The controversy surrounding the resigned of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe this week. Critics continue to debate whether Wolfe acted in a way that warranted demands for his removal while others view racial incidents on campus as the fault of the Administration. This is a worthy debate for any university. However, a recent incident should raise equally determined calls for the removal of school officials who appear to have led attacks on the media and free speech as part of student protests. Mass communications professor Melissa Click has since apologized for disgraceful conduct in attacking the media — a curious act by a mass communications professor and the antithesis of an academic committed to free speech.
A confrontation occurred as journalists, including students journalists, simply tried to cover the event. They were set upon by protesters threatening them and telling them to leave. Tim Tai, 20, is a senior at the university working on a freelance assignment for ESPN, went to the protesters’ tent encampment. Protesters insisted that he had no right to cover the event and chanted “Hey hey! Ho ho! Reporters have got to go!”
One school administrator, identified as Janna Basler, the school’s director of Greek life and leadership, is seen on the video confronting Tai. When he asks her name, Basler refused to identify herself — a problem for a school official on campus harassing a journalist. Instead, she say “I am Concerned Student 1950,” a reference to the name of the African-American group leading the protests.
Near the end of the video, another adult, identified as assistant professor of mass media Melissa Click, tells another reporter, “You need to get out.” She appears to call on other protesters to help force out the journalist. She is heard saying “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”
That is a disgrace and should have immediately raised calls for the review of both of these employees for discipline. What they were doing was joining voices of intolerance and abuse. They are the very antithesis of the mission of all academics.
Click has now apologized, stating “I regret the language and strategies I used, and sincerely apologize to the MU campus community, and journalists at large, for my behavior, and also for the way my actions have shifted attention away from the students’ campaign for justice.”
There is no word about Basler. The concern is the double standard at our universities. We have discussed that controversy at the University of California and Boston University, where there have been criticism of a double standard, even in the face of criminal conduct. Here you have a communications professor and an administrator seem encouraging protesters in denying a student the ability to work as a journalist on campus. Yet, there is no outcry and demands for review, let alone termination. There is a serious diminishment of free speech occurring on our campuses where a new orthodoxy is rising in the enforcement of preferred speech and positions. The intolerance shown opposing views threatens the very essence of our intellectual traditions and values. The video below vividly shows that trend.
At the exact scene (no pun intended) or “gathering” where the speech occured what was the purpose of that discussion or meeting? If it was to discuss strategy then it might have rightfully been a closed session in which the media and spies from Mizzou officials could be barred. What would the big thug at the door of the closed meeting of the Curators say to the same guy if he tried to get into that meeting the same day?
Different strokes for different folks.
Why are the bloggers here not protesting the closed meeting of the Curators?
Why do you folks assume that all gatherings of protestors are open to the spies with cameras.
When the four students got killed in Ohio at Kent State did the protestors then open their discussion room to the journalists from the New York Times to come and here our strategy? No.
This summer I hear them coming. They’re probably on their way. Gonna get down to it. Soldiers are cutting us down.
It is good that the jerk President of the Missouri four campus system quit. He was a dork all the way. The protests did this. The threat of an athlete strike was the clincher. A million dollars was at stake. The school paid that dork President $450K a year. Jeso. Now there needs to be a discussion about competing with China in math and science and doing away with professional football at Ol Mizzou. So what if Penn State beats Ohio State in football. Listen to the Republican debates last night. They are being replayed on tv. The jobs are going oversees. China don’t need no football players from Ol Mizzou where they went in dumb and come out dumb too.
The best spokesperson from Mizzou was the black guy who is President of the Student body or what ever that organization is called. He was elected by a white majority of students. He should be made the next Chancellor of the Columbia Campus.
If you want to send your kid to a good state school law school (price is lower than private) then think about UMKC Law School in Kansas City. He or she could also catch some Royals games now and then.
This is the football program that produced SJW Michael Sam. NTTAWWT.
There is no evidence of the “poop swastika.” It’s not the type of thing that someone just cleans up voluntarily. And, the football team is 4-5. This all would never have happened if they were even just a mediocre 6-3 and headed to the Poulin Weedeater Gator Bowl.
Nick – I didn’t realize the team was a bad as ASU.
If the libs want to go down this path, so much the better.
We get to see their true colors – when ugly people (character) like Ms. Click become the face of liberalism, then America gets to see who these people really are.
Click sounds like she used to be a bar manager. I have never been more disappointed in a university. They should have let the athletes go on strike and played everybody else.
Personally, I’d take this instructors words as fighting language, and as a threat to violence.
Melissa Click, the “Muscle” associate professor, teaches courses on Lady Gaga, Twilight, and Fifty Shades of Gray. She is a radical feminist.
This was definitely a teachable moment. It encompasses so many competing issues of group dynamics, double standards, propaganda, the power of crowds, freedom of speech, press, assembly, components of order and functional governance, racism, victim-hood, the power of sports and money in universities today…….it could be the basis for a useful undergraduate course.
Reblogged this on John Drake.
Obama has the community of the United States to organize in his vision and he hasn’t accomplished everything he said he would do. He’s still trying to close Gitmo, not because it’s the right thing to do but because he said he would do it. He is a person used to getting his way and no process or procedure or constitution will get in his way. My concern is the racial unrest he has been stoking since he took office and this entire social justice movement in general has created an entire generation of people that act just like this mob. Obama will perceive his legacy as complete as this generation and it’s disdain for the rule of law, the constitution and capitalism will be the gift that keeps on giving for decades.
Mark my words, this President has things yet to accomplish and if he believes the next President won’t be someone to continue his “fundamental transformation” then watch out, he’ll only have one year to act.
I’m enjoying the hell out of all this. It is Lord of the Flies. When I went to college originally, back in the early 70’s, there were many student protests. Those protests were about obtaining autonomy and free speech. Now, the poorly educated special flower students of today, hovered over by parents and teachers their who lives, told that they have a right to not be offended, are doing the opposite of what was done in the 70’s. They are DEMANDING that administrators exert draconian control and limit speech. They are turning on those who have coddled them. Just what was the specific firing offense for the administrators who were forced to resign. And, I will bet anyone these two women, who committed firing offenses, will not be terminated.
This is occurring just a 2 hour drive from Ferguson. We know Ferguson burned over the the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie. There was an incident last week @ Yale where a woman accused a fraternity of yelling racial epithets @ her. A reporter from the Daily Beast interviewed the woman and she backed off her accusations, saying the words we hear too often, “Well, it has started a conversation.” Just like Rachel Dolezal “Started a conversation” on a LIE. This Mizzou uprising started because of 2 ALLEGED incidents of speech. No violence. One where a swastika was allegedly written in feces by a hater and the other where someone allegedly yelled, “Nigger” why passing by in a pickup truck. The pickup truck part is a red flag telling me it’s probably a lie, based on a stereotype.
Yes, I’m enjoying the hell out of this. As Malcolm X said when JFK was shot, “The chickens have come home to roost.”
The dark night of fascism is always descending among the conservatives and yet lands only among the Leftists.
1. The incidents reported to have sparked all this were almost certainly faked. Especially the poop swastika.
2. The entire event looks like it was coordinated by outside actors, just like Ferguson.
3. The University of Missouri police said people should report any “hurtful speech”, and any students so reported would face disciplinary action.
4. The administrator and teacher supposedly work for the journalism school. The one who ‘resigned’ only quit her courtesy appointment in the j-school, but is still employed by the communications department.
My daughter attended their journalism school. I find this episode disgraceful.
I am no longer sending them any money, and I will never attend another game.
I will not fund fascism.
Universities are 95% or greater Democrat, and they have become explicitly fascist.
“Unexpectedly.”
Professor Click says “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”
Disorderly Conduct Laws: Inciting a Riot
From the rioter’s viewpoint, there is safety in numbers. The point at which an unruly crowd becomes a riot.
A riot is essentially thought of as mob mentality. A riot can occur as the direct result of many things, and can certainly be blamed on one individual.
Noted historical psychological authority, Sigmund Freud viewed crowds as crazed, criminal, unanimous masses of anonymous individuals who had
ceded psychological control of themselves to the group mind and whose behavior was being directly controlled by the mob.
Being rowdy and angry within a group could be enough to get you arrested and accused of this criminal offense.
This incident, of Liberals demanding to get “their way”…is just the beginning.!
Watch, and see how many more of these Colleges follow suit….and become rudderless ……..because of the demands of these unruly mobs. Time is running out for these people…they need to agitate, while they still have cover, from the White House.
A recent article in The Atlantic article gives us reason to believe the Mobbing culture we see on film came from the top down:
“Last week the English Department made a vote of no confidence in Loftin’s leadership. Today, nine deans signed a letter to the UM Board of Curators and to Wolfe saying Loftin had created a “toxic environment through threat, fear and intimidation,” according to the Columbia Daily Tribune.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/11/whats-happening-at-the-university-of-missouri/414870/
Both professors actually touch and push the student who is not physically bothering anyone. This is a common law tort of battery and any sensible professor should never do this especially with so many students openly holding cell phones. There is a large black cop standing behind the Greek Life professor posing as a student. This is a much more muscular response than anything I remember on campus pre-911. You have to wonder how much this aggressive approach actually leads to violent acts, especially if it is a controlled aggression over time.
Free speech exclusion zone
I’m sure Click is on board with Holocaust-“deniers” rotting in Federal prisons in Canada and about fifteen EU nations.
Interesting when those who want tolerance and equality want to do so in the dark and without journalists watch. What were they hiding?
Reblogged this on Scoop Feed.
A rudderless professor simply moving with the rising tide “of preferred speech and positions. The intolerance shown opposing views threatens the very essence of our intellectual traditions and values.”