We have previously discussed the controversy surrounding University of Missouri Assistant Professor of Communication Melissa Click who was caught on videotape obstructing a student journalist and calling for “muscle” to prevent him from covering a protest. She was charged with assault in that case. Now, a new videotape has emerged showing Click yelling profanities at police officers who were trying to clear protestors blocking traffic on campus. The new videotape below will obviously not help the already suspended academic.
The latest controversy involves a protest at the October 10th Homecoming Parade. Click is seen with student protesters blocking the Homecoming Parade route. When officers attempt to direct the group back onto the sidewalk (a manifestly reasonable act), Click intervenes and tells the officers to “get your hands off the children” and then uses a profanity when an officer grabs her shoulder to direct her back onto the sidewalk.
The response from the Administration was fast and furious. Interim Chancellor Hank Foley stated that “Her conduct and behavior are appalling, and I am not only disappointed, I am angry that a member of our faculty acted this way . . . Her actions caught on camera last October are just another example of a pattern of misconduct by Dr. Click – most notably her assault on one of our students while seeking ‘muscle’ during a highly volatile situation on Carnahan Quadrangle in November.”
Click told media that she has made mistakes but “My mistake is just one part of who I am. I want to stay at MU. I deserve to be heard and I deserve to be treated fairly, and I’m going to fight to be treated fairly. I think it’s everybody’s right to be treated fairly.” She certainly should be treated fairly but her actions are inimical to the role of an academic, particularly a faculty member in the communications department (in the matter of the original controversy of obstructing a journalist). In the latest video, she is resisting and being abusive toward police who are trying to move students safely to the sidewalk. Click clearly should have free speech protections for her own advocacy, but these actions go beyond the pale for an academic on campus.
What do you think?
Well, what’s fair? Is it fair for a communications professor to physically threaten a student journalist on campus who was covering a protest on public property? Isn’t that the antithesis of “communication”? Is if fair for a communications professor to obstruct the police from keeping protestors safely off the street where they were impeding traffic? Is it “communicative” or fair for her to behave in a hateful manner and prevent people from doing their job, or to interfere with the Homecoming Parade, trying to wreck an event that so many worked hard on?
To be honest, what she wants is special treatment. She wants to act in any manner she wishes, without consequences. And that isn’t fair.
Karen – she clearly either skipped or failed “Conflict Resolution”
DavesNotHereMan – beyond the Pale comes from the English in Ireland. Everything within the Pale was controlled by England. Beyond the Pale was uncontrolled territory. Google it. If you hit the right selection you can get a map of the Pale.
Anyone who has worked on a college campus knows that there is a mix of fully functioning brilliant people and barely functioning borderline people. You run into a lot of autism spectrum folks, functional schizophrenics, and so on. Often brilliant in their own right, but lacking social skills and what we would all call common sense. I don’t know this person, but I know people like her. They need “helpers” to keep them from running off the rails. Most of these folks would not make it off campus. You could call them non-campus-mentis. (TM)
P.S.
Great still selection.
I look forward to people capturing more and more of the activist left on video. They’ve gotten away with their hatefulness because most people simply can’t believe people can be as crazy as they are. In this they are quite similar to cops who have received the benefit of the doubt in the past but are having a hard time dealing with their actions being provable. It will be interesting to see if the left tries to delegitimize video of their activists even as they champion it against police.
I have no problem with Click keeping her job, as long as the same is true for firefighters caught with audio/video intentionally igniting fire, twice.
I think the aspect that she was discriminating against a journalist takes some of the angle off of the full set of facts. From her perspective she was trying to organize the protestors. The so called journalist was revealing the identity of the troops to the authorities by photographing or videoing them. He was an nterloper during their organization aspect. Even tho the troops were earnest in protesting, they perhaps did not want their faces on facebook or local tv or national tv so that mom and dad would see that they were not studying math and science.
Forget the “journalist” for a bit. The organizers of a First Amendment protected gathering of those who wish to petition their government for redress of grievances need some room to manuever so to speak. And on that issue she spoke.
It is not as bad as JT and the ratpack throwing commenters off the blog for saying things that JT disagrees with. First Amendment First!
Click is not a regular tenured faculty member at MU. She certainly doesn’t pull in 200k in compensation – not even close. But more to the point, she isn’t representative of faculty either at MU or nationally, who overwhelmingly disapprove of her behavior.
Poster “person” (gender unknown) for retroactive abortion.
How do Missourians feel about paying tax dollars toward this “person’s” comfort and pleasure? Sad, so sad.
Imagine how smug must be this “person” to have a cush, do-nothing “job,” with sum total annual wages and benefits worth about $200k, and risk tossing it in the toilet for the irresistible pleasure of insuring her fellow earthlings are absolutely convinced, beyond any shadow of doubt, that he/she/it is a pure, Class A, piece of criminal, unadulterated dung?
We should all give thanks this woman is not our mother or our wife. She should not be teaching. She should get some help.
For a communications professor, she doesn’t seem to know how to communicate very effectively.
Apparently she prefers to be an activist so fire her and give her more time to pursue her ambition. Let’s see if that pays the bills?
That photo depicts Click as wildly insane. Just the same, I’d give Click the benefit of the doubt regarding ignorance of the First Amendment. What Click should have done was admit to such blatant ignorance and argue she’d study hard to better inform herself. After all, how many professors and college students are First-Amendment informed? Perhaps the number, if small, might startle. Too bad the First Amendment Center does not do a survey of that particular population. I went through college, got a doctoral degree, and do not recall one single statement made by any of my professors regarding the First Amendment. Why do colleges not have compulsory First Amendment courses? Why do they all seem to possess deans of diversity, but not deans of democracy? Now, here’s the cartoon I did on Click back in December: http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2015/12/melissa-click.html . I sent it to her, but Click decided to clack and not respond. Rarely do professors ever deign to respond to my criticism.
The question posed: is this beyond the pale. That phrase originates in Europe, not Missouri or America. It has geographic significance and also is a manner of alleging that some theory, view, conduct, or attitude is outside the norm and is indeed outlawed almost. The phrase was: Beyond The Palentate. Google that.
In terms of academic restrictions or realm, I would say that this is not “protected” speech. It is not like yelling Fire in a crowded theatre but it gets close. One does not have protected speech when one yells Shut The F Up! in a crowded legislative body. One does not have protected speech when one yells at some cop to not use the men’s room. She will argue that she was in the process of joining together with others to “petition her government for redress of grievances”. To do so is protected speech and protected activity under the First Amendment. She does not articulate very well in defending her prior actions. One would think that by now someone would have advised her about some buzz words about the First Amendment and protected speech and conduct.
Beyond The Pale has some religious overtones. In Europe today this might mean that the offender is a Muslim or comes from some Stan country or territory.
Missouri keeps getting denigrated in the world press. Whether it is Al Sharptongue or others from the East Coast, they think that Missouri is West of the Alleganies and is fair game. Those on the East Coast in the U.S. think that their defecation does not stink and that those who live west of say Philadelphia, such as Pittsburg, are not up to snuff. These East Coasters lift their noses and belittle others. This is one reason that all the Supreme Court Justices went to Harvard or Yale and one reason why all but three hail from the New York area. Those who teach or attend law schools in DC fall into this snobbery.
Which brings us to the topic of this “teacher”. They can probably fire her for yelling at cops doing their duty of clearing pedestrian traffic from harms way. But they should not think that they can deny students the right to picket, organize, meet and join in groups on public property, or petition their government for redress of grievances. These “school” personnel are “state actors” and can be sued under the Civil Rights Act for certain types of conduct. Goody two shoes, East Coast snots and buyers (into the Beyond the Sara Palin arguments) beware. Oh, did I say “Sarah” in the same context of “Pale”? My mistake but no assault or battery intended.
The Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile has its rights as well. Well done by the police.
Our kids are being taught by idiots like this. She is the norm not the rarity.
Well, this behavior is not as bad as her other incident. I have to wonder, though, what she doesn’t understand about the word “communication”, since she is supposed to be teaching it, but has a bad time demonstrating any effectiveness in carrying it out. One effective way of communicating is to ignore someone in your presence. That would be my means for her since anything out steps into the trap that she is.
She is a very sad woman. I don’t agree with hitting women but in her case I believe it would be justified.
A remarkably unattractive person who bullies her opponents.
If these two incidents are any indicator of her personality, I can only imagine how she treats students in her classes who disagree with her.
Obviously this woman is a partisan street fighter who does not believe in the democratic process.
Does Missouri have the death penalty?