While Click was certainly wrong, why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that students thought they had the right to bully someone off public property? The students harassed and bullied someone who did nothing at all to deserve it. I am all for the students taking a stand against racism, but that doesn’t mean they get to control public space because they feel like it and violate the rights of other people.
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And there in lies a major problem. You only get the golden ring if you shut up and conform to whatever the university wants you to do. Step outside those lines, and it’s adjuncting until you die.
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Why am I totally unfuckingsurprised at that? Oh yeah spent the first 26 years of my life in that state and Mizzou is a bastion of marginal sanity in a sea of small town racist crackers.
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Why did white people get the idea they can shoot and abuse black people for the last few hundred years and then bitch when they complain? HOW DARE THEY STAND UP TO RACISM!!!
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That’s fucked up, but why is it addressed to me?
But but but but but . . . . she’s obviously being microaggressed.
!00% access doesn’t mean anything in this context. Access that allows people to photograph and record other people in public spaces is all that matters. And in a liberal society, that kind of access is a basic requirement.
Pretending that by complaining that a professor should understand basic civil rights is not okay because more important issues are being overlooked is not only based on a falsehood (most of the same people concerned with this professor’s behavior are just as concerned with racism in society), but it’s the exact, same excuse the police and other authorities use to shut down people who want to record them in legal and appropriate ways.
Protesters who dismiss or ignore bad behavior on the part of their allies quickly become protesters who are easily dismissed and ignored.
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Laying hands on a student isn’t a good way to get tenure where I’m from…
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So…at the risk of middle-ground fallacy, I think you both have a point here. @anon61221983 echoes a thought I had earlier in this thread that there’s a very real and unhealthy divide between the latitude given to tenured profs and non-tenured profs. Tenure is a great idea in principle, protecting academia from the political manipulation, but it’s status as a brass ring fosters a larger class of non-tenured academics that won’t risk rocking the boat.
On the other hand, I think anyone would be hard-pressed to say Click didn’t make a pretty big error in judgement in both how she handled this student journalist and the violent fascist language she used in doing so, however noble her intent might have been.
But frankly, she gave a real apology and acknowledged her mistake. Unless she makes a habit of this sort of behavior, canning her entirely seems really reactionary. There’s no excuse for what she did, and, sorry to be blunt, but the Citizen Kane defense of trying to manage the media image is complete bullshit. But firing her for one stupid decision in the heat of the moment that, AFAIK, didn’t actually result in anyone getting hurt, would just be a plain stupid way to run a University.
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News to me. Where was this apology?
Includes full text of her apology, plus a statement from the Journalism School, and one from the National Hellenic whatever get a shorter name in support of Janna Basler, the other professor involved in the incident.
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When did it become an either or? You will find that propaganda and photojournalism have fluid boundaries. One interesting demonstration of this reality is the ease by which journalist move into PR. Pretty much all communication directors (be it for corporate or government entities) started out as journalists then they become PR professionals spreading propaganda for their paymasters.
I hope it also provides them with an opportunity to educate students about the responsibilities of a free press. E.g. when appropriate challenge the powers that be with the same vigour and commitment as they challenge those generally underrepresented in the media.
Here’s a piece from the LA Times that offers a bit of context, history that informs a level of wariness and distrust of the press
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Mizzou Prof Apologizes, Quits Journalism Post
The University of Missouri professor who called for “some muscle” to get a journalist away from student protesters says she’s sorry—and she has resigned from her courtesy appointment at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Meanwhile for a little context. While the interweb is obsessed with Ms Click’s lapse of judgement this guy is walking freely among Mizzou students calling for the KKK to step up its game.
Do have to wonder if the twitter mob have their priorities right… But 1st Amendment…
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There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a tenure-track academic yelling about safe spaces and white privilege — forever.
And there’s been an arrest over the threatening posts, reports USA Today.
Campus police have arrested a suspect who allegedly posted racial threats to the University of Missouri campus on social media, the university said Wednesday.
The suspect is in police custody and was not located at or near the campus at the time of the threat, the university said on its website.
Threats of violence toward black students had raised concerns Tuesday night, as the school remained tense following the the toppling of the school’s leadership over racist campus incidents.
Someone using the anonymous social media app Yik Yak wrote they would shoot every black person they see Wednesday. Others tweeting from the university’s Columbia, Mo., campus said people used racial epithets as they drove around campus, and a group of men walking with bandannas covering their faces yelled racial slurs at black students.
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I object to both the anonymous racist rants on the Youtube clip and Professor Click’s/students’/others’ handling of the incident with the photographer. The rant is horrifying, sickening, and all the rest: and I’m guessing criminal too, given its threatening nature and intent to coerce. But I find the Professor’s actions upsetting and sickening in their own way, and for quite other reasons, one of them being that I have a reasonable expectation for an intellectual and progressive to handle themselves better at a site of conflict and discourse.
Please do tell.
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Stupid decision in the heat of the moment? As a nontenured employee, I’d expect to be thrown out on my ass immediately if my university saw me doing ANYTHING close to this. As it stands, faculty are held to higher standards in most regards. Beyond that, tenure inures you to academic protection – I have known a few tenured employees released because of inappropriate student relations or acting in ways that were against the university good. I had to sit in on a committee for one as a student as a non-voting observer. It was awkward and a bit scary at times. So even as a tenured faculty member, one would expect that being the one responsible for putting hands on a student would be grounds for dismissal.
It isn’t a stupid decision in the heat of the moment, it is a career ending decision – or would be at any university where the worst examples of a SJW wasn’t getting 100% of their way because of the bad action / inaction of others. Given that the two top positions in the university are currently vacant because of this, it may be harder for what should happen to happen. But again, I would expect in my position to be removed immediately if I were to ever put my hands on a student in the way these two employees did. No one gut hurt, but this isn’t the purpose. A stupid way to run a university is to ever let employees touch a student under any regard that they were not entirely authorized to do so.
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Sorry. Was on my mobile phone, pissed off about the threats of violence in my home, and just picked a convenient entry point into this thread. No criticism of you intended.
