question is private, it has the right to enforce rules against free speech, however vile I may consider such rules myself).