There is a new controversy involving an investigation of a professor for statements made on social media. Trinity College Professor Johnny Williams has fled Connecticut after receiving death threats over his postings, including an inflammatory reference to people considered bigots and how we should “Let Them. F**king Die.” Williams teaches classes on race and racism and clearly wanted to get others to read this hateful screed.
As we have previously discussed (including the recent controversies involving an Oregon professor and a Drexel professor), there remains an uncertain line in what language is protected for teachers in their private lives. The incident also raises what some faculty have complained is a double or at least uncertain standard. We have previously discussed controversies at the University of California and Boston University, where there have been criticism of a double standard, even in the face of criminal conduct. There were also such incident at the University of London involving Bahar Mustafa as well as one involving a University of Pennsylvania professor.
As is well known on this blog, I tend to favor free speech rights in all of these cases. In my view, this view does seem to be satire — bad satire but satire all the same. However, the standard remains entirely uncertain for academics as to whether their conduct or comments outside of school will be the basis for discipline. As a private institution, Drexel falls under a different standard than schools like the University of Oregon. Yet, free speech demands a bright line to avoid a chilling effect on those who want to challenge the status quo or popular views. Academics often write to challenge students and the public in exploring the edges of norms and beliefs.
As you might expect, I view this latest controversy through the same free speech lens. The reaction to the social media posting in my view was overblown, including closing the entire campus by President Joanne Berger-Sweeney.
Williams shared a Medium article by an author who goes by the name of “Son of Baldwin.” The article attacks House Majority Whip Steve Scalise — who was shot during a congressional baseball practice and makes reference to his being saved by Capitol Police officers who are black. The article, which is remarkably shallow and hateful asked “What does it mean, in general, when victims of bigotry save the lives of bigots?” It adds “Saving the life of those that would kill you is the opposite of virtuous,” it added. “Let. Them. F—ing. Die.”
Williams appears to find such racist and hateful writings worth sharing, which he did on Facebook and Twitter. He used the hashtag #LetThemFuckingDie. Trinity then went into lockdown to deal with a potential “immediate threat.”
Williams insisted in an interview with the Hartford Courant that his posts were meant to reference a fatal police shooting in Seattle and not the attack on Scalise. He insisted “I’m calling for the death of a system, white supremacy, not the death of white people.”
Williams will have to forgive me for not being particularly interested in his explanation. He posted a hateful and frankly juvenile writing that used racial discrimination as an excuse to engage in racist and hateful writings. The fact that Williams views this type of low-grade discourse to be intellectually stimulating is disappointing. I am not familiar with his own writings but his taste in the writings of others is hardly inspiring. I view the writing as reprehensible and the posting as reprehensible but that is not relevant. Williams has free speech and academic freedom protections. This article was clearly posted as a provocative writing that Williams found important to share.
Now the school is going to investigate him and the posting. Berger-Sweeney wrote that “The Dean of the Faculty will review this matter and advise me on whether college procedures or policies were broken.” She added “I told Professor Williams that in my opinion his use of the hashtag was reprehensible and, at the very least, in poor judgment. No matter its intent, it goes against our fundamental values as an institution, and I believe its effect is to close minds rather than open them.”
Williams has apologized.
The issue does raise the question of when it is appropriate to punish people for expressing controversial or reprehensible thoughts. Recently, the Nebraska Democratic party fired one of its top officials after he said that he was glad that Scalise was shot. The comments embarrassed the party, which has an interest in controlling its message for the public. This is different. Williams is a professor who was clearly speaking for himself on a matter of both political and academic interest.
Once again, I do not believe that Williams should be disciplined for engaging in free speech outside of his class, particularly when the writing falls within scope of his academic writings. My greatest concern however is the double standard and whether a professor who posted such statements about minorities or women would receive the same treatment. Free speech and academic freedom requires bright line rules and protections. The solution to bad speech — like that of Williams — is more speech. As to whether his writings justify a teaching position at a leading academic institution — that decision should not rest with public opinion but the opinion of his colleagues.
No but we made some directing signs in my state to a place just 90 miles away and if he shows up in my other hang out we’ll do the same to Venezuela. The only other place where he might be welcome is 430 South Capitol St. SE Washington, DC 20003. Main phone number: 202-863-8000.They run soup kitchens and shelters for his kind.
Don’t care. I’m hot and tired, insufficient sleep to boot and I find I don’t like this character at all.
So whatever…
Just a word of caution, Jonathan. Having your own blog site to discuss legal issues is an exciting aspect of social media. However, please don’t fall prey to giving your attention to people and cases who don’t deserve it. This Prof. Williams at Trinity College is not a voice of constructive solutions to problems…he’s a classic blamer. I’d rather be discussing law and casework emerging from Americans with gravitas who are deeply enmeshed with designing the future, forego the mischievous antics of anonymous sources, and are willing to take their fair share of responsibility for civil, productive dialog. The “shiniest object in the room” is destroying social media’s potential to inform, enlighten and even inspire. Please resist that temptation next time. Giving mention to zealotry only encourages more of it.
What? No red meat for the meat-eaters who frequent this site? Trading fewer clicks on this site for a more diverse discussion of interesting legal topics instead of repeatedly returning to certain topics? (Go count the older posts which mentioned Milo before Milo “transgressed.”) Shirley, you jest. (I know, you are not jesting, and your name is not Surely.)
I forgot to add that I second your commotion.
Just for poops and giggles, I looked up Connecticut to see if it was an “at will” employment state. Here is what I found on a lawyer’s website:
Sooo, I looked up the statute, and here it is, emphasis added:
I am too lazy to look up if other state have provisions like this. I suspect not.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I don’t agree with your argument insofar as it conveys an absolute position: an academic’s out of school statements ought to be protected from invigilation and possible consequence as a matter of free speech. (I’m not here dealing at all with the privately publicly funded school distinction.)
I believe that an institution’s right to protect its own integrity in proper case takes away from and precedence over an absolutist free speech position. We can imagine any number of legal but horrible statements that are simply out of bounds by any measure of common reasonable judgment.
A whole range of legal, non inciting but utterly objectionable statements–“All …should be sent to… All … are inferior All…should be killed All … should be jailed”: there is no end to them–taint irreparably the reputation, integrity and good will of an institution whose employee utters them with impunity. There ought be no legal, cultural or moral barrier to an institution investigating and disciplining the employed maker of such statements, save for the need to accord due process.
I cannot imagine for example that you would be content to teach along side a colleague who espoused out of school the proposition that Hitler didn’t get enough done or other such egregiousness. You’d want him or her gone, I’m confident, and rightly so, no little by reason of the deep blemish that allowing such espousals would cast on your school.
So, in a nutshell, in these matters, from the standpoint of what the institution should do, weighing and balancing is preferable to absolutism.
Replying to myself here, I note this as an example of putting forth the institutional integrity argument and weighing and balancing over letting anything be said out of school with impunity.
http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2017/06/college_defends_firing_professor_after_fox_news_ap.html
As it happens, in this weighing and balancing, even as I reject this adjunct prof’s histrionics, and think that a black only Memorial Celebration is clearly regressive, and even as I understand the school’s concern with more racism as answer to racism, I weigh it balance it differently and don’t support the firing. (Based only the facts as reported in the story.)
But for all that, I still prefer as better policy weighing and balancing the competing values and interests rather than an absolute freedom of speech out of school position.
i grew up near Trinity and have friends who went there back in the 70’s. It used to be a good school.
Great!
Can we eliminate affirmative action now?
Obviously the American welfare state’s unconstitutional redistribution is a disastrous failure.
It has only served to create evermore demanding parasites.
When will the Supreme Court begin to support the Constitution?
Let merit, hard-work and success prevail.
Let freedom ring!
I stand for free speech always. Let people speak their mines. We can disagree with their comments and open it up for discussion. Without that what do we have ? Hidden agendas ? Hidden or ignorant believes ? Open it up don’t be afraid to talk about the worst of subjects. How can we advance in secrecy ? We can’t !!!
I agree. It would have far better for the world to have known the evil incarnate in Adolf Hitler. Too bad it took so long for him to die.
I am against any classes offered on racism, bigotry, etc. perhaps not teaching them will help their disappearance in society. It seems we offer these classes to keep racism and bigotry alive. Skin color should never be used as a teaching tool. Strides made in eliminating racism are lost with such a class to keep it alive.
Very interesting. If we wanted to truly be a color blind country perhaps the census shouldn’t be including race in the data collected.
Only the Government and a few retards (use the real definition from a real dictionary and not a fictionary) promote racism and sexism.
You make some good points here Sandi. The topics should only be addressed in a history class.
I want a class or school department to study Michael Brown’s mom and his life as a welfare guy and thief. And of course her life. She is getting a million dollars from the poor town of Ferguson in a settlement for the rightful killing of Michael. This is a lesson. Towns should tell their cops to let the perps and killers do their thing. You cannot arrest or stop them with the use of a firearm. Let em be. Nigeria is here.
Turley
There is no line regarding what is free speech and what is private. When an person that is deemed unacceptable for a teaching position exposes him or herself, it makes no difference how. That the idiot should get the boot or not is separate from their rights. This goofball can say whatever he wants but he shouldn’t be teaching.
This does not sound like satire to me:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/campusreform/9334/Williams-3.jpg
or this:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/campusreform/9334/Williams-2.jpg
This sounds to me like another pipsqueak Negro who has all the phraseology down to blame White people for the day to day problems of Blacks, while ignoring the inconvenient truth of the 72% black illegitimate birth rate.
Sooo, I guess the real question is, do colleges have the right to fire racists, of whatever color?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Yea its white peoples fault ! The whole thing about free speech is how you can find out what someone really believes and clearly this person has a grudge against white people and I for one don’t understand why someone who doesn’t know me has a problem with me. Yes Im white ! I have never done anything to hurt anyone in my 60 years here on earth. So to lump me into a category is ignorant to say the least !!
To be sure, Americans have the freedom to be as racist as they choose.
Racism is erroneously equated with assault, battery, harassment, rape, murder and other forms of violence. Racism may be impolite or immoral but it is not unconstitutional, while affirmative action and all other forms of redistribution are unconstitutional violations of the right to private property (private property is no longer private when it is taken from one man and given to another).
Americans have the freedoms of thought, speech, religion, assembly, press and every other conceivable natural or “god-given” freedom per the 9th amendment. Americans discriminate when they decide to turn right or left upon leaving their homes in the morning. If Americans cannot discriminate, Americans cannot be free.
We were told that slavery was bad and needed abolition but abolition was not enough – obtaining freedom for slaves was not enough. The complaints and “demands” have only increased since slavery ended. What is really despised is being the minority ruled by the majority so liberals imposed the dictatorship of affirmative action and every other form of redistribution.
Madison said through amendment or change, he feared for the very Constitution itself. The Constitution was shredded a long time ago by “Crazy Abe” Lincoln.
To disparage discrimination and racism is to disparage freedom.
How far down that path will the dictatorship go?
Yu should try reading the Constitution at some point in your life. Fortunately half baked opinions like yours never get anywhere and aren’t needed to protect our Constitutional Republc against such foreign ideology.
A cynical but interesting comment by racist and old MS senatorTheodore Bilbo, in paraphrase: ” Educating a person like this amounts to wasting a good field hand and producing an insolent cook.”
LOL!!!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The diversity-for-the-sake-of-difference meme has to be one of the most foolish ideas ever to occur within a human brain. There is no evidence to support this position, and tons of evidence that it offers distinct disadvantages to any society.
I wonder if JT would be as accepting and understanding had the so-called professor called for the death of, let’s say. . .oh. . .I don’t know. . .let me think. . .law school professors? Maybe, make that, law school professors and their immediate families? I do believe that a more specific threat, which didn’t just target whites, in general–after all, the number of whites allows JT to falsely believe that the odds are in his favor as far as dodging any impending doom–would have him singing a drastically different tune. It’s unfortunate that he would have to feel personally and more specifically threatened, where his own life and safety, or those of his family members, were on the line, to speak out against this type of a threat, which is clearly and obviously not covered by freedom of speech. For shame, JT!
“I wonder if JT would be as accepting and understanding had the so-called professor called for the death of, let’s say. . .oh. . .I don’t know. . .let me think. . .law school professors?”
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. __William Shakespeare
I have always found it interesting that the charter for the colony of Georgia allowed no lawyers.
Very nice piece of history, but I believe the colony was small and I think one could say hand picked so it wasn’t really a totally free environment. On the other side of the coin, a little known fact, is that New Jersey was the first state to provide voting rights to woman the same as men. People might not know that because in the early 1800’s NJ removed that right.
JT, I don’t think you know what satire is, even bad satire. This man is clearly racist. I am sure his classes are a hotbed of indoctrination.
Paul Schulte,….
Maybe the death threats against this clown are merely “satire”.😏
tnash – maybe they are parody?
I also sure that anyone who dares to dissent will find himself a few grade points shy of what he earned.
Ron Slade – anyone who dissents is going to be kicked out of class unless they are mentally strong enough to resist.
Just what is a racist? It seems that most people who use the word can’t define it. I think I can define what a racist is not. A racist is not one who prefers the companionship of those with whom he shares the most commonality, or a person who refuses to intermarry. He is not a person who dares state painful truths about such things as racial differences in I.Q., crime rates, violence, responsible parenthood, incidence of STDs nor even one who may have negative opinions about another people. A man who wants to preserve his own bloodline is not a racist, nor is one a racist who believes diversity for the sake of difference is not a logical approach to immigration policy or national unity.
“Racist” has become a word used by people who can’t define it and who use it as a weapon against those who disagree with them. They throw the word around like a hand grenade hoping to escape facts, logical argument or reasonable debate. Distraction, dissembling, name calling and overt hostility toward those who dare to disagree say more about who they are than than those they accuse of racism.
Ron Slade – in this case I used racism correctly.
My observation is that Trinity has come a long way even from its post-WWII transformation into a GI Bill school. From roughly 1945-1952 or so, Trinity, like most other “elite” colleges, became suddenly willing to take on the task of educating the less-than-elite out of a sense of patriotism, noblesse oblige, and pecuniary bottom line considerations-the “forced” acceptances did all have a GI Bill to help them pay for it. With that onerous task performed, Trinity then went on to their true interests of promoting radical egalitarianism, redistributionism, and social engineering. Now we have the nurturing and toleration of racism within its walls. It is time to rethink this business of higher “education.”
You get these witless individuals because they arrive in college and are given positive feedback for talking vicious rot. They’re hired by institutions who want someone with a warm body, a pulse beat, and black skin, because that’s what the fashion is in the very other-directed world that is academe.
Change the incentives, and you’ll get a small corps of black faculty with the usual smorgasbord of intellectual interests. Types like prof-lout will, in their younger years, learn to live an ordinary life and not a life of performance-art.
He should be permitted the same speech outside of his job as any other person. My quandry is that if the person worked for a private concern and that influenced the bottom line he would be fired. Therefore, one has to consider what is the bottom line of the university? The education of students. If such actions inhibit the education of students then should he be fired or he be forced to restrict his private free speech?
I don’t think free speech means that a person doesn’t pay a price for what he says.
A lot of people talk like this, pro-bigot, anti-bigot, whatever. The lack of civility is astounding, but it’s spreading. The world is changing, and not for the better.
Let him talk – let’s publicize his speech.
Let the world see Prof. Williams for what he is and deal with him in its own way.
Never get in the way of a racist determined to cut his own throat.
The old saying the blind, leading the blind comes to mind. Hate mongers should not be teachers, let alone professors. That is why I say a good trade school will help America the best!
Absolutely! There are few universities that promote a liberal arts, western civilization education. In the stone age, when I went to university, there were professors of the Frankfort school and those of classical, objectivity and western civilization. I was given information to think and to chose where my own philosophies would develop.
The man can say what he wants anywhere he wants. It’s the constant hammering of negativity, hate and lack of decorum that pollutes peaceful intellectual debate. Calling people names and calling for the death of an entire ethnic group shuts down any intellectual debate.
Excuse me for being a skeptic, but is there proof of these death treats against this racist?
Death treats?
That was in the late 60s which hardly quaifies as the stone age although the age of progressivism had you mentioned it clearly qualifies as the Second Dark Ages.
Just maybe this guy could have made a better plumber than a lawyer.
There is no justifiable reason to hate a man because of his race, but there is every reason to believe that we are not all totally equal in every way. These differences are both cultural and genetic. We can ignore reality all we like, but reality won’t ignore us.