How to Stomp All Over Conservative Academic Freedom


 
Over time, her vision had become her dream. The elderly woman wanted to open an outdoor craft show with participating artisans from around the country. A friend of the family owned some land in a little farming community and offered to make a small corner available for a short time.

But there was a problem. Her husband had been seriously ill for a long time, and she was devoted to his care. Her time was undependable.

A younger friend was available to help. They partnered up and the idea began to grow. Folks from around the country signed up to participate.

Then the unexpected hit and hit hard. A few local shops were in the business of buying and selling craft items and they did not take kindly to a new competitor.

The town had a little community weekly newspaper. A part-time reporter published a snide little piece on the front page. He implied a relationship between the elderly woman and the landowner going way beyond friendship. The timing was unfortunate. The husband finally succumbed and the article appeared as she sat at his deathbed.

She and I talked. “Now everyone thinks I’m a whore.”

I was especially interested in the local paper. The part-time reporter told me that it was okay to publish the piece implying a sexual relationship. After all, the woman was a public figure.

Later, a lawyer friend laughed. You can’t make a person a public figure simply by calling her a public figure.

Recent public attacks on a graduate student by a tenured professor at Marquette University in Wisconsin reminded me of the attack on my elderly friend.

The issue of privacy has evolved with social media. It is easier to identify someone if you crowd source a video. But individuals could always become public figures by doing something noteworthy. Something outrageous or something especially heroic might qualify. Racists trying to order black people out of community pools can be outed. A road rage incident can produce a public figure. The rescuers of little kids in Thailand qualify. So might some assigned captor making fun of the weeping of migrant kids.

Oliver Sipple became a public figure in September 1975. He was in a crowd watching President Gerald Ford come out of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco when he heard a loud explosive pop. A woman standing nearby had fired a shot at the President of the United States.

Second shots are frequently more accurate, since a shooter can quickly make visual adjustments and compensate. And she was about to fire that second shot.

Sipple ran toward her. He hit her hand just as she pulled the trigger. The difference of a micro-second may have saved a life.

Sipple was a decorated United States Marine, a combat hero. He had been seriously wounded in Vietnam. He finished his military career in a hospital bed. He was every reporter’s dream, a military hero who had saved a President.

And he was gay. Life for gay people in those days was even more harsh than today.

Sipple was known within local gay gatherings, but nobody in his family knew. He begged reporters to keep his private life private. But they published those details anyway. He was instantly estranged from his family. His mother never spoke to him again. He was not allowed to attend her funeral.

He sued a couple of media outlets for invasion of privacy after they revealed his sexual orientation. He lost after those outlets reminded the court that he had made himself into a public figure by saving the life of a President.

Over the next 14 years, he deteriorated, finally drinking himself to death.

Recent public attacks by Fox News on a graduate student reminded me of this national hero.

In 2006, emails from Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) became public. He had solicited sex from teenagers serving as congressional pages. Individual conservative bloggers published the names of the pages who had ratted him out. After all, they were public figures.

In 2007, a kid from Maryland, a 7th grader came to public attention. He and his younger sister had been seriously injured in a car accident. He appeared in ads defending the federal program that had provided medical care, saving their lives.

Conservatives published the child’s address. Nationally known figures linked to the identifying information. One columnist published driving directions to the home of the brother and sister. After all, the child was a public figure.

I thought about the attacks on the kids who had tattled on the Congressman. I think about the young siblings who promoted funding for health care as I read and hear conservatives defending the Wisconsin professor in his attack on a student.

I am excising the names of the professor and the student he attacked.

The professor has a blog site. He has been publishing conservative views for 20 years.

In 2011, the professor wrote about a campus production of a play with a feminist perspective on sexuality. He didn’t much like it.

The professor contacted a student listed in the production. Then he contacted her again, and again. She asked him to stop. She lived with her parents and her parents became concerned. Finally, she complained about it to the college.

When a college administrator asked him about it, the professor insisted that his calls were part of freedom of the press. After all, he had his own blog. He demanded the administrator relay a promise. If the student ever, ever complained about him again, he would regard her complaints as harassment. And he would attack her on his blog. The administrator quotes the professor:

If I hear any more about this from anybody, I’m going to judge that she is indeed harassing me, and raise hell about it.

When another administrator met with him about the continuous contacts, he followed through. He didn’t actually raise the hell with which he had threatened the student. He just published her name and the fact that she had officially complained about harmless journalistic requests for comment. “…just what was the deal?” he wrote.

The college took no punitive action. After all, the professor was exercising his own freedom of speech. In fact, when a couple of readers of his blog said they would start calling the student themselves, he cautioned against it. He couldn’t stop them, he said:

I guess you are free to do that, since she has created a news story that involves her.

He was referring to the news story she had created on his own blog. He reminded his readers that he purposely had not published her contact information. They might want to call the administrator instead.

His next target was different. She was a graduate student working toward a higher academic degree. Like many students, she was working her way through college. In a common sort of work-study arrangement, she was working part-time as a student-instructor in a Philosophy class for undergraduates.

She had no connection with the politically active conservative professor. He was from a different department.

One day, she was introducing the work of philosopher John Rawls, and what Rawls contemplates as the “lexical priority” of different types of liberty. A student wanted to discuss his opposition to gay marriage. She said it should not be part of that class. The class was about what issues would apply to the Rawls construct, not about whether any side of any issue was correct.

From there, accounts diverge.

The student was a local leader in a national group that likes to expose liberal bias through aggressive confrontation with teachers. So he confronted her after class and secretly recorded the confrontation.

He said the recording proved that the student instructor had violated his freedom of speech. She clearly was pro-gay marriage and had said the student was wrong. On the tape, she could be heard saying exactly that. One problem was that the recording was not made during class.

The undergraduate activist complained to the school, then took his complaint to the politically active blogging professor. The professor wrote an article sand-blasting the graduate student. He named her, and told his readers how to reach her. It seems she had her own little blog site on which she had once posted her own contact information. The professor linked to that specific post.

The reaction was overwhelming. The graduate student was inundated with messages. The university reviewed some of those messages and, for a time, posted a guard outside her door. She eventually abandoned her academic efforts, and fled the school. She was later able to take up her studies elsewhere. Presumably she is now at an institution where she will be safe.

The professor was asked to acknowledge that he was wrong to promote attacks on the student, and to privately apologize. He refused and was suspended.

The entire case became a cause célèbre for conservatives.

Here is Fox News:

Conservative speech is under assault. And one of the starkest examples is at Marquette University. It’s a private Catholic school in Milwaukee.

Here is what Fox says happened to the professor.

[He] was suspended, and has been since 2014, when he chastised a graduate instructor…

Fox tells us why the professor … chastised … the student:

Why? She apparently told a student that she would not tolerate dissent on the topic of same sex marriage during her class on ethics.

One of the best conservative writers around happens to be from Wisconsin. We link to James Wigderson often. Readers should follow those links.

On this case, James quotes a Wisconsin activist. I removed specific names:

Since the beginning, the only thing [the professor] wanted to do was to teach students without having to compromise his principles.

Here is the professor on Fox News:

Of course, this is Stalinist stuff.

But what about the rights of the student?

Anybody whose misconduct is revealed by a journalist might get some …uh… unkind responses.

Unkind responses.

James wrote to us about my criticisms of his coverage of the controversy. Let’s omit the names again:

Actually, [the professor] didn’t publish the “graduate student’s” contact information. [“Graduate students” is in scare quotes]. He linked to an instructor’s publicly available blog. Elsewhere on the blog she posted her contact information publicly. [The professor] did not encourage anyone to contact [the student].

As for the “graduate student,” [Again, the scare quotes] she was the paid instructor for a class in the philosophy department. She told a student at a Catholic University that he could not bring up the Catholic position on same-sex marriage because that would be homophobic and bigoted. If that’s not worthy of discussion on a blog about political correctness (among other subjects), what is?

The professor took the suspension to court. He lost.

He appealed. He lost again.

He appealed again. This time to the state Supreme Court of Wisconsin. This time he won.

The win was not about freedom of speech for conservatives.
It was not about freedom of the press, in spite of the professor’s blog site.
It was not about the professor’s desire – what did that go? – to teach students without having to compromise his principles.

The court found that Marquette University had violated the professor’s … contract.
Turns out he had the contractual right to publicly excoriate a student until she left school.

Academic freedom.
Besides, she had her own little blog.
And … you know … she was a public figure.


Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS
to get episodes automatically downloaded.

 

3 thoughts on “How to Stomp All Over Conservative Academic Freedom”

  1. Thank you for digging more into this and providing more context. I find context is a four letter word these days and people seem to avoid it in order to continue believing the narrative they’ve decided upon.

  2. With solely the information provided here, I am inclined to side with the professor on the recent case, though not on the prior one where he apparently claimed that his blog makes him a journalist and that journalism entitles him to harass others.

    “A student wanted to discuss his opposition to gay marriage. She said it should not be part of that class. The class was about what issues would apply to the Rawls construct, not about whether any side of any issue was correct.”

    It would be fair for a student to explain how opposition to gay marriage could work under a Rawlsian worldview, e.g. behind the veil of ignorance. On the other hand, if the student wanted to use the discussion as an excuse to talk about his problems with gay marriage, it would be fair for the instructor to stop him and refocus the discussion. But I don’t know exactly what happened. All I know is that the student later recorded her saying that he is wrong about gay marriage, which looks bad for her (in the same way, I suppose, that telling a student that he’s wrong to oppose interracial marriage is bad) even if it was outside the classroom.

    The details of the later exchange matter too: was her declaration simply an expression of her beliefs or was it an explanation of why she cut him off in the classroom?

    1. Thank you, Ryan. More detail might have helped. Self-limitation for length, I’m afraid.

      According to a faculty investigation: the graduate student, the classroom student, and a classmate witness all agree the student-instructor listed same sex marriage as a qualifying issue. She told the student and the class that everyone would agree the issue should be included.

      Thanks for pointing out the need for clarity.

Comments are closed.