There are new calls for the termination of incoming Boston University sociology professor Saida Grundy after disclosure that she has a criminal record from Michigan. Grundy has become the best known academic at BU before even starting her academic career at the institution . . . for all the worst reasons. However, at the risk of being called an apologist, I again believe that this is not grounds for termination and that BU should allow Grundy to assume her teaching post.
The first calls for her termination came after it was disclosed that Grundy used Twitter to denounce white men as the central problem population at universities and described how she tries not to do business with white people. After an outcry from alumni, Boston University president Robert Brown expressed “disappointment” with her statements and Grundy herself apologized for what she called “indelicate” wording. New calls were heard after it came out that Grundy attacked a white woman and rape victim on Facebook who expressed her personal feelings over an article criticizing actress Patricia Arquette for her call at the Oscars for equal pay for women.
On both occasions, I wrote that I would have had great reservations about hiring Grundy on a faculty but that, as a current professor, she should be afforded the protection of free speech in making controversial and even racist comments. These controversies highlight a long-standing debate that we have had over the increasing trend toward firing people for their speech on social media and associations in their private lives. This can range from teachers posting vacation pictures to obnoxious employees engaged in sexist or offensive comments.
In this case, you have an actual crime but it was presumably disclosed (if it was not, that would clearly be grounds for termination). In 2008, Grundy admitted that she used multiple pictures of another woman to create a fake account on an adult website in a jealous rage over the woman dating a former boyfriend of Grundy. She was a graduate student at the University of Michigan at the time. Grundy was charged with felony counts of identity theft and using computers to commit a crime as well as a misdemeanor count of malicious use of a telecommunications service.
She eventually pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor count in exchange for the dismissal of the felonies and given probation until June 2009.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised that the severity of the charges in a case of an obvious jealous rage. This was not done for financial or pecuniary benefit. It was stupid and was legitimately reported to the police. The sounds like the type of count stacking that prosecution engage in to force people to plead, though there was probably little need for coercion in this case. It remains a simple misdemeanor committed years ago. As long as it was disclosed, I would not view that crime as a barrier to employment.
None of this changes my view that BU is legitimately under scrutiny for the original hiring decision of someone who has such obvious anger issues and holds what appear racist and sexist views. If those issues were not raised during the hiring process, the question is whether there was an adequate review of Grundy and her history. I would have a great number of questions for someone who holds such views that relate directly to her scholarship and intellectual approach. However, she was hired and I have greater concerns over the disciplining of academics for expressing unpopular views in their academic writings or public commentary.
As I discussed before, there is a contrast in this approach with the rising number of terminations of non-academic employees for public conduct or social media postings. However, in addition to raising concerns about some of those cases, there is the added element of academic freedom that runs to the core of our profession. Academics are given tenure and protections precisely to allow them to challenge conventional thinking or social mores. That sometimes mean that we protect low-grade lows like those of Professor Grundy and others. However, the alternative is a slippery slope of speech regulation for academics that endangers the entire academic enterprise in my view. This issue of speech limitations have become a rising concern on campuses across the country. I would hope that Professor Grundy would be the first to come to the defense of an academic who uses the same freedom to criticize African-Americans as she has criticized whites as in the case of the Duke professor. Indeed, that is one academic paper that I would be eager to read from Professor Grundy once she starts at Boston University in July.
What do you think?
I virtually never comment on blogs — too many “crazies” and not enough rational discussion. However, I hope this response gets to you. While I consider myself a staunch free speech advocate and generally agree with your similar positions, I believe you do not give place emphasis on the fact that people like Grundy are teachers. My daughter took a class in college from a virtually fanatical anti-Israel, anti-Jewish professor. The professor harassed any student who took a pro- or even neutral position toward Israel, and generally made it clear what students had to say and write if they wanted a decent grade.
Would you want your white son to be treated with disrespect and to fear expressing contrary views in a class with a professor who saw white males as the “problem” in virtually any situation, and had shown herself to be easy to anger and willing to engage in very abusive and vengeful behavior toward those who oppose her?
It is one thing to be able to express one’s ideas — no matter how distasteful — in one’s writings and speeches. It is another thing to require students to be subject to that person’s warped views and conduct. When a university professor is involved, I believe we do have to balance the free speech rights of professors against the right of students not to have their classes taught by racist, sexist professors who don’t just criticize ideas and positions, but individuals simply for being born white and male.
Rob
Robert H. Aronson Betts, Patterson & Mines Professor of Law Emeritus University of Washington School of Law William H. Gates Hall Box 353020 Seattle, WA 98195-3020 Phone: 425-242-1577 Email: robertaronson@mac.com
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I read that BU bought the “24 year old youthful indiscretion.” Normal people have an 18 or 21 year old cutoff for “youthful indiscretion.” Must be AA gives you a 3-6 year cushion.
Nick – when I was in graduate school there was a study that showed the graduate students were, on the whole, the most screwed up people on the planet. The problem is you are neither fish nor fowl. You are both teacher and student for many. The competition is much higher, in most programs you cannot receive a C, you have to retake the class, and that C was a B when you were an undergrad. Now you have to get a B, which used to be an A.
So I can see her cracking up in graduate school. And maybe BU saw that as well. However, I think it shows a pattern and I think they were desperate to fill a post. You cannot tell me there were not better candidates out there.
According to a Boston paper BU knew about the misdemeanor and decided it was not a problem.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/2015/05/21/incoming-boston-university-professor-talks-about-that-time-she-kind-catfished-another-woman/PtwqTdQDNhT0gsPc2GL8BK/story.html#comments
If Starbucks brings back their “discuss race” cups/program, she could tour their stores to jumpstart discussions on race-related issues.
Tom Nash – given her langauge about race, I think she would be more likely to jump-start fist-fights at the local Starbucks. BTW, my Starbucks has no minorities working for it, unless you count men.
davidm2575,
“Maybe we should step back and consider that all these anti-discrimination laws are wrong.”
Now we have a horse race.
Discrimination is a natural right that existed before government was established. Private property owners such as landlords and business owners have a natural and Constitutional right to the “free exercise thereof” and never can freedom be granted to one person as it is taken from another.
The singular American failure has been the SCOTUS. So called “case law” and “precedent” is nothing more than indulgence. There is no Constitutional authority for the judicial branch to legislate by any means or method.
Lincoln was told by Chief Justice Taney that he, Lincoln, had no authority to suspend Habeas Corpus.
Lincoln had no authority to confiscate private property.
Lincoln had no authority to prosecute an internal war.
Lincoln had no authority to deny the natural right of secession.
Lincoln had no authority to nullify the constitution based on his personal religious zeal and irrationality.
Scotland, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Virginia and the entire USSR all effected secession.
Madison admonished against amendment of the Constitution fearing the Constitution itself would be destroyed.
Lincoln and survivors pursued freedom destroying anti-Madison further-amendment of the Constitution that nullified the freedom of Americans.
Unconstitutional amendment and law was passed without legal basis or authority for the benefit of people who were not citizens of this country or any other country.
Amendments were passed without a quorum, through coercion and under duress.
Congressional legislation charging the Federal Reserve Board with enhancing “employment” egregiously violates American freedom and free enterprise which is natural law that existed before government was established.
The 18th amendment was egregious to all sane and rational citizens and was repealed.
Roosevelt conspired to allow the bombing of Pearl Harbor to force America into war.
Richard Nixon won the Presidential election that Joe Kennedy and the Chicago mob stole from America.
Obama was not vetted by the Speaker who was derelict.
Obama is not eligible and is not a “natural born citizen.”
Obamacare is unconstitutional compulsory commerce and was said empathically NOT to be a tax by Congress.
The Founders established “checks and balances” and “impeachment and conviction.” They are rarely used. Does that mean nefarious and corrupt actions never occur?
“Officials” should be waiting in lines around the block for the “guillotines” of impeachment and conviction for “high crimes and misdemeanors” that they commit with regularity and impunity.
The SCOTUS was designed to be a great big NO.
The SCOTUS has been the SINGULAR AMERICAN FAILURE.
davidm2575,
Freedom of Speech allows subjects to denigrate the king with impunity.
Freedom of Speech exceptions:
Disturbance of the peace
Assault
Battery
Harassment
Stalking
Defamation
Libel
Freedom is natural and exists before government is established.
Discrimination is the first step of freedom – we determine our path through discrimination.
Free enterprise exists without interference from government.
SteveH, JT is immersed in academia. There are no corrective lens for this vision problem.
davidm @12:22 pm, May 22, 2015
No, speaking thoughts do not transform ideas into a crime. Speaking ideas is how we test ideas. We speak what we are thinking, and then somebody judges what we say and either approves or disapproves, hopefully with reasons why.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Your above-referenced quote is incorrect as a blanket rule of thumb. As I previously discussed, there is no absolute right to speak one’s thoughts or ideas, since those very thoughts and ideas, expressed to others, may, at times, constitute a crime. Thoughts or ideas, with regard to threats to harm or murder, a conspiracy among friends to commit a crime, etc., can’t be defended or protected under the Freedom of Speech banner. That was my point. You appear to believe that the exchange of ideas and thoughts has no boundaries, and I was trying to explain that there are, indeed, limitations.
While I agree that Grundy has a limited right to state her opinions with regard to whites, those limitations materialize as soon as those racist opinions cross over into the realm of threats or calls for violence. I would vehemently argue that the university is under no obligation, whatsoever, to keep her as an employee if her expressed views are so abhorrent to the values and ideals espoused by the school. If the university is regulated by governmental rules and regulations, which specifically outlaw all forms of racial discrimination, I would contend that hiring her as an employee, knowing her outspoken beliefs pertaining to those who are white, exposes the university to liability for hiring an openly racist and discriminatory employee like Grundy. Who is going to police her? An openly hostile professor, who made similar remarks about blacks or other minorities, would have been gone in a New York minute. She epitomizes the opposite of what a university should portray. Her bigoted and hateful remarks reveal a propensity for dealing unfairly with those of a different race, simply based upon that difference in race and nothing else.
bam bam wrote: “You appear to believe that the exchange of ideas and thoughts has no boundaries, and I was trying to explain that there are, indeed, limitations.”
No, I do not believe that. As I said before, threats constitute unprotected speech. Fighting words would be another example of unprotected speech.
bam bam wrote: “I would vehemently argue that the university is under no obligation, whatsoever, to keep her as an employee if her expressed views are so abhorrent to the values and ideals espoused by the school.”
That is ridiculous. You don’t believe in free speech. Speech cannot be regulated based upon content unless the school showed a compelling interest in regulating it, and it also showed that they were using the least restrictive means possible in regulating it. Clearly her tweets do do that.
From Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819 (1995): Discrimination against speech because of its message is presumed to be unconstitutional. … When the government targets not subject matter, but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant. Viewpoint discrimination is thus an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction. Id. at 828-29.
bam bam wrote: “If the university is regulated by governmental rules and regulations, which specifically outlaw all forms of racial discrimination, I would contend that hiring her as an employee, knowing her outspoken beliefs pertaining to those who are white, exposes the university to liability for hiring an openly racist and discriminatory employee like Grundy.”
Maybe we should step back and consider that all these anti-discrimination laws are wrong. Whenever the law leads us to such loss as you outline here, then something is wrong with that law.
According to your standard, if the school has a policy giving special protection to homosexuals, a person could be fired simply for reading a Bible verse that says homosexuality is an abomination. That would be speech contrary to the school’s policy, and according to you, grounds for firing. You might as well say that all Bible believing Jews, Christians, and Muslims cannot be employed by the school. Such an attitude closes the door on speech to debate issues that the authorities already have taken a position on. Sounds like the destruction of a tool of democracy.
JT said: “However, the alternative is a slippery slope of speech regulation for academics that endangers the entire academic enterprise in my view.”
Too late. If you speak conservative or criticize progressive in a university, you’re a racist, a pariah, a -phobe, and anti-diversity. Speech regulation defines the academic enterprise.
JT, I respect and admire you. But, at times, you are so naive. This is one.
Paul C. Schulte –
Thank you for the clarification, and you’re on the right track —
because the heavy handedness was on the part of both the Michigan Prosecution AND the Michigan Judicial Courts who submitted (went along.)
Note that “Center for Public Integrity” graded Michigan Judicial Courts and “‘F”’ grade for Judicial Financial Disclosure and Corruptibility.
Paul C. Schulte
… much as I am against censorship, her comments make it clear she could not be fair in the classroom. BU needs to get rid of her.
Your comment forces me to rethink what I said earlier here that “College must be very different today if we can’t handle the divergent.” I’m now leery of academia’s tolerance for real diversity. I suspect your are correct, by implication, sad as it makes me, that divergence is no longer tolerated in universities today. That is a shame. My experience in the 60’s, when rowdy political debate was rampant, was not like that…we all had a say, and so long as we could support what we said, it was acceptable. If that is gone, it is a loss we may not be able to recover. Also, as I said earlier, bright students will avoid her classes if they doubt the merit of them…as I said we did with the biased Shakespeare wonks in my day. However, if she refuses to acknowledge that she can be fair, she should go. Solutions to racial and social issues must be multilateral for them to have any positive impact.
Aridog – she would be among the first to vote for hate speech laws, especially on campus, but directed only at white males.
Unaccomplished affirmative action poster children examples;
Obama
Holder
Lloyd
Rice
Jarrett
Jones
Lynch
Fox
Johnson
Wright
Etc.
Bias goes both ways.
Love comes from the heart, not the mouths of dictators.
People must live with reality and adapt to the consequences of freedom.
She is the gift that keeps on giving. Ms. Grundy may be the proverbial straw that breaks the Affirmative Action back. AA is a policy that has proven to be fatally flawed. Ms. Grundy is the poster child. And, she is indeed a middle school, mean girl, borderline personality, child. Forget about her racism, she is generically toxic. Lord knows how many times she has used sockpuppets to hurt people. She has gotten caught and prosecuted for one. You know that was not an isolated incident. There is a person who used an alias and posted slanderous reviews of my wives books. Filthy, vile stuff. People w/ angry, mean, hearts like that will destroy any business, club, classroom, blog, etc. I hope JT is just playing advocatus diaboli here to stir the pot.
Let me ask the author if there have been any “new calls” for the complete elimination of welfare, affirmative action and the entire enabling, redistributionist state?
Have there been any “new calls” for merit over artifice as the driving force of a nation?
Have there been any “new calls” for freedom and free enterprise over dictatorship?
Have there been any “new calls” to take back the asylum from the inmates?
“Harm her? If her speech constituted a threat, which means that she expressed an intention to commit violence against her and she had the ability to carry it out, then that would be speech that is a crime. But from what I have seen, her speech was protected speech. Her speech did not constitute a threat.”
The article makes clear that Grundy gathered pictures and posted statements on an adult web sited pretending to be the other women. That clearly is not protected speech. Considering the longevity of anything posted to the internet, those actions of Grundy could have severe consequences to the other woman for a life time – including problems with employment and harassment from those seeing the pictures and statements.
In my opinion this kind of identity theft is far more serious than a simple misdemeanor would indicate.
.
Here’s a brief description from the Boston Herald. It seems she created more than one account, doxxed her, and admitted to computer fraud.
_______________
Grundy said she downloaded photographs of the victim from the man’s email, telling the cops she got into his account by guessing his password. Grundy also admitted that she created other online accounts in the victim’s name “just to annoy her” and so “random junk mail” would be sent to her.
When the cops told the victim that Grundy was “extremely jealous” of her and had posted her information on several websites, the woman said she had never met Grundy, the report states.
“I got a lot of junk emails from strange men seeking a sexual relationship,” the woman told the police, according to the report.
@ DavidM
Grundy used the identity of a Virginia woman in a jealous fit over a man in late 2007 to create online accounts in the woman’s name, including one on an adult website for people looking for trysts, according to a police report obtained by the Herald under a Freedom of Information Act request.
This action put the other woman in a position where she might be harmed or sexually assaulted. It also puts her in a position of harming her reputation if people were to conclude that the woman had actually opened these adult sites herself.
If I were to take YOUR name, photos of you and your personal information and put out on the net that DavidM is looking for sexual congress and prefers a three way with another man and another woman. Gave out your email address and even your physical address so that people can harass and stalk you. DavidM can be reached at this time, this place. People who are ready and willing to fulfill DavidM’s sado-masochistic dreams can show up at your house, contact you at work, flood your email box with photos of themselves in sexual positions.
Would you consider this to be free speech? I doubt it.
This type of harassment and exposure to danger is not unusual http://blogs.findlaw.com/legally_weird/2010/11/posting-a-fake-craigslist-personal-ad-criminal-harassment.html It is criminal.
Is actionable, not are actionable.
Paul, there are other parties, e.g. the Socialists and the Greens are two.
Jonathan Turley –
You stated, “The sounds like the type of count stacking that prosecution engage in to force people to plead, though there was probably little need for coercion in this case.”
We’re not condoning Grundy’s Twitter actions this time in any way, but
“This University of Michigan Student Twitter jealousy action is another example of the heavy handedness action by the Michigan Courts.”
Coleman Young – wouldn’t the heavy handedness be on the part of the prosecution, not the courts?