Campus President Rebukes Limbaugh-Supporting Professor
That freedom extends to both Landsburg and Seligman as well as to UR as an institution, and as university president, Seligman had the right to both personally and institutionally condemn Landsburg’s remarks as long as UR takes no official action against the professor for his expression.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that all public universities and the vast majority of private universities are supposed to protect unpopular views on campus, the reality is quite different. According to a study (large PDF) by the Association of American Colleges & Universities, less than 20 percent of faculty members strongly agreed that it was “safe to hold unpopular positions” on their campus. This is borne out by multiple cases from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (where I work), such as that of SUNY Fredonia’s Steven Kershnar, who was denied promotion because of his op-eds in a local newspaper, or Purdue University-Calumet’s Maurice Eisenstein, who was investigated under nine complaints of harassment for his Facebook comments about Islamist violence.
While Seligman had the right to condemn Landsburg, whether doing so was wise is a different issue. This article from UC Berkeley, which points out that its chancellor condemned an affirmative action bake sale on campus last fall but not a recent appearance from Louis Farrakhan, shows us why. Once a university president takes the position that some expression (like Landsburg’s) is beyond the pale, that president risks looking like a political hack when he or she fails to condemn equally controversial statements from the other side of the political spectrum.
Most worrisome, however, is the fact that UR allowed its students to disrupt Landsburg’s class without any consequences, despite the fact that campus security was on the scene. What happened in Landsburg’s class is a textbook example of “mob censorship,” where a group of people silence or drown out a speaker with whose views they disagree. A classroom is perhaps the least appropriate place for something like this to happen, and the fact that UR did not see fit to clear the heckling students out of the class is disturbing. If UR truly values “freedom of expression of ideas and action,” it should make clear that those who engage in mob censorship will be punished and that it will tolerate no further disruptions of campus speakers, be they professors like Landsburg or (the more common target) invited speakers like former Congressman Tom Tancredo, Minutemen leader Jim Gilchrist, or General David Petraeus.
The one heartening fact in the entire thing is that there is still somebody like
Landsburg that has not been assimilated into the Borg yet.
Mike, my thoughts exactly. Nevertheless, he is most likely as rare as a Conservative heading any major university.
Never gonna happen.
“..Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, and her testimony to Congress ..” Wait, did she actually testify before Congress, or was it some publicity stunt meant to look like Congressional testimony?
Maybe we’ve all been assimilated already.
I read that Pelosi anticipated that the GOP would deny Fluke as a witness, so Pelosi had a Plan B. She staged a press conference in front of Democratic committee members to look like testifying in front of Congress. The MSM went along and reported it as such when in fact it was a press conference.
I work in San Francisco (Pelosi’s district), and I see her constituents daily. Conservatives, including me, underestimate Pelosi, but she knows her constituents well. I think she won her district last time with around 65%-70% of the majority. She has to die or retire for her to leave Congress. Sad, but it’s reality.
I’ve said that for years when people ask me how Bozo the Clown can say what she says and stay in office. I tell them she is the spokesman for the luny left for just that reason, she’s entrenched in a district that has no desire to get rid of her. She can always be counted on to do the dirty deeds other Democrats in more contested disctricts can’t.
Pelosi is like Lee…her district just keeps sending her back and she feels like she can do and say any thing she wants to with no repercussions. She appears to answer to no one…SO..as you said..she will need to die or retire in office
I believe that the Fluke testimony was a set up..I don’t know how, why etc..but conservatives fell right into it.. Social issues are important, but not worth losing the election in Nov over…
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!!!!AND..!!..THANK YOU POSTERS ON PJ MEDIA…..compared to the posters and stupid mouthy quips on THE BLAZE , most of you are
” elite intellectuals”..
I presume you are using the dictionary deffinitions of ” elite intellectuals” Progressives have so soiled those words as to make them connote both sloth and vice. They have used them to describe Slick Willy Clinton, and Obama! Progressives complain about anti-intellectuals, when referring to opposition to elitists.
Pelosi is like Lee…her district just keeps sending her back election after election. She appears to believe that she can do and say any thing she wants to with no repercussions, and she does. She answers to no one…SO..as you said..she will need to die or retire in office
I believe that the Fluke testimony was a set up..I don’t know how, why etc..but conservatives fell right into it.. Social issues are important, but not worth losing the election in Nov over…Women of America cannot be so dumb/mininformed, as to believe the BS Pelosi is spouting..
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!!!!AND..!!..THANK YOU POSTERS ON PJ MEDIA…..compared to the posters and stupid mouthy quips on THE BLAZE , most of you are
” elite intellectuals”..
All professors should be engaged in the search for truth and should not turn their classrooms into fight clubs for any point in the political spectrum. I wrote about the rules of engagement here, citing Alexander Hamilton’s views on libel and slander. See http://clarespark.com/2012/03/03/sluts-and-pigs/. Note too the hyperlink to a longer piece on classroom politics as advocated by UCLA in the 1990s.
I favor the first option for leaving congress.
Cool, Mike! You mean resistance ISN’T futile!
Maybe the slogan should be, “Don’t be a Borg, unBorg!”
On, on, unBorg!
An Préachán
Most of the universities in America perhaps with the exception of Hillsdale College have sold their souls for 50 pieces of silver to the US government grant making machine. You can be assured that now we have one stop shopping for student loans, the government keeps the skids greased with cash grants to liberal professors so long as they support the liberal platform on abortion, anti Israel, man made global warming, big government new dealism etc. Also this assures that the Big O has a happy landing in any state in the union to spew his racist divisive propaganda to dumb ass students devoid of critical thinking skills–aka drones.
There you have it. When we tame the government beast by shrinking it by 50% we would do well to do the same to the sacred halls of academia that piss away our money and create manchurian students in our midst ready to “occupy” on demand whenever the master orders them to.
This UR professor needs to stand his ground and we need to withdraw support from this turkey of a president who breaks his own rules on protecting free speech.
Another center of open discourse. Not.
The university president has a personal right to say what he wants, but by speaking as the president and boss of the university, he implicitly threatened those who depend on his good favor for their employment and careers. He either did that with the purpose to suppress ideas or he’s to stupid to be in a leadership position.
If one desires freedom of expression and more importantly, freedom of thought, the university campus is not the place to look for it. That so many on both sides of the aisle seek to keep the myth alive is disturbing.
Several generations of Americans have been has subverted by the academy since the 1960s.
It’s time to do what Rome would do: let returning soldiers teach.
There is a down side to your suggestion. Would John Kerry be one of the teachers you would select? We need more evolution than revolution.
And this is why parents pay literally thousands of dollars for kids to go to college?
You know, I feel like telling my kids, “After you graduate from high school, I want you to pick up a trade, any trade. Go to either a trade school or learn on the job as an apprentice with a master tradesman. Then, when you’re ready, I’ll buy you a truck and set you up in a shop.” ALL of what I just said would STILL be cheaper than paying for four full years at a private university. So unless my kid has the talent to be a doctor or wants to go into some field of chemistry or biology or medicine, my way would not only give a kid A JOB, but he would have a trade as well. And if you have a trade, like being a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter, you stand a better chance of surviving an economic downturn than an expendable “executive,” which are cranked out by our universities today like sausages.
Get a trade and have a job, and leave the “white collar” jobs, you know, the ones that were fired and layed off in the millions in 2008, to the other guy. I don’t think there is much of a demand for kids majoring in dead lesbian poets from the 19th century, or even history majors these days (although I love history). And if you want to go into business, then GO INTO BUSINESS and learn that business. All businesses want today are skills, skills that they can use NOW and not have to be train you for. And if you don’t have those skills, believe me there are literally millions of people out there who have them and can replace you.
And for those of you who say, “Well, what about law schools. We MUST have law schools.” Well, I say that Clarence Darrow never went to law school, and he didn’t turn out too bad.
“kids majoring in dead lesbian poets from the 19th century”
I think that was Sandra Fluke’s major at Cornell. She soon realized she was unemployable, and did what all ivy-league graduates with useless degrees do: she went into being a activist parasite, feeding on our government. In this chapter, she has signed up to become a parasite lawyer bent on advocating for free shit of behalf of her chosen victim constituency (wimmin’), and showing up on any DC hearing that she thinks can garner her publicity. Her endgame is working for some advocacy law firm that sues both government and business when they don’t come to her call and take dictation according to her ideological position (with a nice stipend in there for herself, of course). She’s a whore all right, but of a much more pernicious variety than Limbaugh had in mind. Worse, DC is filled to the suburbs with such trash.
Excellent summation and conclusion. I wouldn’t refer to Fluke as slut, as much as I would simply distinguish her identity by her most appropriate family name.
Parasite.
History was, in fact, a valuable degree at one time. Before the onslaught of self-aggrandizing MBAs, a significant percentage of business General Managers and CEOs were History majors. Why? They had learned to spot the dots, connect them and project what the outcome might be. Context, analytical skill and smarts are always a powerful combo. A questioning mind is a plus, too.
Today, we’re reaping the rewards of several generations of “specialists” who operate in and care only about their silo, with little if any understanding of how what they do affects or is affected by the world outside their safe, specialized enclave. Edutopia is the perfect example of this principle in action.
You nailed it: “All businesses want today are skills, skills that they can use NOW and not have to train you for.” An emerging trend is the revival of the apprenticeship model for both education and skill-career development. Why? Because it actually works.
If you work in government, you’ve changed, “first we kill all the lawyers” to “first we kill all the MBAs.” Most of the lawyers only think they’re experts about the law, though some don’t know the difference between law and policy, but the MBAs not only think they know everything about everything, they think everybody who isn’t an MBA is an idiot.
Here I thought I was alone in my low opinion of MBA’s.
I have a low opinion of biz schools generally and especially of biz school created “managers” who don’t know how to actually do anything but who’ve been taught by lefty professors who’ve never done anything how to “manage” things they don’t know how to do. I think a lot, most, of the moral vacuum that currently exists in the financial sector is attributable to the biz schools. I generally believe that no Republican government should hire anybody from a “front rank” biz or law school unless they are absolutely certain of the applicant’s bona fides and ideology.
I was only a corporate manager for a couple of years a long time ago. I had to bring in my nicely polished resume and wear my neatly pressed suit for the interviews but when I was hired, they told me to report to work in “work clothes” at the loading dock. Before they let me manage ANYTHING I had done practically every job in that business long enough to be able to cover at least routine events in any position there. I think that is the right way to train managers or better yet, take your good production people and as they progress get them the training and schooling necessary to move them up into management, which really isn’t all that much for most jobs. Most large businesses and almost all governments are grossly “over-credentialled,” preferring to use degrees for minimum qualifications rather than subjective evaluations or testing to avoid discrimination complaints. Actually, before long, white males will be able to freely file discrimination suits when employers disqualify them for lack of a degrees by being able to show that the degree requirement has no business utility and acts as an artificial barrier to employment of males and thus discriminates on the basis of gender. I’d almost become a lawyer just to file those lawsuits, but I really don’t want to become a lawyer because it would disappoint my mother who went to her grave thinking I was a piano player in a whorehouse.
My youngest kid by way of military school to keep him out of jail and a stint as an Army Infantryman in resorts like southern Afghanistan and Kosovo is using his GI benefits to pay for his training in the Laborers’ Union apprenticeship program. The Laborers aren’t the highest paid building trades union, but they get the most work; $25/hr. for 2184 hrs/yr. is better than $40/hr. for 1000/hr./yr. He got in 12 hrs. yesterday at his $17/hr. base rate and time and a half for the hours over 8 (Alaska state law OT is over 8 and over 40). His college educated older brother makes about the same hourly wage but since he’s a college educated professional doesn’t get overtime. Over the course of a year, the younger brother will make half again what the older one will make. The younger one is about halfway to Journeyman and depending on the kind of work his wages will increase by 150% – 200%. So long as he gets in about 1200 hours a year, he has year-round coverage from a very good health insurance plan. The downside is that it was +5F degrees yesterday morning when the younger one went to work to shovel the snow off a warehouse roof, so you need to be young and tough to do it, but he was colder in Afghanistan and shovelling snow off a roof is a lot easier work than humping a 60-80 pound pack and a SAW up a mountain in Afghanistan. My advice to him is, first, keep yourself able to pee in a bottle and pass a background check; those are becoming among the most valuable credentials in the Country, and start taking some writing and math classes to spin up your administrative ability, because life gets pretty miserable working outdoors with the tools of the trade after 35 – 45, depending on your health and whether you have serious injuries. He started at 25, so his pension will be vested at somewhere between 35 and 40, so he has that to fall back on and if he gets hurt or decides as I did that he’s tired of doing manual labor when Manuel never shows up he can go take some physically easier inside job. Even though he won’t have the coveted degree, at least in this part of the World, employers have learned that unless the degree is required for some professional certification, and all too many do, the best thing to have on your resume for most jobs is the demonstrated ability to show up and do what you’re told.
The schools are putting out lazy, semi-literate slugs with high self-esteem and no reason to have it. In the last years of my career for my entry positions I came to prefer young people with a GED and some work experience over those right out of high school, even the ones with good grades unless I knew their family; grades are meaningless any more. Those with a general college degree like communications or one of the “Studies” are barely more educated than HS grads but feel even better about it and come with a lot of lefty ideas and a bad attitude towards authority. I found that to get a decent English paragraph, I pretty much had to stick to law school grads and even they couldn’t write anything with any literary interest.
Law school is just about the ultimate barrier to entry because it reserves the field to those with enough money to go or those who fit the right box to have somebody pay for it. Every Republican government in the Country should take on the bar about the law school requirement to take the bar and return to allowing “reading law” to qualify for taking the Bar Exam. I have a couple of years of college in Georgia in the ’60s, making just good enough grades to stay in and keep my deferment and the college courses I was interested in here in Alaska, quite a few, actually, but I never bothered to take anything I wasn’t interested in or didn’t see a way to make more money by taking, so I don’t have a degree, yet somehow I made it to the highest pure appointee level supervising a bunch of lawyers and HR professionals, negotiating multi-billion dollar contracts, and representing my government against the best legal and labor relations talent the unions and interest groups could throw at us. I’ve faced Ivy League and other front-rank law school attornies in grievance arbitrations, labor board hearings, and contract negotiations and I’ve written a lot of court pleadings for State attornies facing fancy counsel. Frankly, I could eat almost any lawyer’s lunch back when I was a full-time advocate. Arbitration, especially, is like the courts were in most of the Country a century ago; you don’t have all the motion practice and discovery that makes sure that the only possible surprise is a witness flaking on you; arbitration is strictly “run what you brung” and you’d best be damned quick on your feet and know your case, the contract, and where relevant, the law intimately. You’re going to look really stupid against a good advocate if you yell “OBJECTION,” then have to fumble through some hornbook to figure out why you objected only to have the arbitrator tell you that a formal objection such as that is to protect a lay jury and s/he doesn’t need such protection so s/he’ll take the evidence or testimony for what it’s worth. I took great joy in just poking at them and provoking them, and generally the less they know the louder they get and the more Latin they try to use, usually not very well. I’ve certainly lost cases to lawyers; if you don’t lose some, you’re not taking the hard ones, but I’ve never been out-smarted, out-maneuvered, or intimidated by one and I’ve done a pretty good job of all three of those on some of them. I couldn’t waltz in and pass the bar exam today, but neither could most practicing lawyers; it is like most licensing tests: you study specifically to take the test and as soon as you pass it, you forget all that unnecessary crap. If I knew all the stuff that the Coast Guard could have asked me or even that I had to know to pass my Master’s test, I could have walked on and been the Master and Commander of a Royal Navy warship in the early 19th Century so long as I had a sailing master and an gunner master, which all the Commanders did, and as soon as I passed I mercifully forgot most of it. Just like the Bar, it functions as a barrier to entry. I’m licensed to operate a vessel for hire of under 100 tons in coastal waters not because I’m such a good operator of a vessel, I know lots of unlicensed fishermen and amateur boaters who are much better at handling a vessel than I am, but because I am REALLY good at taking tests.
To my point about law school: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57393849/even-lawyers-struggle-to-find-jobs-these-days?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo
Thankfully, a least these lean times are keeping idiots like this unemployed. Of course, it is only a matter of time before Comrade Obama starts forgiving the student loans for time wearing brown shirts – or working for a union or other “good” organization.
Most Supreme Court justices haven’t had law degrees, because for most of this country’s history there wasn’t such a degree. Some universities offered law classes you could sit in on, which helped people pass the bar exam, but most just studied for the bar on their own. A college degree wasn’t even a pre-requisite, and one Supreme Court justice became a lawyer at age 17 because he didn’t want to go to college.
Eventually a one-year course was offered, and then a college degree was attached. By the mid 1900′s Harvard turned the program into a two-year course, and most other schools eventually followed suit.
So in her thirty years, Sandra Fluke has gotten a degree in feminist something and now she studies law. She could’ve just read the Bronte sisters and Blackstone’s commentaries and saved all the money she blew on a worthless degree, one that she might as well have written herself – in crayon. On top of saving all that money, which she’d now have for contraceptives, if she’d read the Bronte sisters she might’ve been wise enough not to publically humiliate herself. One day she may walk into a court room as a lawyer, and then the judge will wear out his gavel trying to keep the jurors from snickering.
Despite Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke will be the comedic gift that keeps on giving.I can imagine in one of her interviews, she wil be told to go out and screw an opponent and then get paid for it.
I don’t totally agree with you. Yes we need to eliminate all the dopey majors and departments. We also need to stop promoting and subsidizing them in high schools. Trade programs are barely alive, while $20 million theaters are being built on campus. Even worse, here in California, it’s very difficult for kids under 18 to get jobs due to regulations limiting their hours and what they can do. So now most kids don’t know what it means to work at a job until they’re 18. The upside to that? More kids are working for their parents businesses, being entrepreneurs, but most don’t.
The left is a about words not principals. The left is perfectly happy to deliver and support fascism as long as it’s called anti-fascism.
Never forget that fascism is a derivative of marxism. Mussolini was a communist who created fascism as a “third way” between capitalism and communism. But just like communism it puts the state as the central tenet of people’s lives. The Left is fascist, at least.
Yep, and in doing so Mussolini demonstrated that he was far smarter than Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and all of the other Communists. If the trains didn’t run on time in Moscow then who would the peasants blame? Stalin. If a building collapsed in China then who would the peasants blame? Mao. But if there’s no bread in Rome then who gets the blame? Capitalism.
Mussolini built a Marxist system with a built-in scapegoat.
Benito Mussolini was a leader of the Italian Socialist party and editor of its newspaper, Avanti. He opposed Italy’s participation in World War I (on the side of Britain) because, according to Marxist dogma, war was between capitalists. In 1917, I think, he joined the Italian army. He invented Fascism to be national socialism – as opposed to communist international socialism (the Communist Party had not yet been founded by Lenin), and used the ancient Roman symbol of authority, the fasces, to be the name of his new party.
(Note that Adolf Hitler’s party was the National Socialist party, National Socializmus, or Nazi for short.)
Mussolini broke with the socialist party over the war. Socialist parties had an agreement to vote against credit for the war. Only, the spartakians , Liedbeck and Luxemburgo , and the socialist senator from Wisconsin honored the pledge.The italina socialist part blamed for the was the petit bourgoise , that is : functionaries, midle and little merchants , rich farmers, lawyers , doctors and teachers. So the blamed 90% of italian population. Mussolini saw that and left the party to began his own movement .A blind elite did the rest.
A farewell to the arms is a ralistic portrait of the vision of the war by italians.
The battle over the meaning of “fascist” was lost when we went along with the Soviets’ labelling of the German Fascists as some sort of revanchist, right-wing regime rather than the socialists they were. Lenin and Stalin’s vision of World conquest was ideological, Hitlers was physical conquest and that’s about the only difference other that the NSDAP’s allowing private ownership of business and industry so long as those businesses and industries subordinated themselves to the NSDAP. Comrade Obama and his Junta learned a lot about the NSDAP’s “coordination” with business and industry.
Regardless. The Left is totalitarian through and through. Have no illusions what would happen if they had complete power.
You’re preaching to the choir about the totalitarian Left. You need to preach to all those people who think there is no difference between voting for Romney or any other R and voting for Comrade Obama.
Principles, not principals
The left loves free speech as long as you are on their side. They will call conservatives every name in the book, metaphorically kick them in in the face, and yell bully while they are pounding them one last time and rubbing their face in the dirt.
I went to University of PA in the late 1980′s in the early days of PC. When certain black students decided that an editorial in the school newspaper offended them, they trashed every copy of the paper they could find on the morning of its release. The response of the university president was:
“unfortunately, this is what happens when diversity and open expression collide.”
Fascism is alive and well on campuses across America. Republicans and conservatives lack the power and the balls to take back our educational institutions, which are spitting out leftist drones and Obama zombies by the thousands every year. Only a major war or total economic collapse will save this country.
ANECDOTE: I was once stranded at the Philly airport and noticed an elderly gentleman in the seemingly same condition, so I went over and struck up a conversation. Turns out he was a survivor of both Nazi and Soviet prisons and regimes. He looked at me with some concern, not knowing my political beliefs, and said, “I don’t want to offend but I have to say this – both systems started in the universities.” Sctratch a “Progressive,” get a fascist. Every. Single. Time.
Fascist, Nazi, Socialist, Communist–it is all the same thing. Scratch a Progressive and discover the festering pile of evil that is at the core of all these leftist totalitarian ideologies.
Looks to me like the professor could sue the private college and his employer for breach of contract and failure to provide safe working conditions, and possibly sexual harassment and a crowd based hate crime. Maybe he should call Gloria Allred? She is famous for gender and sexual harassment lawsuits, and she’s been around for a long time. She graduated during the Berkley Free Speech movement in the hippie era: Hey babe, wanna ball? Groovy!
Apparently today repeatedly asking for some free love is now grounds for sexual harassment rather than the tolerant celebration of diversity.
Those who are interested in academic free speech should read Mike Adams’ columns over at Townhall.com. He doesn’t take guff from anybody and he has been to court to fight for his conservative, Christian speech.
College classes cost lots of money and the students whose education was disrupted should be upset. Isn’t the university’s primary duty education? And the campus police allowed this to be disrupted – shameful.
The story mentions that “no official action” was taken against Landsburg. Not so fast. He blogged as a private citizen, and he could likely argue this was unconnected to his official duties. But did Seligman issue his statement in his official capacity as university president? Hmm.
And true enough, the left’s support of free speech (beyond their own) extends only as far as vulgarity and pornography.
What about the Professor’s student’s right to hear he lecture? They paid money to learn from him and the protestor’s got in the way of that lesson.
Nazis. Every single one. Himmler and Goebbels would feel right at home among today’s academic leftists.
As Kate @ SDA says . . .
the opposite of diversity is university.
Shockingly I did not see concerns from Seligman when Landsburg posted on the same blog an anticatholic comment in connection to the Penn State scandal.
Actually, the unfortunate truth is that Landsburg can be kind of a jerk. He can be something of a anti-religious bigot. I don’t know him myself but I know people who know him fairly well.
But Landsburg has the cojones to take issue with the powers-that-be on campus. And that is no small thing for non-lberals at a modern university.
“Actually, the unfortunate truth is that Landsburg can be kind of a jerk. He can be something of a anti-religious bigot. I don’t know him myself but I know people who know him fairly well.” Sweet you start out with hear-say from hear-say. Slander is the Progressives style.
Mobocracy. The model is European. Europe has gone on like that for the last 40 years.
From the DoJ down to the univeristies, totalitarianism substitutes the rule of the Law.
We are falling fast, the subversives are doing their best to destroy the Republic and to kill Freedom.
Work hard for a serious victory in November, We must roll back the subversives, it’s a battle for the life or the death of Freedom.
Le grande terruer (at least figuratively) will come to these moronic administrators one day. All political hacks face it at some point. Meanwhile, I’m getting my popcorn ready.
Number 5: BINGO
The End of America….The Cloward-Piven Strategy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5xJZEY3oz0&feature=related
The Cloward Piven strategy, this is what we are witnessing today.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/02/the_clowar…
Taxpayer-Funded University Professor Calls for Public Uprising
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/01/frances_fox_piven_we_desperately_need_a_popular_uprising.html
The problem is that conservatives do not punish liberals for their words and deeds. Where are the parents of Rochester students and what are those parents doing? I would imagine that every child admitted to Rochester’s Fall 2012 freshman class was also admitted at another quality school. Given this episode, why would any conservative parent allow his or her child to enroll at Rochester this fall? Those parents could hold the Rochester administration to account. All of those children could enroll somewhere else. That would send a message. If you are a college and your prospective freshman class disappears, what do you do? But that will not happen. It never happens. Conservatives should be taking names had holding people to account.
Scratch a lefty liberal, find a scumbag. You’d think there would be exceptions, especially in senior positions in highly visible institutions. You’d be wrong. They just hide that aspect of their nature until, one fine day, it surfaces – like some unspeakable object floating to the top of a reeking cesspool.
One wonders if the College Republicans occupied a gender or ethnic studies lecture in protest of the balkanizing agit-prop being disseminated, would Pres. Seligman’s campus police be as deferential to their disruptive presence? To ask the question is to answer it, no?
According to the UR website, undergraduate tuition and fees for the 2011-12 academic year are $41,826.
Assuming a full load of thirty credits, that works out to about just under $1400 per credit hour. Assuming the class that was disrupted by the protest was a typical three credit hour class, that means each student in the class is paying about $4200 for the class.
A typical semester is about sixteen weeks. For a three credit hour class that means there are 48 class hours during the semester or 2880 minutes.
That means that each student in that class is paying just a shade under $1.50 a minute for the privilege of being in the class.
The disruption to the class lasted fifteen minutes. At the per minute rate, that means each student lost about $22 in value.
The legal relationship between a student and the university is one of contract.
When it condoned the disruption of the class in violation of its own rules, UR arguably breached the contract it had with every student in that class and so is liable to them for their loss.
In addition to breach of contract, a number of other possible causes of action occur. State consumer protection law, the laws against fraud among them.
Great point. Coming from a working class family I tried to get the most out of every college course I payed for. I never skipped my classes (even when my beloved grandmother was dying of cancer), only for her funeral. I would have been FURIOUS if a mob of silver spooned brats came in and disrupted my classes. This is totally disrespectful to the students who want to learn and to their parents if they are helping to pay their tuition.
Actually, now that I have thought about this from your perspective Bill, if I were one of the students or parents, I would be demanding an apology, a refund, and condemnation of the mob behavior. If none of the above is granted, I would be calling for resignation. Is this really what higher education has come to in this country? Welcome to the mobocracy. There are officially no real adults left. Thankfully I have several years left before my children will be old enough for college. If the state of the university has not changed by then, they will not be going to college. Instead I will buy them a house and send them to trade school.
“While UR is private and does not have to guarantee free speech, it nevertheless does so, as do most private universities (and such promises have especially clear legal force in the state of New York). After all, attracting quality students and faculty is likely to be much harder for a university that tells its community free thought is unwelcome on campus. UR states:
Freedom of expression of ideas and action is not to be limited by acts of intimidation, political or ideological oppression, abuse of authority, or threat of physical harm and well-being.”
This is one of those things that looks different as you stand in different places; I can make a good argument that “academic freedom” and “freedom of speech” by professors only exists where specifically conferred whether the institution is is public or private. It is settled and well understood that the 1st Am. is a protection against a governmental actor suppressing speech and, consequently, the 1st Am. doesn’t act against a private person’s suppression of speech, at least so long as “suppression” doesn’t rise to assault.
More interesting is the question of the “free speech” and “academic freedom” of employees of public institutions. Here I draw on the thinking of the 9th Circuit in a case I can’t cite anymore and I’m not going to spend the money to search for it, but it involved Gil Garcetti and a disciplinary action against one of his subordinate attorneys, and for once in my life I agree with the 9th Soviet. It basically holds that in the course of his duties, the attorney was himself a governmental actor; he was in fact the government and his speech was the government’s speech. We’ve long fought this battle with unionized and/or activist public employees speaking under color of office on issues or wearing buttons and such while on duty. If the employer wants to, the employer ALWAYS wins these; you absolutly cannot identify your speech with your job. At least in my government, you could make a speech or write a letter to the editor in your offtime, but if you didn’t put in a specfic disclaimer that you were speaking strictly for yourself you were going to get a visit from the nice people from headquarters wearing the dark suits and when they were done, you would have all the free speech you wanted because you wouldn’t have a job.
There is absolutely no difference between a teacher or university professor in a public institution and a, say, biologist in the Department of Natural Resources making a statement wearing her DNR jacket criticizing a state government’s resource policies; you discipline or dismiss that biologist in a heartbeat. In the K-12 system, there is no inquiry, no research, no “life of the mind;” there is a public employee, licenced to teach by the government, teaching to a curriculum developed by the government, evaluated by the government, and hired, transferred, promoted, demoted, disciplined, suspended, or dismissed by the government. Any so-called academic freedom is specifically conferred and delimited by statute, policy, or contract. Between the school bells a teacher IS the government and while the 1st Am. protects the students from having their speech suppressed by the teacher, within limits, the teacher is the government and isn’t protected from the government by the 1st Am.
Colleges and universities are more problematic because they at least try to maintain the illusion of academic freedom to research and inquire. So, maybe as a matter of policy some instructors/professors should be specifically through statute or contract be granted academic freedom and freedom of expression, but the “production” professors are just public employees and they will, By God, say what they’re told to say.
Now this is one of those two-edged swords; what the Peoples’ Republic of Mexifornia may require its public employees to say may be very different from and very offensive to the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Georgia, or the Republic of Texas, but that is what federalism is about. The main point here is that Republicans control about half the state governments and have the power to bring boards of education and boards of regents to heel through appointments and through the budget. I know government well enough that when you have even a liberal university chancellor by the budget, his heart and mind will follow, and if you pay attention to appointments and budget, before long you’ll have a Republican board and your schools and colleges won’t be sinecures for out of work Democrat politicians.
I enjoyed the blog posts of Professor Landsburg, and the comments section on his blog as well. Thanks for including the links.
Hey there Skeezix, I really applaud the courage of your convictions to stand up and class and speak yer piece.
Real shame about failing the course.
But TANSTAAFL
Warmest Regards
Teach
The only way to destroy left wing propaganda factories -i.e higher education sinkholes of liberal art – is to eliminate any subsides of any kind including tuition and research grants. Then watch those lefty parasites starving to death one after another.
And watch america’s competitiveness go straight down the tubes.
Brilliant plan. Gut the universities. Just brilliant.
The people who contribute to American productivity ARE NOT humanities/liberal arts school grads with degrees in “Angry People Studies” or “19th Century Lesbian Poets.” The colleges and universities are turning out functional illiterates indoctrinated to leftism and filled with unjustified self-esteem. When they enter the workforce, they have no work ethic or discipline, little or no practical skill, a vast repetoire of excuses and grievances, and are unaccepting of authority. So, in fact, these programs are a drain on society because generally the only jobs these people can get are waiting tables, slinging drinks or coffer, or, worst of all, in government which is about the only place a “communications” or “studies” degree will get you something like a white collar job.
So, unless you lefty punks succeed in your takeover, these schools are in the main going out of business anyway as people see that such degrees do them no good and leave them deeply in debt. Of course, this gives Comrade Obama the opportunity to increase the public workforce and then recruit mind-numbed lefty robots by offering to pay their student loans, a sort of quasi-literate, lefty freikorps.
Actually Hun is on to something. First, no more Pell grants or grants for student education at all from the government. Parents or students either pony up the money, get bank loans or ask the school to fund their education.
Two, research would still be completed only this time with universities cooperating with private industry. So no there would be no gutting of research.
Third, make each university actually abide by affirmative action hiring of professors, staff and administrators and not just sing the praises of said nefarious program. Fire, um retire, half of the white professors and staff and hire only blacks and other “disadvantaged minorities.” That will quell their support for AA.
Fourth, since most hire education costs have been rising at geometric rates, when they start to see fewer students enrolling, their costs will come down. Econ 101.
Lastly, allow no tenure for professors. They should have to undergo consumer ratings each sememster/year which determines whether they will be re-hired. If they piss off students with their rants, they will be fired.
Most American colleges seem to have no more in the way of free speech than do Iran and North Korea, maybe even less.
Where was that place that was called the Land of the Free?
It seems to be missing.
Hang on a minute ….
You’re in favor of a professor’s right to be an asshole (and with some really stupid arguments, no less) but think that students should have no right to protest when he does it.
This whole debate has been the height of idiocy. Do you guys really fail to understand the economics of the problem this badly? Putting contraception on a health insurance policy is no more “making somebody else pay” than putting viagra (or any other sort of elective cover) on the same policy.
The REAL issue is that insurance companies have the market power buy goods and services at much lower prices than individuals can. Keeping contraception out of health cover simply makes it more expensive in unit terms – which is precisely why certain ideologues want it that way. Even if the health cover required a 100% copay, it would STILL be cheaper for people to pay through their health insurer.
So … why are sportspeople (who are far more likely to claim for certain sorts of injuries) not “demanding” that others “pay for their activities”? Why should you have to pay for the natural consequences of some jock’s gridiron hobby? How about pregnancy and childbirth services – should they also be left uncovered so that “others don’t have to pay” for some woman somewhere to give birth? Is she being “paid to have babies”? God knows how rush would describe that (if it occurred to him to try)
It’s an utterly stupid argument, and it’s ONLY being applied to this one single issue. The US isn’t having this argument about any other health issue (and no other western country would have having the argument at all). It kind of stands out, don’t you think? Not one other piece of cover is being contested like this. Just contraception. For women. A bit odd, yes?
But I’m sure this isn’t just another case of ideologues wanting to keep making it as hard as possible for women to make choices about pregnancy. I’m sure that’s not it. Actually, I’m lying – that’s obviously what it’s about. Want to prove me wrong? Find one other piece of elective cover that’s even being debated, let alone with this level of vitriol.
The prof was being a prat. He deserved to be called out for being a prat. He should grow up and stop hating women.
You’re an idiot, probably one of those idiots with a degree in “Angry People Studies” who’s been told by his/her professors that lefty and smart are synonyms; they’re not. Here, fool, is how group insurance works:
A policy of insurance covers what you pay for it to cover. Just as your warranty on a car doesn’t cover routine maintenance and wear parts such as belts, brake pads, etc., a medical insurance policy doesn’t cover routine and expected or elective procedures or medications, few cover routine physical exams for instance. One can elect to purchase additional coverage for all sorts of things including elective procedures but they all have a cost, which can be quite high because if the insurer is to cover routine and elective costs, it isn’t really insurance at all but rather a prepaid coverage which assumes the benefit will be used in its entireity. For example, almost all dental and visual benefits are not insurance at all but a prepaid benefit. Also, only the most lavish “Cadillac Plans” don’t have significant co-pays and deductibles for all procedures and medications. All benefits in the bundle have a cost and those costs are distributed to all members of the covered group. This is the reason “cafeteria plans” and the like never really work; people naturally adversely select; those with the greatest need will buy the greatest benefit level and make the most use of it, dramatically driving up the price of the better coverage. Young, healthy males will select no insurance or the minimum coverage but to be successful, a plan must distribute the costs equally which results in younger and healthier members of the plan subsidizing the older members and as they age becoming subsidized themselves; that is what makes a plan economically viable and is also the reason that plans that cover retirees only are extraordinarily expensive; reirees can be expected to begin using the plan heavily almost immediately upon retirement.
It isn’t an element of “insurance” at all that may provide discounted costs but rather a benefit of plan management for cost containment. An employer will set up a plan’s parameters and coverages and either negotiate directly or have an insurance company or third party administrator negotiate on their behalf special rates from preferred providers of healhcare and prescription drugs. Many employers, especially large employers and governments, don’t buy insurance at all, but rather self-insure and hire a third party administrator to administer claims and payments. TPAs are often but not always insurance companies. This results in lots of stupid people thinking they are insure by Blue Cross or Aetna, when in actuality they are covered by their employer’s plan which is merel administered by Blue Cross or Aetna. I was at all times in my career covered by my self-insured employer but the card in my wallet said New York Life, Blue Cross, Aetna, Well-Fargo, and recently SmartCare. None of these companies ever designed or in the case of unionized employees negotiated the plan; they just did the actuarial work to tell the employer how to price it and then bid on administering it. Insurance companies themselves do set up and sell bundles of benefits and the administration of claims that are generally sold to small businesses and private individuals which in many cases have a network of providers preferred by the insurance company. In that case, the “group” is the group of people who have bought that particular bundle of coverages rather than a group of all the employees of an employer or members of a union or association of some sort. Individual or small group policies tend to be very expensive because there is less opportunity to distribute costs.
And because you’re an obviously and thoroughly indoctrinated lefty idiot, I’ll explain that both Viagra and birth control pills are covered by virtually every plan when a physician says they’re medically necessary but neither are covered without additional cost for wymyn who just want to avoid conceiving a child or men who want to take a sex vacation in Thailand, which isn’t to say that Doctors don’t play fast and loose with medical necessity. It’s a good thing lefties are so stupid, else they’d be really dangerous.
30 techno – We do pay for babies. It’s called welfare. Since the pay is much higher for single mother’s babies, the number is rising constantly. We are having this arguement also.
“I’ll explain that both Viagra and birth control pills are covered by virtually every plan when a physician says they’re medically necessary but neither are covered without additional cost for wymyn who just want to avoid conceiving a child or men who want to take a sex vacation in Thailand, which isn’t to say that Doctors don’t play fast and loose with medical necessity. ”
Here’s an example of doctors playing fast and loose with insurance from my own life.
Back in my university days, I served a stint on the student council. One of the issues that came up a few times during my term was health insurance. The student council had been persuaded by an insurer to offer a supplementary health insurance plan for students. As I recall, the council wanted to make it a plan that students could join or not as they saw fit but the insurance company insisted that all students had to participate or there could be no plan. The student council discussed costs and the insurance company told them that $4 per student per academic term should cover the costs and given them a satisfactory profit. There was some grumbling about the mandatory nature of the insurance but they went ahead with it; $4 was considered pretty affordable by almost everyone. By the time I joined the council, this insurance had been in force for several months or a year and the insurance company had told us that the rates for the next year were going to be $20/term, a 500% increase. We asked why the rates were going up so dramatically. Our vice president had researched this with the insurance company and it turned out that claims had been far higher than the insurance company had expected. He cited an example where one student went to one of the doctors on campus complaining of a rash. The doctor told the student that he needed to bathe more often and the rash would go away and stay away. The student apparently complained that he/she was short of money so the doctor wrote a prescription for soap! And not the exotic medicated dermatologist-approved soap either, just ordinary bars of soap, like Ivory Snow or Dove or whatever, just like you buy at any supermarket.
And like the fools we were, we simply agreed to pass on the new $20/term rate on to students. They made a bit of noise about it but soon swallowed it. I don’t think we even considered having a word with the doctors to suggest that they not give prescriptions for soap or other such silliness.
I’ve been a part of plan management for a unionized state government workforce and negotiated benefit packages with unions; you absolutely MUST make the participant put some “skin in the game” with co-pays and deductibles on EVERYTHING. Doctors will sign a leaf that blows in through the window if you have health insurance. When the ees could get a Doc visit free, they always had a medical excuse for their absences; make them pay something, not so much absence or excuses. If they can get the advertised drug free or with a minimal co-pay, they’ll always go brand name, if the generics and allowable substitutes are free or cheaper, they’ll go there. Rather than have a regular Doc and schedule appointments during normal hours, the single mommies will ALWAYS take the kid with sniffles to the ER, put a heavy deductible on ER visits unless admitted, and that stuff stops. It goes on …
Love the banter on this one, good posts everyone. From this Rochester resident’s perspective, Seligman is using the present to set up the future. Most major universities, including his, have received millions of dollars of muslim monies. You might as well set the tone now to keep the protesters at bay when the muslims come in and start dictating what people can and can not say, and can and can not believe. I’m completely onboard with the naughty professor’s viewpoint, but let’s face it in the new world order, right and wrong are not his to decide.
Doesn’t sound too serious.
A college professor spoke his piece, a college president spoke his piece, and some college kids held a silent protest, that doesn’t appear to have been especially disruptive (unlike a lot of protests) in order to speak their piece.
Nobody got hurt, no property was damaged. Nothing to get excited about, at least according to what I read.
God bless the economists. They’re the last sane department in the American university.
If I understand this right, Landsburg made these comments not in a classroom, but on a private website that is unaffiliated with his employer. Nothing suggests that what he wrote constitutes a violation of the law, or his university’s code of professional conduct. So, where does his employer get off reprimanding him? Landsburg’s also a private citizen with a private life, no?
And when said employer gets all sanctimonious about his respect for freedom of expression, what does he mean to suggest? That employers may (or may not) grant employees their constitutionally protected freedoms?
Yet another idiot administrator who thinks he owns his faculty members, and must police them for ideological purity. What’s next, does he plan to ferret out those that attend deviant religious services. Or maybe he’s got his eye on those that vote for deviant political parties? I dare him.
John X
(I’d put my family name here, if I weren’t afraid of getting another reprimand from my own university’s administrators.)
Landsberg was foolish to be indiscrete about his Limbaugh sympathies. I daresay that Limbaugh is more unpopular on college campuses than Hitler, and Jerry Sandusky.