We recently saw rather bizarre case of a college president having to publicly apologize for saying the “all lives matter” rather than “all Black lives matter” in supporting protests over the Ferguson and New York grand jury decisions. (Ironically, I listened this weekend to protests where leaders chanted “all lives matter” in Washington). Now, Serhat Tanyolacar, a University of Iowa visiting professor and printmaking fellow, has been denounced for a piece of art designed to protest racism after the decision. Iowa officials have declared the art to be the equivalent to hate speech and ordered its removal within hours — with President Sally Mason denouncing the art and apologizing profusely. Now, however, students are calling for the artist to be fired and for a new speech-regulating committee to be established for such public forums.
The Klu Klux Klan figure is covered with newspaper clippings on racial injustice and violence. It is a powerful image that is both artistic and political speech. Tanyolacar sought to create something to “facilitate a dialogue.” He got it. The university however has abandoned any defense of the free speech expression or even tried to understand the obvious purpose of the art. The piece was placed in an area designated as a public forum. Nevertheless, Mason and her staff threw Tanyolacar and free speech under a bus. Smith has said that the school failed “to meet our goal of providing a respectful, all-inclusive, educational environment, the university apologizes.” She has demand that the school “prepare a detailed plan of action” to presumably protect against such expressions of free speech in the future.
Much like law schools supplying professional counselors after the Ferguson decision for students, Mason has ordered university-provided counseling for anyone traumatized by the art work.
I do not question the impact of such an image and I can understand why the image was disturbing for so many. While I cannot say that I share the same cultural and personal pain of African-Americans in relation to such images, I was raised with stories from my mother of how she would often go to sleep with a burning cross on a nearby hill when the local KKK would terrorize her Italian and Catholic community in Ohio. However, this artist was using this well-known image as an important statement against racism an hate. It has now become for many an image of growing speech regulation and intolerance on university campuses.
What is equally shocking is the statement of David Ryfe, director of UI’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UI, who supports viewpoint discrimination, stating “If it was up to me, and me alone. I would follow the lead of every European nation and ban this type of speech.” That is the director of a school of journalism.
We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. We have seen even comedians targets with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here). However, it is the appearance of effective speech codes on campuses that are the most worrisome. We have even saw a professor attack demonstrators with the later support of faculty and students who have justified her actions as responding to the “terrorism” of pro-life displays.
The statue tar screen prints of newspaper clippings depicting coverage of racial tensions, riots, and killings dating to the early 1900s was a faculty member’s effort to express his own creative feelings in a place for public discussion. Nevertheless, he was forced to apologize and issued a statement that “I sincerely apologize for the pain and suffering I caused to the African American community on Friday,” he said. “I am hoping that I will be able to be forgiven for the pain I have caused with my sculpture.”
Tanyolacar is the father of a mix-raced 8-year-old boy and has faced “racism and prejudice” in his own life. He recently participated in an exhibition project called, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Artists Respond” in St. Louis.
Nevertheless, students are continuing to protest and complain over the now removed art. Kayla Wheeler, a third year doctoral student in the UI Department of Religious Studies, has criticized the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for promoting the statue on social media and demanded a “social media oversight committee” to regulate such speech in the future to satisfy the sensibilities of the public. Moreover, she and others want the artist fired. Wheeler stated “If he is not fired immediately and returns to campus next semester, he should not be allowed to teach any students.”
By the way, Nic Arp, director of strategic communications for the college, who earlier attempted to defend the expression of free speech removed that defense from social media and issued his own apology “for contributing to people’s very real and understandable pain. I have learned a lot about how my own privilege and culture bias informed my own initial reaction to it.” He added:
“I’m a white person and responded to it first and foremost as a piece of art and not in the way an African American might — as a very real and scary symbol. I wanted to take personal responsibility and say, hey, I’ve learned a lot and I’m embarrassed by my own insensitivity about it.”
I will confess that I have a “bias” in favor of free speech that shades my view of this incident. Public forums come with all types of speech: good, bad, valuable or valueless. Bad speech is combatted with good speech — not pre-speech approvals or firing artists. Some of us have growing concern over the level of speech regulation that is occurring on our campuses, which were once bastions of free speech.
Source: KCRG
I wish people’s skin was as thick as their heads.
The first amendment hung in effigy
Thank you for keeping us alert of another attack on our Constitutional rights. We must stand up against our universities and other organizations who try to stifle free speech…whether we personally agree or not.
And playwright Bertolt Brecht’s remark about the Soviet show trials summed up the views of the intellectual Left:
“The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die.”
Soviet Brigade Commander S. P. Kolosov sounds like today’s University presidents, as he wrote in a letter in 1937:
“I am afraid to open my mouth. Whatever you say, if you say the wrong thing, you’re an enemy of the people. Cowardice has become the norm.“
Nikolai Bukharin denied every criminal act he was accused of in the Soviet show trials, among them the charge that he conspired to murder Lenin. Nevertheless he pleaded guilty to the charges:
“For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For when you ask yourself: ”If you must die, what are you dying for?” – an absolutely black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one wanted ta die unrepented. And, on the contrary, everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man’s mind. This in the end disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees before the Party and the country.
an enemy of the people. Cowardice has become the norm.“
@Pogo
You seem well read, sooo I have a question. Do you remember some commie in Soviet Russia was tried for treason or something, and even though he was innocent, he said that he didn’t mind be executed for the good of the State, or something like that??? I remember my father telling me something about that, but I have never read it anywhere.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
That was’t the Cultural Revolution Pogo.
That is a photo of the Chinese restaurant owners who over charged a professor two dollars on a Goupon.
This deserves an artistic response, sooo:
https://birtherthinktank.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/mason.png
(I know, the photo-editting of Mason is not very good, but it is Monday, and I have a hangover. )
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
This is more like the Cultural Revolution in China, where student leader undertook denouncing, criticism and forced labor re-education of school leaders, teachers and students. Some were killed. Many were innocent of any wrongdoing at all.
Using words in slightly the wrong way was punished severely, and those rules seemed to change on a whim almost daily.
the point was to reduce any trust between people, to destroy any relationship except with the state. Especially familes.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/63290000/jpg/_63290681_glizhensheng.jpg
They must have not been able to find a Crucifix being urinated on. That would have been deemed ok, if not celebrated.
The dark night of fascism is always descending in the Right and yet lands only among the socialists.
I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘free speech’ is something most folks only believe in when they are in the minority…….When they gain enough power, they immediately decide that it’s an unnecessary extravagance and that the world will be a better place when folks are only allowed to believe as they do. I think truly principled support of free speech is rarer than one would hope.
Nick – extremism ruins everything it touches.
And this sculpture would be very interesting, especially on display in a Museum of Tolerance.
Oh, the irony of universities leading the charge in curtailing free speech and promoting blasphemy laws.
I agree that this is free speech, and the university should promote that freedom of expression over the PC police.
I also think that this professor clearly hadn’t read any of the evidence released to the public after the Ferguson GJ found a no bill on any indictment of Officer Wilson.
It would have been a better intellectual exercise if the professor used an actual racist hate crime as inspiration and touch stone, and they are out there. With actual racist events to choose from, why select something that was not a hate crime?
Again, it seems ironic that a university professor would chose a non-hate crime to start a discussion about hate crimes.
Dictators often rise at the will of the people. And what we have here is a “tolerance” movement that is openly intolerant. Universities are clamoring to restrict free speech. The media has tried to curb the uses of commonly used phrases, such as when they condemned Sarah Palin for using military terms during political campaigns. When they tried to show they were above such a thing, anchors could barely complete a sentence when covering politics. It was hilarious. I used to watch MSNBC just to laugh at people struggling to suddenly excise political terms that might have a military origin. They couldn’t use war room, target, set our sights, laser like focus, aim, or any other military term that is applied to politics. They finally abandoned the effort without comment. I had a friend once who spoke often about women’s rights. But the same person announced on social media how she and her friends hoped that Anne Coulter would die, simply because they disagreed with another woman speaking her mind.
If we project this trend forward, say 50 years, what level of erosion will we see in free speech? Will people be fired for criticizing the dominant political party? What restriction of their own hard-won rights will the people demand?
Steve, Indeed, both the extreme left and right are control freaks. But, I never see a day when the right rule campuses like the left has increasingly over the past 50 years. The rape is rampant meme is also part of this. Professor Glenn Reynolds has a good piece in today’s USA Today on that subject. If you want to see what our country will look like if liberals ruled, college campuses are the models. Now, I would not want a country ruled by right extremists either. But, I can’t come up w/ a model like college campuses.
Steve F., I don’t think so. “Social justice” trumps ordinary justice, let alone symmetric injustice.
Freedom of speech is becoming a memory thanks to political correctness and the liberals of our nation. Everything demands a demonstration.
Swords tend to cut both ways.
These same PC rules can and will be used to suppress the left.