Academia, Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Society

University of New Hampshire Professor Identified In Effort To Disrupt Free Speech Event
imagesWe recently discussed the disruption of a speaker at a university that was led in part by a professor who believed that she had a right to prevent other faculty or students from hearing the views of speaker Dave Rubin, a Democrat online talk show host who has called for free speech protections on campuses.  University of New Hampshire Professor Dr. Joelle Ruby Ryan screamed profanities and refused to respond to Rubin’s invitation to have a dialogue.  She is part of a growing number of faculty who rally their students against free speech values and seek to prevent those with opposing views from being heard.

Professor Ryan is a Women’s Studies professor who teaches “Gender, Power, and Privilege” and “Transgender Feminism.” She lists her specialities as “transgender/LGBTQ, film/media, sex work, disability justice, fat studies, social movements.”
She disrupted the event on May 1st on screaming at Rubin (who is gay)”We don’t want you in the LGBT community. Get the f**k out.”

She then bragged about her briefly shutting down the event on free speech by posting a tweet reading “We did something right!Glad we were able to disrupt this man’s hate speech as much as possible. He is nothing but a provocateur and ‘civil discourse’ with him is impossible.”

No she did not do something “right” in disrupting an event on free speech.
The question is the lack of any action by the University of New Hampshire.  We recently saw a University of Connecticut professor charged in another effort to disrupt a speech.
We have discussed the need to protect the free speech rights of teachers who have been disciplined for statements made outside of their schools.  However, this was a professor acting on campus to disrupt an event for students and faculty.  It was a disgraceful and anti-intellectual performance.  Ryan in my view should be disciplined with a minimum of a suspension from teaching and considered for termination for such conduct.
A failure of the University to act will speak loudly as to its lack of commitment to free speech on campus.  This is not a close question. It is equally clear for students who try to disrupt the event.  There is ample ability to be heard in protest outside of the event.  However, this is little more than an effort to silence opposing views through a heckler’s veto.  Ryan clearly demonstrated not only a fundamental lack of appreciation for free speech but a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of an academic.  She appears entirely ill-suited for this profession, which seeks to maintain open discourse and intellectual exchange.

 

88 thoughts on “University of New Hampshire Professor Identified In Effort To Disrupt Free Speech Event”

  1. The answer is simple: nuke the Dept of Education and remove all tuition support at the Federal level.

  2. The protesters should have been immediately expelled. Freedom of speech is not just for the speaker, it’s also for the audience. For Rubin to tolerate the interruption(s) as long as he did was disrespectful of his audience. There should be zero tolerance for these protests. Before a speaker agrees to speak at a college, they should have a prior commitment from their host that disruptive protests will be ended immediately, and the protesters expelled. It’s time to get serious about protecting a fundamental right.

    1. If I had been the speaker, I would have gotten the entire audience chanting “black lives matter” until the thing exhausted itself. That would have shown the robots that audiences can respond in unpredictable ways. If the robots continued alone after the audience stopped, I would have led a chant of “show some respect…show some respect”.

  3. Faculty? This is a professor? Fire her immediately, such intolerance cannot be condoned.

  4. Under “specialties” on her bio is included “fat studies.” Sad and hilarious both at the same time.

  5. There should be more drama. Like what happened at UF with the “Don’t Taze Me Bro” incident.

  6. One look at Joelle and you know she’s a profoundly deluded, confused and unhappy person.

  7. I don’t see what the problem is. For 300 bucks one way to London every one of these unhinged anti First Amendment haters can bask in the glories of a liberal utopia forever…or a least until there is the inevitable government crackdown on THEM for disrupting another forum where the speaker is saying something they don’t like.

  8. I watched the whole video. Dave Rubin had a tough house. It seems the entire identity politics department attended.

    Those who disrupted the event do not understand the interaction of free speech and the social contract, the give and take of discourse. They shook rattles, chanted slogans, interrupted him, and were quite aggressive.

    Rubin did his best in this difficult environment, but I suspect he does not have as much experience interacting with animus possessed people intent on destroying their ‘opponent’. Most of those who asked ‘questions’ had no interest in a discussion; they wanted to shout their slogans and spew their vitriol. There was also no way to answer some of the questions because the premises were so faulty. I wish Jordan Peterson had been there with Dave.

    1. This is who they are, that’s what they do. A criminal element here would be the rest of the faculty and the trustees, who have been delinquent in creating these programs and allowing them to be staffed with elderly adolescents.

  9. Dr. Ryan should be suspended until she completes a remedial program in toilet training.

  10. make a montage of their most virulent moments. All of them from Harris and Ortiz at DNC HQ through their phony comediennes, through their Proffesors and play that as the rebuttal to any thing said by their sick and dying party. and add int the best of sound clips from Schumer aka Schmuckley Putzlosi. Label it ‘the DNC Platform,The best they have to offer. four letter words and all. I guess one coujld always replace them with ;redacted’

  13. If the trustees are serious they will:

    1. Close the woman’s studies program.

    2. Fire every single professor in active service responsible for creating the woman’s studies program.

    This woman (employed at what is notionally a research university) has produced six items indexed on Google Scholar. Her dissertation was called “Reel gender: Examining the politics of trans images in film and media”. She’s given a conference presentation which was abstracted in its proceedings and placed four articles in journals no one’s ever heard of, which it’s a reasonable wager no one outside a rancid little subculture ever sites.

    The faculty who give these types paid employment are criminals.

    1. If government money for these places dries up, the trustees will get serious pretty quickly. Don’t know if there’s a chance that could ever happen, but if rates keep going up, who knows…

      I did see this video, and wondered why this particular woman would go out of her way to see this just to be a problem. Never occurred to me this damaged subspecies would be a shaper of young minds. My naivete at my age is embarrassing sometimes. This is a form of societal perversion that has been beyond my experience. Growing up in house with values from a hard-working blue collar veteran who came from very humble agricultural roots in the highlands of PA doesn’t allow for this sort of wasteful indulgence.

      So this is what my father’s generation of hard work, personal sacrifice in war, savings, and taxes have wrought. Hmmmm. Lots of problem-solving on display there, and I’m sure she’s full of boatload of proper political solutions as well.

  14. The faculty at the University of New Hampshire hired this woman to teach a fake subject. They did so because they are fake pedagogues.

    And, of course, she thinks everyone else should be subject to her mouth. Not one person entered that auditorium to hear her speak.

    1. Oh! And I love the whole Fat Studies thingy! Oh, this needs some doggerel:

      I am Woman, Hear me THUMP!
      From all the lard that’s on my rump!
      And I weigh too much to go back to Size 10.

      I have gotten sooo darn plump
      That I need a stomach pump,
      Just to get my jeans to fit my big rear end!

      I could do more, but cats are crawling on me.

      Squeeky Fromm
      Girl Reporter

      1. Squeeky – I was going to comment on the Fat Studies, but you did it so much better than I could have. 🙂 Thanks for your poem.

  16. Instead of we have ways of making you talk. It’s, we have ways of keeping you quiet!

    2. Absolutely. It’s been around as a ‘discipline’ for 40+ years. Coast to coast out of 1.8 million baccalaureate degrees awarded in this country anually, about 1,400 are awarded in ‘women’s studies’. Even if it were a serious discipline, most state university systems wouldn’t have a program in it because there would not be a critical mass of interested students and only the 3 or 4 most populous states would have aught but a single lightly-staffed program. There’s nowhere where this rubbish isn’t cross subsidized by faculties pulling their own weight.

  19. It’s really worth noting that Rubin is a self-declared democrat, gay, *and* gay married, he’s also one of the most unbiased and non-partisan people in media of any kind. This is about insanity and hatred, nothing else, there is no reason at work here. The people perpetrating these acts on campuses and in society are unbalanced, they are not well. There’s no other way to view it at this point. As far as I’m concerned any official not intervening is complicit, and it’s both absurd and concerning. And, ‘Get the **** out!’? Isn’t that basically an admission that this is about paranoid, tribalistic nonsense and not solidarity?

    2. Excellent points James. Civil discourse from Liberals is becoming rare – they immediately fly into histronics when you dare entertain the rational idea that free speech is imperative for our civilization. Ugh! I am a Progressive albeit with certain Conservative values and I can easily debate with my Republican/Libertarien friends w/o getting hateful. With the disappointed Hilbots not so much. Good thing I am not a student these days – I’m quite certain I’d be either thrown off campus.

  20. Typical Democrat. Win at any cost. Say anything to win and do anything to get votes for their cause. No different than Pelosi saying borders are racist to shut down the argument. Why do supposedly sane people keep voting for this party???

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

    3. False, and wrong. Thanks for playing, next.

      this is to “often I just make sh*t up for the hell of it” sqeeKKK

      1. Marky Mark Mark – do you have anything to back up your claims? Or are you just making sh$t up again?

    4. re: Why do supposedly sane people keep voting for this party??? Because they are deluded Squeeks. They are taken in by the Establishment. There are some decent Dems – Tulsi Gabbard who I’d vote for easily – every time I’ve been around a Democrat I’ve asked them about her and they don’t know who she is!! The DNC is so corrupt.

    5. Why do they sink so low? To attract votes? NAY! It’s a vain attempt to KEEP votes to keep their dwindlling scattered shattered CRIUMBling former party from scattering to the four winds.

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