Women’s Studies Professor Kevin Allred at Montclair State University is back in the news. Allred previously attracted national attention (while on the Rutgers faculty) after he was reportedly ordered to go through a psychiatric evaluation after students “felt threatened” by him following Trump’s election. Now, Allred (who teaches a course on Beyonce) posted a comment that he hoped someone would kill Donald Trump. As should come as little surprise to many who know my view of the First Amendment, I view this statement as protected speech and hyperbolic. However, it was reckless, hateful, and worthy of condemnation.
I must also confess that I am perplexed by the fact that a professor is teaching (and students are getting credit) for a course on Beyonce. Hopefully there is something substantive in such a course though Allred’s public comments do not offer much basis for optimism.
In a tweet, Allred reportedly wrote “Trump is a f***ing joke. This is all a sham. I wish someone would just shoot him outright. “The tweet was reportedly withdrawn, according to the Washington Times.
Allred also retweeted the infamous image of Kathy Griffin holding the president’s head.
Allred later clarified that wishing death on the president is different than making a threat on his life. There is a federal law making it a crime to threaten the life of a president.
saying you wish donald trump was dead is different than making a direct threat against him. just saying…
How is this a free speech issue? Who is blocking this idiot from saying stupid things? He has no right to work at the college and they are in no way obligated to keep him for saying stupid things.
He can probably expect a visit from the Secret Service. Even if his vitriol is considered protected speech the agents are going to want to see if he will pose an actual threat to the president or that his actions might entice others to do so. Since he now commands a high profile and large audience compared with the average internet nitwit.
The screen shot of him with the caption “‘Beyoncé Professor’ on the costs of college’ is a statement in itself. Employ personnel to teach useless courses such as these, and someone will have to pay for it.
The whole point of the college of arts and sciences and the faculties of visual and performing arts is to teach useless courses. “Liberal arts” means the disciplines apposite for a man of leisure. Most baccalaureate degrees are awarded in vocational majors.
There are academic majors which are interesting to employers: chemistry and economics to name two. But, again, they do not map to specific careers. Academics and the arts map to teaching careers only.
I think you’re complaint is not about ‘useless’ courses, but about the humanities, and about the less august components thereof. About 30 years ago, a critic of higher education suggested that literature faculties should eschew any work published in the previous 50 years. That seems about right. You need time to let the chaff sift out. I assume that courses on Beyonce are offered by the academic wing of the school of communications. I’m not sure why people major in communications (other than to take vocational courses appropriate to a career in broadcasting), but if they’re going to take academic courses on mass-entertainment phenomena, it ought to be in stuff from a generation or two back which people still consume: Sinatra and Diana Ross, not Beyonce. And all such courses should be electives.
You are right. There are two kinds of college courses, Fun Stuff and Useful/Necessary Stuff.
What makes the Fun Stuff even semi-feasible is that it is paid on what the Brits call the never-never system, or student loans.
The whole thing is hilarious in a dark, morbid, Soylent Green sort of way. There is a product, the student loan, which permits the cost of education to soar way beyond inflation and common sense, and the college administrators and banks can get rich off it.
But, there is only a limited need for college graduates in the Useful/Necessary category, and a limited number of students who are smart enough to succeed at all that math and number-y physics-y sort of stuff, so what is the enterprising and ambitious college administrative crew to do???
Lightbulbs!!! They will simply increase the beejesus out of the Fun Stuff, because the money from student loans is all green, and spends the same way whether it is from a degree in Chemistry, or a degree in Queer Blues Players. That sets up the positive feedback loop of more students and more student loans and thus more money for the administrators to make a killing.
And who said “Moloch is dead!”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Classical languages are ‘fun stuff’ only for a few.
True. And there are a lot of “fun” degrees, that might better be called “scholarship”, and not all “fun” degrees are worthless. Somebody needs to teach English Literature in ElHi and college, if we are to have well rounded people. The same with History. The Performing Arts are necessary because the results are a constant part of society, either thru movies, plays, concerts, street mimery, etc.
Languages are necessary if people are to communicate between cultures. Classical languages for scholarship, and archeology and history.
It just seems like the fun stuff has been inflated beyond all reason, and I think for the purpose of getting warm bodies in the seats and the attendant student loan money. Plus, a lot of white kids just don’t want to become plumbers, mechanics, carpenters, and roofers. They see themselves as “sitting behind a desk” sorts, who have avocado sandwiches on pita bread for lunch. Plus, they won’t have to scrub their nails as often.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So, I could start a course of “Women’s Study” in understanding Strip Clubs, and get to be a Professor, and get paid!!! Lab work in the “Field” on Fridays.
Free speech should not be an obstacle to getting this idiot fired. The concept of free speech, like the rest of our freedoms is determined by their basic values, common ideals, and the behavior or respect of the people to whom they are promised. This mutt exhibits disrespect and should be dealt with at the pleasure of the institution; if only for teaching Beyonce.
These illuminating tweets help explain why only 32 percent of women consider themselves to be feminists, 43 percent of Americans think feminism is “angry,” and why 30 percent believe it to be “outdated.” The feminist movement isn’t about empowering women or championing equal opportunity for both sexes — it’s about forcing an unappealing ideology down everyone’s throats.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/01/angry-feminists-cant-figure-nobody-likes-feminists-anymore/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=01f44ba4b4-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-01f44ba4b4-79248369
This “professor” of Beyonce wears a man bun. ‘Nuff said.
And it’s a dude teaching women’s studies.
Somebody at Montclair didn’t get the memo.
May be pulled a little too tightly.
I think that the school should maintain the right to end a professor’s employment. He could work somewhere else if they wish to hire him. He calls himself a Beyoncé professor. I would not pay for my son, or daughter, to take such a ridiculous class. How about a class on Chinook Salmon? There doesn’t seem to be any oversight. Academic freedom is morphing into academic baffoonery.
A class on salmon is almost surely available at Washington State University. Salmon is important here.
And would be taught at the ag school, not the college of arts and sciences. There’s mechanical arts and there’s liberal arts.
Why should college professor’s
speech merit greater first
amendment protection than army generals, CEOs, TV anchors, or anyone else? What great service to humanity are they performing? Just saying.
Study about Academic Freedom.
The notion has been distended beyond all reason and the people claiming it are commonly defective characters. Time to hit ’em hard and high.
A course on Beyoncé Hahahahahaha, move him to Basket Weaving 101 maybe the weaving will be good therapy for the “professor”.
The bar has been lowered so far for some students that colleges have to offer course like this to gain credits. “Gee mom and dad I can’t get a job, I got great grades in Mooncalfing but no one is hiring. Can I live in the basement?
Montclair State year 5 of high school.
And year 2 of Junior High circa 1970 is now year 4 of High School.
Fit throwing over not winning the argument is petulant and mentally ill. It’s nailing the last nail into the coffin of progressives and DNC. Modern history has proven that the progressives, leftists and DNC are sore losers. What’s new? They just turn it up every election.
Us people in fly over country are working hard to make a living. Posh socialists, including the media running their mouths are seen as insane and a distraction.
Say whatever you want and keep saying it. I definitely don’t want to silence this.
I want no one hurt or dead or even impeached. I wasn’t reveling in the notion that Harry Reid almost took out an eye. I found it curious . War mongers are responsible for the deaths of countless pitiful, impoverished people in the middle east yet them losing their POWER is all I want. :Losing power is worse than death to most of these people and it’s a nonviolent solution.
It’s keeping my Youtube friends in Patreon donations for those of us wanting to know what’s really going on in the world.
“I must also confess that I am perplexed by the fact that a professor is teaching (and students are getting credit) for a course on Beyonce.”
Where have you been, I’ve been reading stories about these silly pop culture courses for many years.
This is not inviting violrnce ?
I wonder if you can get an entire college BA degree re Beyonce? Maybe an MA or PhD ? I wonder what the course titles would be…..
Double standards- Trump said he could kill somebody on 5th Avenue and still get elected. Trump told his fans to physically confront his opponents in audiences. Trump told police to conduct rough rides, a situation which he must have known resulted in the recent death of a presumed innocent suspect.
Turley refers to Trump’s speech as “chilling”. He calls Allred’s speech, “hateful”.
Trump’s fans are commonly set upon by antifa loons. You wanna rumble, Linda, you’re gonna get it.
Antifa? Is that Queen Latifah’s aunt?
“Rumble”- as in West Side Story?
If Susan can help DDS, I hope he finds her.
It’s status lowering among common-and-garden faculty to defend the starboard or to make an issue of portside loons, so the number of starboard on the faculty is outnumbered by red-haze / feminazi / black-nationalist / sexual-deviant creepazoids held together with psychotropics. The question for normies living in the State of New Jersey is why the imprimateur and funds of the state are devoted to succoring the kooks and the status-conscious jack-wagons who let the kooks have the run of the place. Here’s a suggestion: how about a state law which dissolves the arts-and-sciences, teacher-training, and social-work faculties at the state’s institutions. Everyone gets put out on the curb, including administrators whose initial appointment was on one of those faculty. Then have a companion piece of legislation which allows the institutions to build new arts-and-sciences faculties limited to selected disciplines (STEM + economics + foreign languages, let’s say).
So, you would advocate no new school teachers to be trained in NJ?
The content of teaching certificates is such that it’s largely a paper hoop. See Thomas Sowell on the degree to which student performance is attributable to the possession of a teaching certificate by his instructor. Also, many of these programs are corrupt and NCATE promotes such corruption.
Here’s a suggestion: replace the ‘school of education’ and the ‘school of social work’ with the following:
1. Schools of professional and applied psychology which have a clinical / counseling track, an industrial / school track, and a rehabilitation track.
2. Schools of [non-business] administration which have several tracks: general public administration, general philanthropic administration, educational administration, administration of medical services, and administration of general social services.
3. Schools of police and security services which include course tracks on child abuse and elder abuse investigations.
4. Teacher’s colleges which do nothing but train teachers. Teaching certificates would take two academic years to earn and have three components: coursework, internship, and stipended apprenticeship. The precise content would depend on the type of certificate sought and teachers who had other certificates could be excused from some part of the content.
–The certificates to be offered would be as follows: general elementary teacher, art teacher, music teacher, athletic coach, academic secondary teacher, vocational secondary teacher, special education, ESOL, and geography teacher.
— All aspirants would have to pass a general bacclaureate examination to begin with. You’d have supplementary antecedent requirements for entering the certificate program for most (general elementary teachers, ESOL, geography, and special education excepted) For secondary school teachers, you’d have to have antecedent subject training (35 to 70 credits) or trade certifications. For asprirant coaches, you’d have to have 35-70 credit hours in a physical education program and pass a fitness test. For aspirant music teachers, you’d need 35-70 hours in a bacclaureate music program and pass a blind audition. Etc.
— You’d have enhancements for each sort. For general elementary teachers, the enhancements would consist of examinations in social education and general science; the teachers’ college could offer optional preparatory courses for these, taught by seconded arts-and-sciences faculty. For secondary school teachers, completing 35-70 credit-hours in a second subject would be an enhancement. For coaches, music teachers, and art teachers, a second year of apprenticeship would be an enhancement (you spend one year in either an elementary or secondary setting, the second year in a setting different from the one you spent the first year).
–The course work for the certificate would consist solely of methods courses (not courses in raaacism) adapted to the certificate in question. Special education would be the only sequence long enough to be called an education degree. The sequences would generally be 12-21 credit hours.
Your teacher training plan sounds like an MA beyond a BA. Correct?
Not correct. I don’t care if the entrants have a BA or not. I do care that those teaching discrete subjects have undertaken course work in those subjects. I care that the program entrants have passed a standardized examination which demonstrates that they’ve mastered English grammar, arithmetic, elementary algebra, and (perhaps) the fundamentals of American history, geography, and civics. I don’t like the BA degree as an institution and would like to see it abolished.
To paraphrase: This professor and his course on Beyonce are f***ing jokes. They are all a sham. I stop the paraphrase there.
The prof should be fired, not because of what he said, but because he has nothing useful to teach.
Perhaps on alternate Tuesdays, he does quantum mechanics and differential equations…. (though I doubt it)
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he works at the post office.
Montclair State once had an outspoken defender of Joseph Stalin on its literature faculty. His name was Grover Furr.
What’s grossly amusing about arts and sciences faculties is that they are such sandboxes. The number of ordinary Republicans employed on such faculties is, as a percentage, in the single digits and biased toward late-career faculty hired more than 30 years ago. But then they turn around and hire people who need therapy more than they need work (but who have the right politics).
With All Trump decision we all are suffer, Very need to under stand the situation..
I think if you let them, the inmates will run the asylum. And commending them for free speech won’t do you any good when trying to regain control.
What so nice about these
👉Retarded👈 (Protected speech warning) professor and teachers spouting off their vitriol hate, is it makes it so much easier for 50% of the country to avoid these stupid colleges.