It gives me no pleasure to admit here that my alma mater, Louisiana Tech, the institution where my great-great uncle served as the school’s third president, is so willing, under a weak president, to cave when a faculty member dares make a derogatory remark about the darling of the Louisiana neo-Nazi Repugnicans, one Donald J. Trump.
It was always my belief that institutions of higher learning were the havens for free speech and free thought. In fact, I was always led to believe they encouraged the development of ideas and philosophy unimpeded by the heavy hand of censorship and recriminations.
In fact, under the leadership of the progressive F. Jay Taylor, student journalism was encouraged and unfettered. Taylor was conservative politically but with the Vietnam War raging and with police cracking heads in Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic Convention, he never uttered a word about the student newspaper, The Tech Talk, publishing columns critical of the war and racial discrimination. I know. I was a conservative columnist for the paper and Reginald Owens, who would follow the late Wiley Hilburn as head of the Journalism Department, was the liberal voice of the paper during those times. Though we espoused political philosophies that were polar opposites, we managed to form a friendship back then that endures half-a-century later.
But now, when a faculty member suggests in a tweet that he would be happy if Donald J (for Genius) Trump were to spend the rest of his life in prison, all hell breaks loose on campus. Somehow, that observation, albeit controversial in some quarters, was interpreted as a threat on the life of the president.
How absurd. How stupid.
Such a sentiment has been expressed about someone by virtually every one of us, which leaves us all vulnerable to being chastised, harassed, and possibly even fired from our jobs. Who among us has not uttered similar words about someone at some time in our past? But to suggest that a criminal such as Trump deserves to spend the rest of his life incarcerated is suddenly considered a threat on his life that got the attention of some outfit called Campus Reform, a self-proclaimed news organization that seems to exist only to “outrage mobs (and to) provoke university administrators into knee-jerk defensive reactions like firing professors,” says Andrew C. McKevitt, an associate professor of history at Tech.
He is the one who posted the tweet that got the Tech administration’s collective drawers in a wad.
McKevitt’s biggest sin is posting anything on social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and whatever else is out there is good for nothing but spreading what Trump so affectionately calls “fake news” in the form of misinformation spread by Russia, China, Iran, and anyone else with an opinion. They’re good for nothing but getting people in trouble. I can do that easily enough on my own – which is why I abstain from any and all social media other than texting and email (and this blog). I know this makes me a technological dinosaur but it’s a choice I’ve made and one I’m content with.
“The meaning (of the tweet) was unambiguous,” McKevitt says. “President Trump should survive his illness so that he can be held accountable for his many documented crimes and spend the remainder of his days – may they be healthy and long – in prison. Of course, you may disagree with me,” he continues, “but my opinion on the president’s criminality could hardly be called radical in the current political climate.”
But Campus Reform just couldn’t let it go. “The group published an article claiming that I, along with several other academics across the country, had wished the worst upon the president during his illness—despite the fact that no sincere reading of my tweet could lead to that conclusion,” McKevitt writes.
And of course, Tech President Les Guice showed everyone his feet of clay with his own email on the subject:
“One of our faculty members recently posted a highly controversial – and viewed by many as threatening – statement on their personal Twitter account, which also connects this faculty member to Louisiana Tech through their profile page. This statement has received negative national attention for the University and this faculty member. (Take not of Guice’s admission that the post was on McKevitt’s personal twitter account.)
“…[T]his faculty member does not speak for our University,” Guice continued. “There are responsibilities associated with the right to free speech, and threatening, harassing, and bullying speech is never appropriate. It is not representative of our values and culture at Tech.”
Seriously? Threatening? Harassing? Bullying? You gotta be kidding me, Guice. You want to talk about threats and harassment? Try this on for size:
“One angry man wrote a lengthy screed in which he labeled me ‘Hitler personified’ and boasted that he knew my home address and how many ‘sex offenders’ lived nearby,” McKevitt says. “Others have speculated on the best ways to get me fired because they see Louisiana Tech overrun with ‘radical socialists.’ I’ve reported these incidents to the university, as have my harassed colleagues, yet the institution hasn’t uttered a word in our defense.”
In other words, post a derogatory comment about a deranged, dangerous POTUS and you face censorship. Become the victim of harassment and threats of violence and you’re on your own.
McKevitt said no one from the Tech administration even bothered to contact him. “Louisiana Tech’s failure to question who made these claims against me, and why they would make them, also represents an abandonment of our institution’s values. University leaders accepted the deliberate misrepresentation of my words without doing the sort of independent critical thinking we demand of first-year college students. Administrators failed a basic information literacy test. They got duped.”
Want another illustration of how bold and progressive Guice is?
“This was not the first time Louisiana Tech’s leaders failed to defend academic freedom and free speech,” McKevitt says. “Last December, they fired my colleague when a student’s parent complained that he was teaching about, among other things, racism (Michael Savage was subsequently reinstated when administrators realized how their action made them look like the ass clowns they were). The university quickly reversed course and reinstated him when students protested. Administrators promised to appoint a committee to review the university’s academic freedom standards, but that never materialized.
“Last year, when student journalists asked too many questions about the institution’s sexual assault reporting practices, administrators shuttered the campus newspaper. Two years ago, a resident assistant on campus threatened to shoot me and my students when we hosted a campus forum on gun-rights issues. Administrators dismissed it as a ‘boys will be boys’ incident.”
So, there you have it. Threatening to shoot a professor comes down to a “boys will be boys” shrug of the shoulders – despite the alarming number of on-campus mass shootings at elementary, middle and high schools, and colleges and universities. Just “boys will be boys.” Have we learned nothing from all the slaughter?
As for shutting The Tech Talk for addressing a serious issue? Well, if Guice had been around back when Reggie and I were churning out our columns about Vietnam and civil rights, we’d have been shut down in about a week.
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