Are You for or against "Free Speech"?

[TillEulenspiegel]

University of Colorado Police arrest Shareef Aleem after he and other students brought a halt to a Board of Regents meeting in Aurora, Colo., on Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005. The special meeting was called by the Regents over the controversy of Professor Ward Churchill and a paper he wrote comparing the victims in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as Nazis. Protesting students brought a halt to the meeting by shouting their demands to speak at the meeting

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?p=...hill&e=1&tmpl=sl&nosum=0&large=0&t=1107482043

 

[Ziggurat]

Which side in this fight do you think represents "Free Speach" ?

 

[aerocontrols]

Before I answer:

Is there a difference between Free Speech and "Free Speech"?

Actually, let me just say that I'm in favor of Free Speech, and am unsure of my stance on "Free Speech", pending clarification.

Ward Churchill should be free to speak, no matter how odious his opinions and how phony his life story. Similarly, the Board of Regents should have been able to conduct their meeting according to the civilized rules they almost surely had set up beforehand.

MattJ

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Damn I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. I was speaking in reference to the professors (tenured) right to express himself, not the unruly behavior of impassioned group of proponents in a meeting .
Mae Culpa.

 

[Number Six]

I'm in favor of free speech when it applies to me but not when it applies to others.

I think everyone would agree that the Professor is free to express himself. Where people disagree on is whether being a tenured professor shields you from certain consequences of what you say.

 

[aerocontrols]

Damn I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. I was speaking in reference to the professors (tenured) right to express himself, not the unruly behavior of impassioned group of proponents in a meeting .
Mae Culpa.

He's got every right to express himself. On the other hand, that right doesn't protect his job as Department Chair, and it's totally appropriate that he's stepped down. If he had not, the University would have been within its rights to remove him from that position.

MattJ

 

[Ziggurat]

I think everyone would agree that the Professor is free to express himself. Where people disagree on is whether being a tenured professor shields you from certain consequences of what you say.

I also see no reason to remove him from his faculty position over anything he says. But there's no problem with making him step down as chair, and it should also be quite clear that giving this half-wit tenure in the first place was a mistake. But since they did, they've got to put up with him, and that includes taking the well-deserved ridicule directed towards the University for its monumentally stupid (but all too common in academia) hiring decisions. Should the protesters have disrupted the meeting? No. Should they have protested? Hell yes.

 

[Tmy]

Should he be free to spout hateful things. Yes. Dont throw him in jail or beat him up.

On the other hand I think its fine for the school/company to fire him for outragous behavior.

If you can do that to a tenured proff I dont know. Thats an employment issue.

Free Speech does not mean free of consequences.

 

[aerocontrols]

Should the protesters have disrupted the meeting? No.

Agreed

Should they have protested? Hell yes.

Why?

 

[pgwenthold]

University of Colorado Police arrest Shareef Aleem after he and other students brought a halt to a Board of Regents meeting in Aurora, Colo., on Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005. The special meeting was called by the Regents over the controversy of Professor Ward Churchill and a paper he wrote comparing the victims in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as Nazis. Protesting students brought a halt to the meeting by shouting their demands to speak at the meeting

I don't know what free speech issue you are talking about, but

1) The professor is certainly free to say what he wants
2) The university is certainly within its rights to remove him from department chair
3) The university is not within its rights to fire him completely
4) The students are well within their rights to protest
5) The students do not have a right to disrupt a special meeting of the Board of Regents
6) The police are within their rights to arrest students for trespassing

Disrupting a Regents meeting does nothing to help anyone.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

I find his comments and position to be offensive, point being that not only does the man have a right of personal expression, the forum is a university -which is supposed to subject it's community and student body with non-conventional ideas. The university is SUPPOSED to be the seat of divergent and novel thought . The man was also tenured, which means that there are certain guarantees in the scope of his employment.

So we have the setting of the most liberal of forums in America ( the Collage ) where a tenured professor ( meaning immune to superfluous prosecution ) who states a political point of view ( the most protected of all kinds of speech) can be fired or censured for expression of those thoughts.

What's wrong with this picture?
edit to add:
pgwenthold, You didn't read my second post regarding the issue. It redefines the scope of my question.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Aerocontroles:"If he had not, the University would have been within its rights to remove him from that position."

Really? Is that the law in Colorado or an opinion? I know first hand how hard ot is to fire a tenured professor in my state , which BTW is a right to work state. Cripes their almost as un killable as a postal worker.

 

[CapelDodger]

If you can do that to a tenured proff I dont know. Thats an employment issue.

The point of tenure is to guarantee freedom of expression without fear of dismissal. This is intended to promote independent thought, but is easily undermined by the Ziggurat principle : only give tenure to people you're absolutely sure will think the way you want.

As to your question, TillEulenspiegel : I am against absolute freedom of speech. I have a general bias against absolutes, which are often unworkable and/or destructive.

In this particular case, if the prof's views are as they're presented, ridicule would seem a better reponse than shouting him down - perhaps a slanderous mambo, or a limerick. (There's a Clinton, New York? Is there a Rodham?)

 

[BPSCG]

The students have no right to disrupt a board of regents meeting, period. When you make it impossible for someone to speak by shouting him down, it's no defense that you were exercising your own freedom of speech.

"The Human race in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon - laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution - these can lift at a colossal humbug - push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand." Mark Twain - The Mysterious Stranger

 

[Ed]

I think that being tenured is not proof against having to support off the wall claims. It seems to me that if he cannot provide ratioal support for his claims of the victams of 9/11 being Nazis and the like that he is a fraud and his employment is null and void. Vapid, unsupportable and horrific statements are hardly examples of "intellectual freedom" and undermine the concept of tenure.

Further, it is not clear that tax dollars should support such a person.

 

[WildCat]

I find his comments and position to be offensive, point being that not only does the man have a right of personal expression, the forum is a university -which is supposed to subject it's community and student body with non-conventional ideas. The university is SUPPOSED to be the seat of divergent and novel thought . The man was also tenured, which means that there are certain guarantees in the scope of his employment.

So we have the setting of the most liberal of forums in America ( the Collage ) where a tenured professor ( meaning immune to superfluous prosecution ) who states a political point of view ( the most protected of all kinds of speech) can be fired or censured for expression of those thoughts.

Would you feel the same if he had stated that Jews deserved to die in the Holocaust? If he had said that murdered abortion doctors deserved what they got?

 

[The idea]

[...] the controversy of Professor Ward Churchill and a paper he wrote comparing the victims in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center [to] Nazis.

For what it's worth, here's Ward Churchill's response:

I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns."

It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack.

Source:
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/ward_churchill_responds.html

 

[Ed]

Would you feel the same if he had stated that Jews deserved to die in the Holocaust? If he had said that murdered abortion doctors deserved what they got?

Yeah! And what would you say if he wanted to close the tittie bars? Hits a bit close to home, don't it boy-o?

 

[aerocontrols]

Aerocontroles:"If he had not, the University would have been within its rights to remove him from that position."

Really? Is that the law in Colorado or an opinion? I know first hand how hard ot is to fire a tenured professor in my state , which BTW is a right to work state. Cripes their almost as un killable as a postal worker.

Firing a tenured professor is a different thing than removing a tenured professor from the position of Department Chair. I thought my post was clear on that issue.

As to the legality of this issue, I would direct you here.

Stripping him of chairmanship: Nonetheless, there is no reason that the University had to keep him as Chair of his department, had he not resigned that post. The chairmanship of a department is an administrative post; while a professor's job is to publish his own work and his own views, the chair's job is to advance the academic mission of the university. (Teaching is a separate and complicated matter, but as best I can tell none of Churchill's offensive statements were made in class.) See Jeffries v. Harleston (2nd Cir. 1995), which sensibly draws this distinction.

If the University concludes that keeping a person such as this as the administrative face of the department will cast the department and the university into disrepute, it can properly remove him as chair, while retaining his right to say whatever incendiary things he likes as professor. And of course I'd say the same as to department chairs who said things I liked: A university should have fairly broad authority to strip them of their chairmanship, though not of their posts.

MattJ

 

[aerocontrols]

I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns."

It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack.

What a marvelous view into his thinking. Thanks for that.

Going directly to the essay in question I find it hard to see that he was making that distincution.

They did not license themselves to "target innocent civilians."

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

He is quite clearly talking about everyone in the WTC. As if the distinction he makes in the response you quote makes a difference.

MattJ