"Kansas City Art Institute Expels Student for Retweeting Sexual Art"

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression reports:

Incoming student Ash Mikkelsen (they/them) is fighting to defend artistic expression and their academic future after retweeting sexually explicit Japanese-style cartoons featuring nudity and sex, known as hentai, on their personal, pseudonymous Twitter account. The art institute investigated Mikkelsen, alleging that the images could constitute sexual harassment and contribute to a hostile learning environment. Though Mikkelsen did not tag anyone from the university community in their posts or send messages to anyone relating to the account, KCAI expelled Mikkelsen for their artistic expression — and permanently banned them from ever re-enrolling at the school.

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a letter to KCAI demanding that the school immediately reverse the outrageous expulsion….

After one student allegedly found the account and complained to administrators, KCAI attempted to justify investigating and then expelling Mikkelsen for non-Title IX hostile environment sexual harassment under its Student Code of Conduct. However, KCAI does not define sexual harassment under that code. It's patently unfair and unlawful to punish students under unpublished disciplinary standards. Moreover, Mikkelsen's retweets don't come anywhere close to meeting the legal definition of sexual harassment….

As a private university, KCAI is not bound by the First Amendment's protections for free speech. But KCAI's policies, which it is morally and contractually required to uphold, state that the school "is committed to freedom of expression," "supports the rights of the campus community to engage in free speech and open assembly," and values "intellectual and artistic curiosity together with critical and creative inquiry."

The school first notified Mikkelsen of the investigation into their Twitter account on June 15. On June 29, Mikkelsen met with Assistant Dean of Students Joe Timson. During this meeting, Timson told Mikkelsen that they would be expelled — without any chance to contest the allegations — for violating the Student Code of Conduct.

KCAI gave Mikkelsen five business days to appeal the finding, which they are doing today. FIRE connected Mikkelsen with a FIRE Legal Network attorney….

Note: I have consulted for FIRE on a different matter, but I wasn't at all involved with this controversy, and wasn't asked to write about it.

Comments

[bevis the lumberjack]

The university is full of shit for doing this. Totally totalitarian thuggish. And the plaintiff has to broadcast they’s pronouns.

Can we set up an arbitration session on a rocket and fire it into the sun?

[DaivdBehar]

All PC is case. All woke is case. Stop sending letters FIRE. Starting inflicting real pain in these traitor schools. File a lawsuit to mandamus the IRS Non-Profit Office to de-exempt them for providing indoctrination instead of education, as promised in their 990 Form. In addition, that tax fraud fully justifies the seizure of the assets of the school in civil forfeiture.

Cancel this school. To deter. Do it once, no more letters will be necessary. But then, we will no longer need FIRE. The rent is everywhere.

[DaivdBehar]

Then find the complainant. Permanently expel that person as part of any plea agreement.

[Jerry B.]

Even they/them is not a protection against cancellation.

[AtR]

I getting a little tired of reading of FIRE's continued failure to get academic institutions to uphold their own academic freedom guidelines.

[Krayt]

FIRE's response is under way. Were did you see they failed already?

[AtR]

Most recently, Katz - https://www.thefire.org/princeton-must-clarify-it-wont-investigate-joshua-katz-for-opinion-piece/

[Longtobefree]

"It's patently unfair and unlawful to punish students under unpublished disciplinary standards."

What's that got to do with anything?

[Cal Cetín]

We're all on tentacles...I mean tenterhooks...waiting to see what the outcome of FIRE's intervention will be.

[Longtobefree]

" . . . of the investigation into their Twitter account . . . "

Their? So it was a conspiracy?

[Dan Schiavetta]

I think the mention of hentai has stroked a sensitive, secret nerve among the administrators. (Sorry, I meant hit a nerve . . . )

[Krayt]

Here's another one for you, Rev! A private school not bound by the First Amendment being held to their own boilerplate about academic freedom.

This sort of attention is your doing, a response to your complaints they only pay attention to government bad actors. Kudos!

[Bubba Jones]

How did they ever know?

And why did he admit it was his?

[Krayt]

H.R. Geiger, Torso Mit Haken, a great, avant gard and famous artist, presumably would have been cancelled.

It's a fine example of morality creep via imaginings.

Years ago, government sends out a dear colleagues letter threatening to pull Congress' money unless they do something about pervasive, nasty harrassment.

The human mind, forgetting the financial nature of it, imagines some fantastic morality in it.

Severed from money, the imagined morality, whatever value there is in stopping severe harrassment, grows into application to lesser and lesser slights. This then grows into a full-blown Emperor's New Clothes situation, nowadays called virtue signalling.

Now the meme takes the final step. The real power of a meme and meme theory isn't that a meme is an idea. It's an idea that gets you to behave in ways that spread it, severed from its original surface reasoning.

It has been controlling human behavior for quite awhile, via the monetary threat hook, and grown to spread more easily as nonsentient cog host units adopt it, then adapt it to these lesser and lesser slights -- memes evolving to spread more easily. More accurately, like any biological organism, they evolve randomly here and there. Some are stillborn or not as good as the original. Some, as here, reproduce more effectively, and so dominate among the host units.

And here, the next evolutionary step has happened. The virtue signalling growth to lesser and lesser slights has, like Tasmanian Devil Tumors, learned to leap onto new organisms and no longer needs the financial threat from the dear colleagues letter.

[Kazinski]

I think the University I probably correct here, even though it was art, and it was his personal account for two reasons:

1. It was inevitable that people in the university community would see his private social media accounts when they started searching for something to complain about.

2. Imagine the shock of University students seeing the images and finding out people are naked under their clothes (at least before graduate school).

When I was riding the subway in Tokyo in 1984 during a typical rush hour where everyone is standing pressed together. The guy standing in front of me was reading a comic book, he had it held up high over his shoulder because he didn't have room in front of him, so it was pretty hard not to see it. It depicted a naked coed bound with ropes, tied so her legs were spread, and a man (the protagonist?). Was inserting a lit candle in her vagina, I guess it was a metaphor. Clearly the man reading the comic book should be suspended from KC Art Institute too, I should report the incident to them lest I be suspended too, or at least barred from ever being admitted.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Uh, don’t you mean they’s account?

[Cal Cetín]

I think I see one reason for Japan's low birthrate.

"Not now, honey, I'm looking at dirty pictures - I mean art - with my lifelike robotic companion."

[Cal Cetín]

I don't know what happened in this case, but speaking in general terms, a private institution - even (or especially) an art school - should be able to forbid its students from disseminating dirty pictures.

To avoid unfair surprise, the student would need to be specifically informed of this before choosing to attend - because most prospective students in today's climate would assume anything goes. Wouldn't be fair if the first they learned of the institution's standards was when they were kicked out for violating them.

[Davy C]

A private school generally has the right to expel students for whatever reason they feel like. But when we're talking about a pseudonymous social media account that's still going to be there whether or not they expel him (he can "use" whatever pronouns he wants, but I use the pronouns I want to use when I'm writing, OK?) it seems stupid to do so. It doesn't make the other students any safer from his tweets.

And I don't think that a school's reference to free speech means it's subjecting itself to the exact same requirements as a government university. I would argue that a school which supports free speech doesn't have to support everything which isn't actually illegal as defined by the current Supreme Court.

[Krayt]

This is true. But expect to be held to account if you violate your own lip service towards academic freedom and the like. How close this is to an enforceable contract is for others to decide. They also lean on them they are morally obligated to uphold it as well, beyond any possible legal implications.

[David Nieporent]

A private school generally has the right to expel students for whatever reason they feel like.

That's not exactly right. Subject to public accommodations law, a private school generally has the right to set its own rules of speech and conduct (except in California, which statutorily applies the 1A to private schools).

But there's a difference between saying that a private school can set its own rules and saying that a private school can expel someone whenever it feels like. It's not analogous to at will employment; it's a contractual relationship.

[ReaderY]

It’s interesting how traditional morals offenses change their jargon - the Kansas City Art Institute describes things in totally different language from the way that say, a Kansas City Evangelical Art Institute might - yet doing so doesn’t really change anything.

The language doesn’t even really mean anything different here. Feeling “harassed” amd feeling “morally offended” pretty much amount to the same thing, the same emption and personal reaction, just viewed from two different intellectual lenses.

[ReaderY]

One of my themes that I’ll repeat here is that when person A feels offended by what person B does, whether person B is harassing person A or whether instead person A is attempting to intrude on and control person B often appears obvious to the people involved. But it isn’t necessarily so obvious from the point of view of a complete stranger.

One signal that things are out of hand is when people claim the exclusive right to interpret whether what someone else does is offensive. In a segregated society a white people can subjectively feel the same sense of being intruded on by a black person in the front of the bus that in a different society (or perhaps the same society, different subsectors of it) a black person could feel at a white person using the word “nigger” in quoting a legal case.

This is one of the reasons why judges should be careful not to decide thongs based solely on their personal sense of offense.

At the same time, I think society has a right to codify these senses of offense so long as they stay within constitutional boundaries, which generally means that the text of the Constitution addresses the issue, as distinct from purely judge-made law.

Onscenity is a long-standing exception to the First Amendment. Libertarians don’t like it, Professor Volokh hates it, but it’s there.

But it might be more honest, and better for everybody involved, for the Kansas City Art Institute to acknowledge that it and complaining students don’t like smutty pictures than to dress up their dislike in the language and clothing of discrimination.

Just because you find something offensive doesn’t mean the other person is discriminating against you. Otherwise, black people could be accused of discrimination for sitting in the front of the bus, and of sexual harassment for looking at white women the wrong way.

[Keenleyside]

I don’t understand why pester this student, as this animation movement is quite common now. I know some people who are into watching this content. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing particularly scary about it. One of my acquaintances was talking about hentai vids. He said that he found this article interesting, about this kind of content.

[Michael P]

Is your argument that we shouldn't criticize such actions because they have lots of precedent?

[David Nieporent]

I just want to know what language he's speaking, because that's not English.