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Grover Furr Ignores Facts, Again
In the comments section below my and Azhar Majeedās Inside Higher Ed , the infamous makes some outrageous accusations against my and Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOSās writings. He claims we do not āsubstantiateā our claims, that our articles are ādishonestā and that our articles ādo not merit publication.ā Here is my response:
Professor Furr,
In claiming that my and Azhar Majeedās article is ādishonestā and that we do not āsubstantiateā our claims, you make multiple unsubstantiated, dishonest, and willfully ignorant statements of your own. Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS documents all of its cases and provides access to that information through links to primary documents and articles; in fact, we do so more thoroughly than any group with which I am familiar. If you had bothered to follow the links provided in the article (here, again, are the links to the William Paterson University materials, the Suffolk County Community College materials and the Washington State University materials) the falseness of your claims should have been obvious.
Most outrageously, you claim, āĀé¶¹“«Ć½IOS has a shameful history of falsely claiming suppression of free speech. A long Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS article in the CHE of Aug. 1 ā03 about āSpeech Codesā similarly failed to give a single example of a āspeech code.āā This is either a gross oversight on your part or a lie. In that article, Harvey Silverglate and I reference over half a dozen kinds of speech codes and directly quote a speech code from Shippensburg University (which was enjoined by a federal court in Pennsylvania) and the code from Citrus College (which the college abandoned just weeks after Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS Legal Network attorney Carol Sobel filed suit).
Perhaps your unstated argument is that you do not agree that the policies we cite are āspeech codes,ā because they are not labeled āSPEECH CODESā in the university policies. We even addressed that anemic argument in the article. We define a speech code in the most straightforward way imaginable: āas any campus regulation that punishes, forbids, heavily regulates, or restricts a substantial amount of protected speech.ā We went on to write:
No one denies that a college can and should ban true harassmentābut a code that calls itself a āracial-harassment codeā does not thereby magically inoculate itself against free-speech and academic-freedom obligations.
Courts have overturned speech code after speech code, whether they are called āharassmentā policies (see for example Doe v. University of Michigan, 721 F. Supp. 852 (E.D. Mich. 1989)), āfighting wordsā policies (see for example The UWM Post, Inc. v. Board of Regents of University of Wisconsin System, 774 F. Supp. 1163 (E. D. Wis. 1991)) or āfree speech areasā (see Roberts v. Haragan, 346 F. Supp. 2d 853 (N.D. Tex. 2004)) when they intrude on clearly protected speech.
The Citrus College āfree speech areaā policy, which we cite in the article, required that students "[G]et permission in advance, alert campus security of the intended message, and provide any printed materials that they wished to distribute, in addition to a host of other restrictions."
Further, this free speech area was open only from ā8 a.m. through 6 p.m, Monday through Friday.ā
If that was not a speech code, nothing would be a speech code.
In that article, Harvey and I also referenced an on-line database of speech codes Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS was assembling at the time. That database has existed for years now and catalogues hundreds of speech codes across the country.
You could have easily found it if you bothered to lookāand you would have looked for it if you had read our article carefully or honestly.
In that database, we directly pull university policies and often link to them in their entirety.
Finally, you insult the Chronicle of Higher Education by claiming that we had no evidence to back up our article.
The Chronicle carefully and thoroughly scrutinized every claim we made and they were satisfied with everything in that article.
You can ask our editor, Sarah Hardesty-Bray, for proof of that if you like.
Further, you baselessly assert, āCalling someone ācuntā in an email sent to that person is certainly āharassment.ā Does Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS consider this email appropriate?ā If you had bothered to follow the link we provided (again, which was in the text of the article!) you would know that your claim that this is ācertainlyā harassment is refuted by numerous sources including the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education. You also might have noticed that Suffolk County Community College itself eventually concluded the studentās one-time e-mail with a bad word accidentally sent to a professor did not constitute harassment.
As for whether or not we see we see that word as āappropriate,ā you entirely miss the point. Free speech is (thank goodness) not limited just to what Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS, Grover Furr, or I deem āappropriate.ā
The Supreme Court recognized years ago in Papish v. Board of Curators of University of Missouri, 410 U.S. 667 (1973) that speech, āno matter how offensive to good taste -- on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of āconventions of decency.āā
You also seem to place great importance on whether or not William Paterson University used the word āguiltyā in finding Jihad Daniel guilty of ādiscriminationā for his one time e-mail in response to unsolicited e-mail from a professor in which he called homosexuality a āperversion.ā I have been to many a conference of student administrators where they are advised to stop using the word āguiltyā when they find someone guilty of violating campus policy; for a variety of reasons, they now sometimes use the word āresponsibleā or simply say that someone had āviolatedā their policy. If you had bothered to read the universityās own finding or the rejection of Danielās appeal by the WPU president or the letter from the New Jersey Attorney General you would have seen constant references to Daniel being āin violationā of state and campus policy; these documents also talk about appeals, letters of reprimands, and the disciplinary committee. Jihad Daniel was found guilty of violating state and university policyāitās clear, undeniable, and the fact they donāt like using the word āguiltyā is a laughably irrelevant point. You also question if Daniel was punishedāa letter of reprimand was placed in his file and he was found to have violated state law. If you donāt believe that being formally labeled a āharasserā or ādiscriminatorā under state law is punishment, I challenge would you to try to get a job at a college these days with such labels in your permanent file.
With regard to Washington State University, you also make some inchoate point that ā[e]ven Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOSā cannot claim that campus securityās refusal to defend the play from the mob was āthe policy of the university.ā If you had bothered to read any of the documents in the link on WSU, you would have seen that the administration facilitated and encouraged the protests and afterwards took no action against campus security and defended the rights of the protestors even though they had made threats of physical violence at the event. From reading your articles, I donāt think that you would argue that police abuses (say, police brutality) can be forgiven if the state can show the abuse was not āofficial policy.ā Police and campus security abuses are bad enough; standing by those abuses is unforgivable, and facilitating bands of censors shouting physical threats is criminal.Stalin, the mass-murdering overachiever of the 20th century is somehow underappreciated and that the back in 1981 because he was too liberal, as well as numerous other claims many would consider outrageous, offensive, and absurd. You, like Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS, should be arguing for a conception of free speech and academic freedom that is as strong as possible, as you benefit from a strong conception of academic freedom and free speech every day.
To be clear, everyone at Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS believes in your right to speak your mind.
I noticed that some of your more controversial opinions have gotten the notice of the media, including .
The author of that piece has just as much right to criticize you as you have to criticize him.
However, if you find that you are being officially punished for your opinions, donāt hesitate to contact Āé¶¹“«Ć½IOS.
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