Thomas Klocek has filed a law suit agains the university.
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Good show! Fight back! PC is not law, being anti-anti-Israel should not end academic careers.
Phoo. Simply admitting to being a Republican is enough to end an academic career in some places.
Roger:
Good for him. Expose the absurd double standard where students can use the most extreme political rhetoric, Israeli’s are nazi’s , but they have to be protected from anyone who may challenge there juvenile form of thought. The marketplace of idea’s on college campuses has been replaced with enforced speech codes, not based on notions of civility, but on mandatory political points of view. Freedom of expression but only on one side of the political fence.
Dumbleton. Name or description? And what do you suppose they teach at the School of New Learning?
Professor Klocek’s lawsuit is not based on First Amendment grounds. He is claiming they slandered him. The Free Speech/First Amendment right do not apply in this case. DePaul is a private instituion.
Jerry,
A private institution cannot exercise prior restraint over employees. SCOTUS has said that private institutions cannot restrict the speech of students or faculty. It is my understanding (and you can check with FIRE on this) that private schools can restrict where speech can take place (i.e. the so-called free speech zones), but cannot restrict the content of any speeches.
Slander is not protected speech. De Paul cannot claim free speech protection in this case, but Prof. Klocek can indeed claim that they slandered him as they knowingly published false information designed to ruin his reputation.
DePaul students are learning something. They’re learning how AWFUL it is to live within some ideologically-uniform community filled with authoritarian thought police. Learning that’s worth something for Americans, but it’s not worth what they’re paying.
Amen. Enough of this open season on anyone who strays off the campus liberal plantation. The campus is part of the nation.
Princeton is for Hihg Acodemic Stadnards, to!
Academics by the score rushed to the defense of Ward Churchill and his ‘free speech’ rights. I haven’t noticed any similar rush to the defense of Prof Klocek.
Argue that American office workers deserve to be killed, and today’s professoriate will be there for you. Dare to argue with a Palestinian, and all bets are off.
Well put, photoncourier. An admirirable impulse to support the underdog long since gone sterile and reactionary, and blindly creating the very overdogism it purports to revile.
Dare to argue with a Palestinian, and all bets are off.
The man is accused (as everyone here has conveniently ignored) of physically assaulting students by throwing papers at them. If true, he’s no standard bearer for academic free speech, but a thug. I’m also curious as to why the Columbia professors accused in a similar he said/she said situation were not given the benfit of the doubt that Professor Klocek has been.
Incidentally, Mr. Simon, your source quotes verbatim from a press release put out by the accuser. Is this an example of “Fair and Accurate” reporting?
Klocek denies that he threw any papers. And the university’s representative, Dumbleton, said: ìNo students anywhere should ever have to be concerned they will be verbally attacked for their religious belief or their ethnicity,î Dumbleton wrote. ìNo one should ever use the role of teacher to demean the ideas of others or insist on the absoluteness of an opinion, much less press erroneous assertions.î
Is the university asserting that Klocek’s defense of Israel is “erroneous?” Do they believe that all statements made by currently-employed members of their faculty are free from error? Do they believe that to argue with someone is to demean their ideas?
I understand that DePaul is a Catholic institution. The current Pope has spoken out strongly against relativism. Does the university believe that the statement “no one should…insist on the absoluteness of an opinion” is consistent with this direction?
Does DePaul have a school of engineering? Does their believe that no one should insist on the absoluteness of an opinion apply to this school..say, to the value of Young’s Modulus of Elasticity? Would DePaul administrators drive over a bridge built by someone who carried relativism to this level?
The truth is, the professor was the target of a witch-hunt. That’s the truth, The Truth. You can continue woolgathering all you want, but, really, there is such a thing as objective truth.
The Thomas Klocek affair simply highlights the pervasive anti-Israel sentiments in virtually every liberal Christian institution. It has now become the mainstream mindset to perceive the Palestinians as victims of an allegedly fascist Jewish state. You do not need to take my word for it. Just read the numerous liberal Christian publications and find out for yourself.
It took me only a few moments to find this item on the Internet:
ìU.S. taxpayers fund Israeli terror to the tune of at least $3 billion in military aid annually. The mainstream media emphasizes the deaths of Israelis and ignores Palestinian deaths or refers to ìa period of relative calmî even as the Israeli military attacks Palestinian children, women and the elderly.î
http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005b/051305/051305u.htm
A few moments later, I also found these comments:
ìIsrael’s assassination of Hamas’ spiritual header Sheikh Ahmad Yassin seems terrifyingly predictable. Terrifying because the assassination is likely to trigger more violence in response; predictable because we’ve come down this road before. Where will it end, one wonders. Fighting fire with fire only feeds the flame. What kind of conflagration is building as the Israeli government pursues revenge rather than reconciliation and the Bush administration stands on the sidelines and issues empty calls for “moderation”? The assassination is deplorable on several counts, not just on the pragmatic grounds that this will scarcely help the peace process but morally as well. Extrajudicial killing violates the rule of law that is fundamental to open and democratic societies. If Yassin was guilty of the crimes Israel accused him of, Israel could have arrested him and tried him in a court of law; it chose not to do this. Instead, it resorted to terroristic actions of its
…î
http://static.highbeam.com/n/nationalcatholicreporter/april022004/israelfeedstheflameasusstandsbysheikhahmadyassinas/
Do yourself a favor and visit the library of any liberal Christian university. This will allow one the opportunity to read the many publications that normally escape your everyday attention.
David, that sorry situation is one of the reasons we see the evangelical movement turning the legacy Christian churches into irrelevant husks.
Does DePaul have a school of engineering? Does their believe that no one should insist on the absoluteness of an opinion apply to this school..say, to the value of Young’s Modulus of Elasticity?
DePaul does not have a school of engineering, although it does have a computer science program (which would frequently be found in a school of engineering at other universities). When I studied accounting there (1969-1972), the professors did, in fact, insist that debits always went on the left, that assets equaled liabilities plus owners’ equity, and things like that. When my parents studied chemistry there (1938-1942 for my mother, I think, and some extended post-WWII period for my father under the GI Bill), the professors probably did insist that, for example, carbon had an atomic number of six.
Not that these problems have anything to do with DePaul, per se. Political correctness and moral relativism are, as far as I can tell, endemic at college campuses in the United States, and probably elsewhere.
from the post:
“Klocek?s real crime was offending students during an out-of-class discussion of a controversial and emotional topic.”
Amen.
Not allowed under the peecee laws. What a joke…oops, I mean “joke.”
Come weigh in on your pet peeves:
In Defense of Hatred
Warning****Warning****
Politically incorrect. Also has a Pogo cartoon. Do not go there if you’re sensitive.
The truth:
“I’m also curious as to why the Columbia professors accused in a similar he said/she said situation were not given the benfit of the doubt that Professor Klocek has been.”
I believe the statements made by Columbia professors stand by themselves.
I don’t see where the doubt is.
Not much doubt where the blogosphere stands.
Just found this entry searching for information on Klocek’s case and thought I’d voice my agreement with everyone thus far. It’s a shame that our schools of higher learning are teaching all about leftist authoriatarianism and aren’t allowing another side of the story to be told.