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Author
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Topic: This should please jwhop........
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Motherkonfessor
unregistered
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posted May 25, 2004 04:51 PM
 
Hard lessons from poetry class: Speech is free unless it's critical
By BILL HILL
Last update: 15 May 2004
Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics. The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived. In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel. A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy. The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job. Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal. After firing Nevins and terminating the teaching and reading of poetry in the school, the principal and the military liaison read a poem of their own as they raised the flag outside the school. When the principal had the flag at full staff, he applauded the action he'd taken in concert with the military liaison. Then to all students and faculty who did not share his political opinions, the principal shouted: "Shut your faces." What a wonderful lesson he gave those 3,000 students at the largest public high school in New Mexico. In his mind, only certain opinions are to be allowed. But more was to come. Posters done by art students were ordered torn down, even though none was termed obscene. Some were satirical, implicating a national policy that had led us into war. Art teachers who refused to rip down the posters on display in their classrooms were not given contracts to return to the school in this current school year. The message is plain. Critical thinking, questioning of public policies and freedom of speech are not to be allowed to anyone who does not share the thinking of the school principal. The teachers union has been joined in a legal action against the school by the National Writers Union, headquartered in New York City. NWU's at-large representative Samantha Clark lives and works in Albuquerque.
The American Civil Liberties Union has become the legal arm of the lawsuit pending in federal court.
Meanwhile, Nevins applied for a teaching post in another school and was offered the job but he can't go to work until Rio Rancho's principal sends the new school Nevins' credentials. The principal has refused to do so, and that adds yet another issue to the lawsuit, which is awaiting a trial date. While students are denied poetry readings, poetry clubs and classes in poetry, Nevins works elsewhere and writes his own poetry. Writers and editors who have spent years translating essays, films, poems, scientific articles and books by Iranian, North Korean and Sudanese authors have been warned not to do so by the U.S. Treasury Department under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Publishers and film producers are not allowed to edit works authored by writers in those nations. The Bush administration contends doing so has the effect of trading with the enemy, despite a 1988 law that exempts published materials from sanction under trade rules. Robert Bovenschulte, president of the American Chemical Society, is challenging the rule interpretation by violating it to edit into English several scientific papers from Iran. Are book burnings next? Hill is a retired News-Journal reporter.
Nice to see freedom is selective.......
MK IP: Logged |
lioneye68
unregistered
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posted May 25, 2004 05:14 PM
Why can't anyone seem to shut that stupid Micheal Moore up, then?PS I don't think this is a NEW phenomenon in your country. In fact, the climate has been much less tolerant of criticism in the past than it is today. The 50's comes to mind, for example. That principal is simply the kind of person who has zero tolerance for opinions that oppose his, and since he's in a position of power, he uses it to shut people up. I'm sure there are several school principals around your country that DON'T do that. Wow. One school, one incident, one despotic principal, and it's being cited as the "NEW NORM". Bull $#it. It's just that nobody writes news stories about the millions of students writing poems and essays which are NOT being suppressed. Your country's media loves whipping you guys into a frenzie. sorry...I know you were waiting for a response from jwhop. *ducks out* IP: Logged |
Randall
Webmaster Posts: 4782
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted May 25, 2004 05:24 PM
Unless something has changed the past few years that I'm unaware of, high school students have no free speech rights (as ruled on by the Supreme Court). High school officials can restrict any speech that impedes the running of the school, especially as it relates to the school paper and other writings. College is a different matter, however. High school students also have no 4th Amendment rights (nor should they). While the Supreme Court ruling was related to school newspapers and locker searches, I still think the ACLU will lose this one. ------------------
"Never mentally imagine for another that which you would not want to experience for yourself, since the mental image you send out inevitably comes back to you." Rebecca Clark IP: Logged |
Randall
Webmaster Posts: 4782
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted May 25, 2004 05:26 PM
By the way, no teacher is guaranteed a job (unless tenured). They work a one-year contract. I have found that in most (if not all) cases of a teacher being "fired," all it really means is that they were not offered a new contract the following year.  ------------------
"Never mentally imagine for another that which you would not want to experience for yourself, since the mental image you send out inevitably comes back to you." Rebecca Clark IP: Logged |
jwhop
Knowflake Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted May 25, 2004 06:02 PM
MKYou didn't seem to have any trouble finding that article about suppression of liberal speech but how could you have missed all the instances where conservative speech is censored on University campuses? There is no comparison to be made. Liberal teachers and university administrators are on a crusade to make sure no conservative can voice any opposition to liberalism. Just in the interests of being even handed MK because you weren't. Winter 2003-04 - College Censorship
XXV, No. 1 - Page 29 Turning off political speech Armed with speech codes, universities target expression they deem offensive, and conservatives say they suffer most © 2003 Student Press Law Center When students at Roger Williams University published The Hawk’s Right Eye, a conservative journal written by members of the campus College Republicans, they hoped their articles would bring attention to conservative political issues.
They did not realize, however, that the articles would lead to a decision by administrators of the private university in Rhode Island to create a system of prior review for all student publications.
“We have to go through our adviser, and if our adviser deems anything objectionable, then it goes to the publications board,” said Jason Mattera, president of the College Republicans and editor of The Hawk’s Right Eye. “I think it goes down to a root of intolerance of dissenting or discordant views.”
Robert Avery, general counsel and vice president of human resources at RWU, said the university’s goal is to ensure that there are a diverse number of voices heard on campus.
“[The university] is looking to allow the maximum amount of speech without invoking legal problems,” Avery said.
Because the university is private, the First Amendment does not prohibit RWU officials from censoring students.
Though it is rare when a university imposes prior review of a student publication because of controversial speech, the controversy at RWU was not the only instance this fall of administrators halting student political speech.
There are many types of political speech, but the types of speech that are most likely to be censored come from students who express strong, but not necessarily partisan, viewpoints on a polarizing issue, and express those viewpoints in ways that students or administrators find particularly offensive.
While administrators at these colleges say they support free speech and open debate, many of these same administrators point to speech codes and anti-discrimination policies designed to ensure civil debate as justification for censoring student speech.
And though most observers of college censorship contend that students are more likely to be censored for engaging in conservative, rather than liberal speech, these observers also agree that the motive for censoring is often apolitical.
“The students who are more likely to be censored are conservative or religious, but it would be a bad assumption to think that all censors are liberal,” said Greg Lukianoff, director of legal and public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization that lobbies for student speech rights on college campuses.
Bryan Auchterlonie, executive director of the Collegiate Network, a nonprofit organization that supports conservative college publications, agreed.
“It’s uncomfortable speech, typically administrators take steps to protect the [campus] environment,” he said. “It’s an effort to keep out what college administrators call hostile environments.”
Courts, however, have repeatedly held that speech cannot be restricted by public school officials simply because it offends others or makes them uncomfortable.
Despite that legal prohibition, administrators have censored political speech, specifically citing goals to prevent offensive speech.
Speech that might ‘provoke’
Administrators often cite their school’s own campus speech code when censoring political speech. Speech codes vary among universities in the amount of restrictions they place on speech, but they tend to prohibit anything from uncomfortable to harassing to inflammatory speech.
Lukianoff said speech codes restrict speech at many colleges throughout the country.
“In the past year alone, we have seen dozens of examples of blatant violations of the free speech rights of students,” he said.
Jon Gould, a professor at George Mason University who is working on a book about hate speech regulation, said speech codes developed in the late 1980s as a response to rising intolerance on college campuses. In many instances, he said, the language of these codes was symbolic, and rarely used to impose punishment on students.
“Many administrators adopted policy to say, ‘We have this problem taken care of,’” Gould said. “They are enforced so rarely, they are almost entirely symbolic.”
Estimates of the number of restrictive speech codes on college campuses vary widely and range from less than 10 percent to more than 65 percent of campuses.
Students and free speech advocates are fighting to remove speech restrictions at universities that used speech codes to censor political speech.
In April, FIRE supported two students who filed a lawsuit against Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, claiming that the university violated their First Amendment rights by imposing speech zones and restrictions on speech that might “provoke.” One of the plaintiffs, Walter Bair, sued because he was forced to take down anti-Osama Bin Laden posters when administrators decided that the posters might offend other students.
In September, a federal district court judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing Shippensburg from enforcing parts of its conduct code on the grounds that the code was likely unconstitutional. (See COURT, this page.)
In November, a student at Southwest Missouri State University, Ryan Cooper, filed a lawsuit against the university for what he claims are unconstitutional restrictions on his right to freely speak about conservative issues.
The suit, filed with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund, claims the First Amendment violations include the imposition of speech zones and restrictions on how and where students can distribute written materials. Cooper, who edits a conservative campus publication, The Bear’s Paw, said he filed suit because of the restrictions placed on his ability to distribute his publication. (See UNFIT, page 24.)
While some students are challenging speech codes in general, other students are finding that university anti-discrimination policies within these codes conflict with their right to free speech.
The politics of pastries
Across the country, College Republicans and other conservative student activists have held “affirmative action bake sales” — not to raise money but to express their opposition to affirmative action.
Organizers of these bake sales sell cookies or pastries at prices that vary depending on the customer’s race and gender. At the University of California at Irvine, for example, bake sale organizers sold cookies that ranged from $1 for white males to 10 cents for American Indian women.
Though these bake sales have been staged on colleges throughout the country without a problem, administrators at a handful of universities, in response to student protests, have shut them down.
UC–Irvine was one such university where administrators cited anti-discrimination policies in halting the bake sales while students argued that they were protected under the First Amendment right to symbolic speech.
“The bake sale was pure political satire and [should have] enjoyed the fullest protections under the First Amendment,” said Bryan Zuetel, president of the UC-Irvine College Republicans.
The sale was stopped after students from a Latino student group, MEChA, notified Dean of Students Sally Peterson about the bake sale. Peterson then told the students that the different prices violated UC-Irvine’s anti-discrimination policies, Zuetel said.
The students involved in the sale, however, said it was not intended to make money but rather to make a political point by charging different prices to different ethnic and gender groups. Zuetel said that because the bake sale was an attempt to make a political point rather than a profit, it did not violate anti-discrimination policies but amounted to protected political speech.
John K. Wilson, founder of the Web site collegefreedom.org, a liberal site that promotes academic and student freedom, said he doubted that the administrators censored the affirmative action bake sales for political reasons.
“In a lot of cases, [the bake sales are censored because of the belief they violate] harassment codes … I don’t think they constitute harassment, I just think they’re a stupid form of political protest,” he said.
Wilson argued that while administrators who shut down affirmative action bake sales made a legally defensible decision, they harmed the campus environment in doing so.
“Not only would punishing this silly bake sale violate freedom of speech,” he said that shutting down the bake sales discredited students who disagreed with the protests “even though [they were] trying to raise legitimate issues.”
A question of bias?
“I think it’s hard to know [how often political speech censorship occurs] because no one has ever done a study of it,” Wilson said.
Wilson contends that nobody knows the rates of censorship of conservative or liberal political speech, but because more support groups exist for conservative college students, when conservatives are censored — such as in the affirmative action bake sales — they generate more media coverage.
“There are a lot of conservative interest groups and they’re good at getting the message out,” Wilson said.
Gould said his research suggested that the censorship of political speech was directed equally across the board but that conservatives tend to react more strongly when they are censored.
“I don’t see a political bias, I see a political jihad by opponents of harassment speech,” Gould said.
Speech vs. peace: Murky motives
Two months after the controversy at Roger Williams University and The Hawk’s Right Eye, editors resumed publishing the monthly opinion journal, after a one-month hiatus. In the most recent issue, one student, Joe Wilcox, argued that administrators had made a deliberate effort to suppress conservative political voices on campus.
“The student senate and [university] President [Roy J.] Nirschel are trying to cut funding to the Roger Williams University College Republicans Club because they believe that people should be able to express themselves freely… unless they belong to the College Republicans,” he wrote. “When the administration fails to provide competing views and instead tries to silence legitimate alternatives, they are just plain telling you that is either their way or the highway.”
But RWU administrators say they instituted prior review not to silence dissenting opinion but to maintain “community standards.”
In an open letter to the RWU community, President Nirschel wrote that he found the newsletter to be “pornographic in nature, mean-spirited and stereotypes gay individuals as child molesters, criminals or deviants.”
The issue included a front-page article accusing “militant homosexuals” of attacking free speech by pushing for hate crime legislation, and another article claiming a nationally known gay and lesbian rights group encourages children to engage in homosexual sex. The Hawk’s Right Eye also contained an article that detailed the rape of a young male by an older male.
Even June Speakman, RWU political science professor and adviser to the College Republicans, said she found the tone of The Hawk’s Right Eye offensive and that she favored the prior review system.
“This is a community and we need to treat each other with respect,” said Speakman, who is a self-described liberal Democrat. “I think the this discourse needs to be within the boundaries of civility and decency.”
Speakman added, “Let me emphasize again that it is the manner and tone of [The Hawk’s Right Eye] that is the primary problem, not the ideas or opinions presented,” she said. “I do think that it is appropriate for a university to have some kind of review process for publications that use the university’s name … I’m for prior review as long as the reviewer has no political agenda, is fair, and is given clear, if general, guidance [such as] ‘community standards.’”
Though Speakman and university administrators contend that the need to maintain campus civility can trump certain speech rights, censorship critics argue that, regardless of motive, instituting prior review of a college publication is not acceptable.
In Wilson’s “Report on Academic Freedom,” he writes, “Prior review should be prohibited at every institution, because it makes any college vulnerable to litigation, and it is unconstitutional at public colleges.”
But Speakman’s support for Roger Williams’ decision to institute prior review — an effort to maintain civility and decency — apparently falls in line with the reason administrators often favor speech codes and anti-discrimination policies.
“There is that tendency among administration, ‘Let’s just keep things as civil and polite as we can,’” Wilson said.
“I think that students and administrators lack perspective on this … they either have short historical memory or an inability to compare,” FIRE’s Lukianoff said, referencing 1960s anti-war protests.
Lukianoff said that in many cases, college administrators censored students because they value “peace and quiet” above speech.
“What I can say with great confidence is if when students open their mouths, they’re punished, they’re not going to open their mouths,” Lukianoff said.
http://www.splc.org/report_detail.asp?id=1048&edition=27
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jwhop
Knowflake Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009
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posted May 25, 2004 06:04 PM
The Campus Left: Opposing Free Speech by ForceBy Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Calt Harris
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 28, 2004 The university exists for the free exchange of ideas, right? Then why is it that representatives of one half the argument – the conservative half – need bodyguards and metal detectors when they speak on North American campuses, and their leftist counterparts almost never do? Consider three suggestive parallels of how the Right needs security and the Left is welcomed. Government officials. In September 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Likud (conservative) prime minister of Israel was to speak at Concordia University in Montreal, but he never made it. Nearly a thousand anti-Israel protestors rioted prior to the event,[1] smashing windows and hurling furniture at police, kicking and spitting on people going to the event. “By lunchtime,” notes the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Globe & Mail daily, “the vestibule of Concordia’s main downtown building was littered with paper, upturned chairs, broken furniture and the choking aftereffects of pepper spray.”[2] In contrast, Hanan Ashrawi, a well-known Palestinian politician and activist, never faces such opposition. As she makes the rounds of American universities (such as the University of Colorado, Beloit, and Yeshiva), she speaks without interference, and what protests take place are completely non-violent. At Colorado College, students held small signs and a rebuttal was offered after the speech.[3] At the University of Pennsylvania, protesting students were so respectful, Tarek Jallad, president of the Penn Arab Student Society which sponsored her visit, commented: “I was very happy with the way the crowd showed her a lot of respect.”[4] 1960s activists. David Horowitz, a founder of the New Left movement in the 1960s and now a high-profile conservative, speaks often at campuses and often faces problems. Protestors at the University of Chicago shouted at him and disrupted his talk before he uttered a word.[5] At the University of Michigan, “the university administration assigned 12 armed guards and a German Shepherd to protect the safety” of those who came to hear him speak. [6] By comparison, Angela Davis, a former Black Panther and still today a far-leftist, enjoys the highest of esteem when visiting campuses. As she tours American colleges, she meets no protests, requires no excessive security, and is dutifully acclaimed by campus newspapers for her “wise presence.”[7] Middle East specialists. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a Harvard University Ph.D., author of twelve books, and a recent Bush appointee to U.S. Institute for Peace, needs security precautions at more than half his campus appearances. At York University in Toronto, for example, security provisions included “a 24-hour lockdown on the building beforehand, metal detectors for the audience, identification checks.”[8] Multiple bodyguards escorted Pipes through a back entrance and kept him in a holding room until just before his talk. More than a hundred police, including ten mounted on horses, stood by to ensure the speaker’s safety and the event not being disrupted.[9] In contrast, John Esposito, head of Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, a Temple University Ph.D., the author of more than twenty books,[10] and key advisor to the Clinton State Department,[11] enjoys honor and praise at the campuses. He recently served as keynote speaker for the inauguration of Stanford University’s new Islamic Studies program,[12] for example, with no hint of special security. A clear pattern emerges. Speakers on the left are welcomed, conservatives require strict security measures. This contravenes a post-9/11 statement by the American Association of University Professors that “specific attention should be given to the freedom to invite and hear controversial speakers.”[13] Some “controversial” positions – vilifying the United States and its president – are just fine on the campus, whereas those who support the president, the war on terror, Israel, the free market, or personal freedom must summon (and sometimes pay for) a small army. The incipient threat of violence on the university makes it unique in North American life. Minority views can be espoused without intimidation in the media, in political forums and even in corporations. Far from being the institution where ideas are freely exchanged, intolerance that would never be permitted elsewhere has become the norm on campuses. The message is clear; if visiting conservatives require police protection to speak for an hour or two, local conservatives and others who support causes unpopular on the campus must tread even more carefully. And that message is indeed received. One visiting conservative reports hearing from a Harvard student “that her open identification could cost her, damaging her grades and her academic future. That her professors, who control her final grades, were likely to view such activism unkindly, and that the risk was too great.”[14] This environment – so one-sided that students censor themselves for fear of harassment or retribution – is exactly what parents, donors, and taxpayers do not expect to receive for their education dollars. They need to do something about the crisis that afflicts North American universities.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11945
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raine6
unregistered
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posted May 25, 2004 10:08 PM
LioneyeI won't even try to fill in the quantum gap between the topic of censorship and Michael Moore.  Michael Moore is speaking out against this very real return to the McCarthyism of the 50s. You don't live here, so how can you dismiss what we are telling you so flippantly? You haven't even seen the movie you are all agitated about--clearly you must listen to Rush Limbaugh up there... You asked for examples. That is a fair question, although the feeling persists that this is a waste of time, as they will be distorted and dismissed in the usual fashion. So here are just a couple from my own personal experience. Right here in Iowa, at Drake Univerity in Des Moines in February, a handful of truly beautiful and loving peace activists were issued FEDERAL SUBPOENAS, having been morphed into 'terrorists' by the new definition: "Anyone who is not waving the new Amerikan flag and goose-stepping to the beat of the wardrums." Patriotism has nothing to do with that act, but everything to do with this: quote:
A true patriot is one who supports his country always, and his government when it is right - Mark Twain
The police were warmly invited to attend the event, inasmuch as they have always had a casual relationship with each other, but the new breed of officers of the law chose to sneak in as spies, giving false names, as though a Baroque music major and another Mother Teresa-type person were hiding explosives in their Linda Goodman books somewhere. Wouldn't you think it would be a better investment of the billions we are spending on "fighting terrorism" to "fight terrorism" instead of harassing innocent, peace-loving people? They are the true patriots, who are watching what has been going on, and are daring to speak out while it is yet possible. People who spoke out against Hitler were quietly put away, too, by those who happily cheered as they gathered 'round their charismatic leader. I do not have a TV, and as I watched Bush recently, from such a vantage point of a fresh look, the imprint of the Nazi masses surrounding Hitler was stamped all over the scene. Has anyone ever read about wolves in sheep's clothing? The media were very scant in their coverage of this freedom-shrouding event, but protestors made them back off. Is this okay with you? I live here, so don't bother with lies and distortions of the truth that one can always find. It was outright usurpation of authority that was not given in our Constitution--and wasn't it the conservatives who were always crying about getting the government off our backs anyway? A gag order was placed over the entire university, and they were also issued a subpoena to turn over the student records. I can assure you this is not "the American way" Another example is how in St. Paul another handful of young men were arrested and detained overnight for nothing more than wearing black. As far as I know, that is not against the law, but who needs law now, when we have the Patriot Act to quietly--what was that old Communist word--where is Jwhop when you need him?--anyway, where they just disappear? People don't realize how close Communism is to this new breed of Fascism. Both are extreme, and Bush espouses the same ideals of Leo Strauss as Hitler, and he is out to finish the job. That ought to cause us great alarm, especially in light of how easily the stiff-armed followers "can live with" the most horrible atrocities imaginable. Denial does nothing but accrue more culpability for those who engage in it, and the day will come when they won't so easily be able to "live with" what they have created. Multiply these two personal examples from one person across the land, and you will see just how negatively the Patriot Act squelches our 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th amendments, and how freedom is swiftly becoming a thing of the past. And where is your attitude coming from anyway? How have those who propose peaceful solutions hurt you in any way? Your input is welcome, but I shall cease to read it if it continues to erode humanity. You are sounding like one of the smug Americans that give the rest of us a bad name around the world. And don't feel so smug, because Bush will not stop at our borders. He wants world conquest and it will take the united forces of the rest of the world, as in Washington's vision, to stop him. It is inconceivable that they would attack America for any other reason. And we are giving him plenty of reason. No doubt others in "inferior" countries can see how comfortably we "can live with" the horrors we are creating everywhere we go these days, it seems. One "oops" here and another there and they add up to a mighty angry and determined resistance to imperialism, ridiculous coverups and distractions aside.  When will we ever learn? IP: Logged | |
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