The site Campus Reform is reporting a disturbing confrontation between student members of the conservative group Turning Point USA and Central Michigan University Professor Sara Moslener. The group posted a videotaped purportedly showing Moslener admitting to tearing down their posters because “I’m terrified of your organization.” While I have defended the right of academics to post and write in controversial and even offensive ways, this does not fall into any category of protected speech. This is the denial of free speech and should be a serious matter for the university.
Moslener is a part-time instructor teaches religion, race, and sexuality. The group quotes her as saying “I take these [signs] down when I see them because I’m terrified of your organization.” However, that is saying that a member of the faculty is actively suppressing the right of students to speak on the campus of Central Michigan University.
When she was confronted by this obvious conflict, Moslener responded that the group in her view is “hiding” racist beliefs and “[i]t is an act of civil disobedience for me . . . If you need to call me out on it, do it, and I will tell everyone exactly what I told you.” That admission would seem to create a direct and insurmountable conflict with the status of being a teacher in higher education.
What is curious is that Moslener is also quoted as saying that “I would love to see a good Republican group on campus” and that “[s]tudents who have a conservative voice don’t have the kind of spaces that students with more liberal voices have.” Yet, she also claims the right to tear down posters for conservative groups that she does not like.
If that seems hopelessly conflicted, it is because it is.
I’m racist against lying, feeble minded, cupcake college professors.
Moslner claims she would welcome conservative groups on campus.
Yet her problem with THIS group is not that they are conservative, or any position that they have take (assuming you are stupid enough to accept viewpoint censorship).
Her problem is that they MIGHT be hiding racists.
This ludicrously stupid argument that you can censor something not because of its overt expressions, but because of what YOU guess are its secret intentions, can be applied by anyone to anything.
Stop engaging in mind reading.
We can not use force – such as censorship against others because of our guesses as to what they might covertly believe.
This is deranged nonsense.
I think all leftists are deranged totalitarians. I do not even need to engage in mind reading to reach that both historically, and self evidently Moslner and her ilk are overtly totaltiarian.
She still is free to speak.
But has no right to censor others.
What’s more important is that is not the act of a rationa Constitutionalist.
Moslener responded that the group in her view is “hiding” racist beliefs…
Well why not? When half the country has been conditioned by establishment Democrats and their media propaganda arm to believe imagination = truth and facts don’t matter, then of course we’ll see more of this civil disobedience playing out. She should be handed her walking papers with a court order to never pretend to be an instructor again.
Yes they are afraid of Ideas, precisely because they cannot defend theirs.
“Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?”
― Joseph Stalin
Great quote!
No wonder college students and grads go for Bernie
and then create PACs
https://lawandcrime.com/crazy/someone-created-a-federal-pac-to-pay-the-person-who-infects-trump-with-coronavirus/
“ Someone Created a Federal PAC to Pay the Person Who Infects Trump with Coronavirus”
A political action committee (PAC) was created on Thursday with the express purpose of infecting President Donald Trump with the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).
The group is named “10 Stacks to the person who infects Donald douchebag Trump with Coronavirus/Covid-19,” and the official paperwork was filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) establishing the organization as an entity legally entitled to raise and spend money in federal elections.
The group’s form text file elaborates on what it apparently hopes to achieve: “CORONAVIRUS PLEASE KILL DONALD TRUMP!!!!” “
These idots need to be put under the jail. Why would the law allow this
These people are all NETWITS!!!!!
Can these people really be afraid of ideas? That is exactly what these PILLARS of Education are confirming with their actions. They should be driven out of their higher education jobs. I for 1 am sick and tired of these zombies!
They’re not afraid, they’re incensed. They may also be anxious that they’d come off badly if they ever had to defend their prejudices in an unfamiliar setting and on unfamiliar terms.
Naaa, they are NOT incensed. They are friggin loony. Don’t soft peddle these acts anymore! They are out to destroy America and American values.
ACKNOWLEDGE IT FOR WHAT IT IS!
Universities are the perfect place for the fringe extremes to dominate. The rest of America, whether airline pilots or turnip farmers, are too busy struggling in the economy. But where ideology is the work product, the power players rule. But aren’t we exaggerating the influence they have? They’re only performers after all. Tearing down posters as a threat to free speech? I’m sure she’d like us to think that. It furthers the “debate”, doesn’t it? Maybe Professor Turley should step back a bit.
hecklers veto
lock this guy up for tresspass and let him whine to the judge
But aren’t we exaggerating the influence they have?
Not likely. You need to understand that this behavior has become a belief system in Education.
If you don’t think that Teachers are the most virulent strain of what is wrong with America today, you aren’t seeing the whole picture.
How do you think that society got turned this way? Hmmmm?
Jon, I’m going to hope that being hopelessly conflicted isn’t a bad state to be in around such matters. And that there are some things are worth risking being accused of censorship for.
I mean, I very well know from first hand experience it’s possible to get bounced from this blog for dropping f bombs in the comments section. But it’s entirely permissible for commenters to jump right in and call other commenters stupid. So there’s that.
Interesting times.
Moslener would perhaps have been better served by employing a bit of well placed grafiti to make her point.
I would not censor you for dropping F bombs.
Nor do I think that people should call others stupid in posts – even if they are.
Arguments should be made with facts, logic, reason not ad hominem or other logical fallacies.
But we do not censor logical fallacies, not even ad hominem.
We do censor F bombs
Even if I would prefer we did not, there is no moral equivalence.
I was reading more about this at the Campus Reform site, and this isn’t the first time non-leftist students have been harassed and discriminated against at CMU – of course it’s not.
In her interview, one of the students, “says she and her chapter remain unwavering. She insists she will not allow professors or students to intimidate her for her beliefs.
‘Our sole purpose on campus is to help students feel comfortable having a voice no matter what… [The left] coming and attacking us and spreading lies about us and our members is what we are here trying to prevent… And it won’t shut us up.’ ”
Much respect to those students. They’ve got real guts. Their peers on the Left are pathetic in comparison. That’s why the grape-flavored minions on the Left always have to mob up because collectively, they don’t have a heart, mind, or spine between them.
If students need to sue schools in order to have their constitutional rights respected, they should.
Forget about cost. If they started a gofundme, I’d chip in. I think a lot of people would.
What is curious is that Moslener is also quoted as saying that “I would love to see a good Republican group on campus” and that “[s]tudents who have a conservative voice don’t have the kind of spaces that students with more liberal voices have.”
She wants a capon club staffed by younger versions of Ross Douthat and David French.
Interesting! It reminds me of when I was teaching at Bennett College. There, I posted criticism of the humanities department on the humanities bulletin board. My critiques were removed shortly after I put them up. Then I discovered one of my humanities colleagues was removing them. Her belief was that it was as much her right to take them down as it was my right to put them up. But, in essence, she was removing my right to freedom of expression. Unsurprisingly, she could not understand that…
G. Tod Slone (todslone@hotmail.com), Ed.
The American Dissident
We have heard recently about the fears our Founders had. Since I never met any of them, the best I can do is read their writings and accounts of their deliberations.
My research leads me to think that a major fear was the tyranny of the majority and this seems to validate that fear.
This is exactly why my willingness to compromise on my right to bear arms diminishes every year.
She seems mentally unstable. If posters and young people of a variety of races speaking about issues terrifies her, she clearly doesn’t belong on a college campus and may be a threat to students. Someone with irrational “terror” beliefs could behave violently due to delusions of a lack of personal safety. She should be removed from her position because her mental instability is a true threat to those she is around. Let’s just call it like we see it – SHE should be ripped off campus and CMU is risking their students if they don’t take action to remove her .
1. Colleges and universities hire people who are loosely wired.
2. Who are more common among disciplines with weak operational measures of competence and more common among women.
3. I’m gonna wager it’s more common among specialists in ‘religion and sexuality’ as well.
Here’s a brain squeezer. Central Michigan is a teaching institution located in a small town in the northern half of the state. Why are they offering a discipline as esoteric as comparative religion. They have an amply staffed department in a subject where perhaps 3,000 BA degrees are issued each year all across American academe. I could see see a private college intensely devoted to academics making this a niche specialty. Central Michigan isn’t Oberlin. Comparative religion belongs where you’re most likely to find a critical mass of interested students: religious schools, private research universities, public research universities, and public colleges with a large census like Towson in Baltimore or James Madison in western Virginia. A couple hundred programs, coast-to-coast, could meet the demand.
Seems as though common sense and personal responsibility have gone out of style.
Yeah, I listened to it. It was painful to listen to. I somehow ended up on another poster ripper downer new articles. This campus reform page is interesting.
So, first question, why is anyone ripping down anyone else’s posters, their property. Would I reach over and take your purse, cut a hole in it, and give it back to you? Would I take your pencils, break them in half and give them back to you?
It’s about respecting others and others property. It’s a boundary situation. Seems like a lot of folks out their do not understand the difference between yours versus mine. Regardless of message.
A lot of emotional underlying issues across the nation. I think it’s the financial squeeze, wage growth and cost of living, but I could be wrong.
I just don’t think its political, where all the rage comes from…ppl use to disagree and just be fine with it and still be friends or at least friendly, what happened!?
I have friends both Dems and Rep. The dems think I’m a southern belle, (they’ve never been to the south…lol), and the Rep think I’m a big ole hippie from Venice Beach. Both are funny, and neither is accurate. But that’s an example of the extreme thinking.
Maybe logic should be a required high school course. Starting with next generation. Also, a life course, use to be called Home Ec. We didn’t have any Home Ec class. It would have been helpful.
Moslener…
🔶
the REAL infectious disease
And still it continues.
Paul, 🙃😉, I added 5 years bc I figured it’s feasible by 5, that you could play bridge. Lol. So, 1960 would make you 60 today plus 5.
Can’t you see yourself playing bridge at five? Lol. Maybe not, maybe you’re a five year old bridge genius. Can’t rule out.
WW33 – I was playing cribbage for money at 5 and poker at 7. However, I did not learn bridge until I got to Creighton University, where it got in the way of class schedule.
“This is the denial of free speech and should be a serious matter for the university.”
_______________________________________________________
Don”t hold your breath.