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.
Well, this is interesting. According to the University, the “N” word was actually used against a white student. So…that’s why people are protesting and a professor tried to resign?
And the poop swastika could have meant anything. It could have meant that racists are poop, for example. Because it seems unlikely that an actual neo Nazi would draw the swastika in feces. Maybe it was just a drunk guy who thought Neo Nazis sucked. Or maybe they wanted to make an incident. Or maybe it was an ignorant racist. Who knows? Shouldn’t we find out more before people lose their heads, jobs, miss classes, cry?
Unless further information comes out, these seems like a really emotional reaction inappropriate to the circumstances.
I saw a video of a girl screaming and crying “Who the f^*(&* hired you!” to a professor. I wondered, what the heck did he do? It must be bad! Apparently he said he was not canceling a midterm because he didn’t want his students to cave to bullying. Agree with his position, or not, but why get shrill and sob about it? I cry at funerals, when kids have terminal illnesses, or things that are actually awful. But disagreeing with a professor about bullying? Her high emotion made her unable to have a two way discussion, and it came across as merely shrieking at a professor and trying to bully him.
Communist Bitch.. Go work in Cuba!
As long as our nation keeps stressing that a college education is the best path to a better income there will continue to be students who will ask “why are you here competing with me”?
Frankie, it should be obvious. Calling one person names is a targeted attack against a specific person. Labeling a whole group of people things is much different.
And I agree with the suspicion upstream that it is unlikely that a racist created a swastika out of poop. A neo Nazi reveres the Swastika, so why would they make one out of feces? That would be like a patriot making an American flag out of manure. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know the context of the swastika yet. Was it actually a message against racism? That neo-Nazis are poop? Or was it an attempt to create a reason for a protest? It could have even been an attempt to get out of an exam, causing such disruption. I am not yet convinced that this particular incident was actually a hate crime at all. We’d need more information.
Karen and others; the following article makes some good points.
Was The Poop Swastika Incident At Mizzou A Giant Hoax?
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/10/was-the-poop-swastika-incident-at-mizzou-a-giant-hoax/
The Mainstream Media News Blackout: A Betrayal of Democracy by John McLaughlin
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mainstream-Media-News-Blackout-ebook/dp/B00KTPMQRG?tag=permacultucom-20&linkCode=w13&linkID=FGBNVPA47LBE2NTM&ref_=assoc_res_sw_result_1
“Every citizen would benefit from Mr. McLaughlin’s in-depth disclosure how major “news agencies” manipulated, purposely omitted, fabricated and spun past events to benefit one particular political party.”
I watched several news segments on the Missouri controversy in which Liberals passionately defended the university’s zero tolerance policy in which it recommends students call the police if they observe any hurtful speech. Even though the school admitted that such speech is not a crime, it indicated that it would take disciplinary action against students including expulsion. I have my doubts that the standard would be high, such as threatening speech.
Aside from the obvious fact that this would waste the police’s time, calling them for what is acknowledged not to be a crime, I was struck by the sincerity of these people that they are firmly on the moral high ground.
I had to wonder how many of them have made hurtful comments, just in the past 6 months (because it is election season so this is easy) on any of the following:
1. the GOP
2. Business owners
3. white men
4. conservative women in politics
5. anti-abortion conservatives
6. illegal immigrants
7. Congress
8. any politician
9. Trump
10. conservative African Americans
11. gun owners
12. people who live in rural areas
13. Anyone on Duck Dynasty
14. Christians
Everyone one of us would have a list of potentially hurtful, divisive, or passionate criticism that we’ve made, so none of us would ever be able to communicate at all if PC was equally enforced.
If we are to be directed to call the police on anyone who hurts our feelings, we are going to be speed dialing 911 continuously, at least until this election season is over. And then it might just become a daily occurrence.
We all say tactless things at times, or jokes, or ridicule others. We can try our best to be civil in public discourse, but if we put everything we’ve ever said in either public or private under a microscope, we all live in glass houses. There is no moral high ground in PC. You can’t declare that a white guy dressing up as Bob Marley is reprehensible, if people call conservative African Americans Uncle Toms, etc. I’ve seen Liberal post online that they wished Anne Coulter was assaulted or murdered. Where’s their moral high ground? We can urge civility, but to criminalize passionate disagreement, or everything that can remotely be construed as hurtful, is absurd and antithetical to free speech.
Universities are supposed to open an exciting world of critical thinking and debate of new ideas to students. Instead of requiring a police report and a fainting couch, they could lead thoughtful, passionate, and vigorous debates. Instead, the message is “Shut up if you don’t agree with me!”
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Courts & Law
Protesters have no free-speech rights on Supreme Court’s front porch
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Activists protest on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court on the first day of hearings on the Affordable Care Act in March 2012. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
By Robert Barnes August 28
The Supreme Court is designated as the ultimate protector of constitutional rights, but the guarantee of protest and free speech ends on the steps to the plaza in front of the court’s grand marble temple, a unanimous federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.
Demonstrators are allowed on the sidewalk in front of the court but not any closer to the famous portico promising “Equal Justice Under Law,” three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided.
The fight over where protesters get to protest has been going on for years.
The appeals court judges upheld a 1949 law that forbids demonstrations on the grounds of the high court, on the premise that protests at the court’s doorstep might lead to the perception that the justices are swayed by vox populi rather than the dictates of the law.
“Allowing demonstrations directed at the Court, on the Court’s own front terrace, would tend to yield the opposite impression: that of a Court engaged with — and potentially vulnerable to — outside entreaties by the public,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan, who argued often before the court as a lawyer and is sometimes mentioned as a future Supreme Court justice.
[A question of where protesters take a stand]
On days when controversial cases are argued and decided, the 50-foot-wide sidewalks surrounding the court are filled with chanting, flag-waving, bullhorn-toting protesters of all stripes. The Supreme Court itself, in 1983, ruled that these sidewalks — on First Street NE, just across from the Capitol — are open for protests.
But demonstrators are not allowed any closer. The court in its 1983 decision did not address the protest restrictions on the court’s grounds, which include the 252-by-98-foot oval marble plaza, with its fountains, benches, flagpoles and steps leading to the court’s iconic, six-ton bronze doors.
Critics have found the no-speech zone around the Supreme Court ironic if not hypocritical. The current court considers itself a fierce protector of political speech, knocking down restrictions on corporate spending on elections, for instance. The justices also struck a Massachusetts law that limited speech around abortion clinics.
In 2010, because of security concerns, the court said the public was no longer allowed to enter through the massive front doors. Visitors must go through security checkpoints on the ground floor, although they may exit via the court’s front porch.
The 1949 federal statute makes it unlawful to “parade, stand, or move in processions or assemblages in the Supreme Court Building or grounds, or to display in the Building and grounds a flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement.”
In 2013, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell struck down the restrictions. “It cannot possibly be consistent with the First Amendment for the government to so broadly prohibit expression in virtually any form in front of a courthouse, even the Supreme Court,” Howell wrote in a 68-page opinion.
Within days, the Supreme Court instituted its own rules that essentially kept the restrictions in place, and the legal fight has continued.
Howell was considering a challenge brought by Harold Hodge of southern Maryland, who was arrested in January 2011 for standing on the plaza wearing a 3-by-2-foot sign that said, “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police to Illegally Murder and Brutalize African Americans and Hispanic People.”
Hodge was represented by the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties group that denounced Friday’s ruling.
“If citizens cannot stand out in the open and voice their disapproval of their government, its representatives and its policies without fearing prosecution, then the First Amendment is little more than window-dressing on a store window — pretty to look at but serving little real purpose,” said the institute’s president, John W. Whitehead. “Through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rulings, government officials have managed to disembowel this fundamental freedom.”
But Srinivasan said the court is different from Congress, where people have a right to protest for political action. The plaza is designed as an extension of the court, he said, and restrictions on protests there need only be reasonable and viewpoint-neutral.
[Read the appeals court decision here]
There is no suggestion that the law is discriminatory, he said: “Demonstrations supporting the court’s decisions and demonstrations opposing them are equally forbidden in the plaza.”
Srinivasan added: “Unless demonstrations are to be freely allowed inside the Supreme Court building itself, a line must be drawn somewhere along the route from the street to the Court’s front entrance. . . . Among the options, it is fully reasonable for that line to be fixed at the point one leaves the concrete public sidewalk and enters the marble steps to the Court’s plaza.”
Srinivasan was joined by Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson and Senior Circuit Judge Stephen F. Williams.
The plaza is likely to remain a place for only tourists wielding cameras and journalists interviewing lawyers and their clients after oral arguments and decisions (cameras, of course, are not allowed in the court).
Whitehead noted in his statement that the decision could be appealed and that his organization is also challenging the restrictions that the Supreme Court implemented after Howell’s ruling.
But there was little expectation of success. “Ironically, it will be the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who will eventually be asked to decide the constitutionality of their own statute in this case, yet they have already made their views on the subject quite clear,” Whitehead said.
Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006.
Make American great again?
Err. Those students were not asking much.
I watched the video. Various camera guys were trying to break into the circle. There is a song which should be sung at Mizzou.
Will the circle! Be unbroken?
By and bye girl, bye and bye.
—
Those students were not asked much. The Supreme Court of the United States would not let those camera humans be in the square outside the Supreme Court Bldg. First Amendment? Get out of my face, my space, my privacy. Move! I gotta pee!
Frank Mascagni, No trespass, a public service. Great tribute. Thank you, sir.
Here is a positive from this. This behavior of Ms. Click does not surprise libertarians or conservatives. We see it all the time. Normal liberals[I’m married to one] who do not involve themselves in politics, are appalled @ this. Like normal conservatives and libertarians, they do not eat, sleep and drink politics. They live their lives, and are liberal in the old school way, w/ common sense. This video has gone viral, and the reason is the MSM, who are mostly hardcore liberal, are giving it play because it involves their profession. Ms. Click should get Christmas cards from all conservatives and libertarians thanking her for an early Christmas present. And, you know she’s a secular progressive so Christmas cards will piss her off.
University of Missouri.
The Inmates Have Taken Over The Asylum.
The same thing happened in Russia in 1917.
It took them 74 years to begin to come to their senses,
And implement the principles of severely limited government, freedom and self-reliance
of the American Founding Fathers.
Are you kidding me? That crowd of kids are not the least bit threatening. A small cadre are pretty obnoxious, but threatening? They are about as threatening as the Blue Team was to the Red Team at my summer camp. You people are nuts.
I have no sympathy for the red-head, but again, she is no revolutionary. Ad who was the fool calling for battery charges here?
They treated the press guy foolishly, moronically even, and he was right to stand his ground. But threatening? If you honestly think this is a fascist riot, please don’t attend the Summer Games at Camp Fun & Sun. You’d be horrified.
Are there all white fraternities at George Washington University in DC? That is where JT teaches.
On campus, not in campus.
The professor, while she should be held to a higher standard than her students, didn’t act in a vacuum and did nothing worse than the others surrounding her. Why oh why is all of the condemnation, including the focus, centered on her, ALONE? Watch this film clip. Thousands of students are purported to have been involved in these faux protests. The woman alleged to be in charge of Greek-related activities in campus–the one who forgot her name–is far from blameless, and the students present were not simply inactive witnesses to these assaults, threats of assault and intimidation. No accountability.
Breaking news:
Video of the confrontation with the journalist, Tim Tai, went viral as the school distanced itself from a professor, Melissa Click, who was seen
in the video calling for “muscle” to remove another journalist from the protest site. Late Tuesday night, Click resigned her courtesy appointment
with the journalism school, although she remains an assistant professor at the university.
“The Missouri School of Journalism is proud of photojournalism senior Tim Tai,” said David Kurpius, dean of the Missouri School of Journalism.
“The news media have First Amendment rights to cover public events. Tai handled himself professionally and with poise.”
Glory be!
@Jude
It’s important to point out when liberals turn into fascists, as was clearly the case at Mizzou.
I don’t think they are crazy at all, but evil, and dangerous to the nation.
The students were talking about social justice warrior topics and using SJW language, so that makes them SJWs.
It was pretty obvious.
Was the so called journalist trying to intrude on a convocation of the planners of the rebellion? I would have kicked him out too. Twice on Veterans Day.
Does the Supreme Court of the United States allow cameras in its court during oral arguments?
This is a law blog. Why do you not bitch about that?
On another note, someone advise me on what a professor of “mass communications” teaches. Does this have to do with Catholic Mass? I am an outsider and do not know nuthin bout birthin babies.