Yep. We;re not real human beings. We’re job destroyers, not job creators, so we don’t get human considerations.
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Mod note: Cool off, stop with the personal insults or it closes.
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I thought it was rather the price she’ll pay (right or wrong) for being stupid enough to muscle a student reporter while being recorded on the very campus where she works.
I’m not saying she deserves a witch hunt but let’s not pretend she’s an innocent victim either. She did these things and they were stupid. She’ll pay a high price for it.
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Says who? If a professor tells you not to skateboard in the hallway, that’s part of her job even if it’s not one of her formal professorial responsibilities. She’s an authority figure, an official. Her telling a student to do something carries that weight, especially absent an explicit disclaimer to the contrary. It’s basically the same reason she’s not allowed to sleep with students.
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Whoa. Wait…you’re Dr. Click?
Seriously? How long have I been around here that you assume I’m someone I’m not.
I am actually referring to the numerous academics who are not the elites coming out of top tier universities and the people who are trying to do good things in this world and who get laughed at and shouted down when we’re not perfect.
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#STOP resisting PUSHING
There you go again, deploying those nuance rays. People here usually go with that, but on this event and Dr. Click, most are being uncharacteristically simplistic. -__-
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I dunno. Being an academic is kind of like being in an abusive relationship from what I can see. That’s part of why I dropped out of my doctoral program.
Really? She’s a prof and she laid hands on a student. To me, it really is as simple as that, regardless of what other things were going on at that particular campus. The fact that she had a honorary appointment to the journalism department and she was blocking a journalist makes it even more ironic but the first issue is the crux. I’m not terribly surprised that she may be looking for a job after doing all of this on camera. It was kind of a stupid thing to do.
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Please don’t understand my attempt to add relevant context as a defense of abridgment of first amendment rights. I’m sympathetic with Prof. Click. I’m a professor too, at an HBCU. She did what she did in a context of many death threats against these students, threats which continue. In a context in which upper levels of the administration refused to condemn numerous racist incidents, and in a time when universities happily throw students under the bus, or to the police, it seemed quite reasonable for her to fear retribution from the university. That is, in her position, I would be concerned that students’ names and faces made readily available would make it easy for them to be murdered, expelled, etc. Again, this is not a defense of Prof. Click. But in her position I would have these fears.
I will also add that, in my experience from my work at an HBCU (historically black college or university), African-American students and faculty are AFRAID. The chair of my department was pulled from her car, thrown to the ground and held at gunpoint for rolling through a stop sign. Her kids were in the car. A student at my institution complained about financing during the speech of an administrator. He was sent to jail (by the school), sentenced to a misdemeanor, and expelled. At my prior place of employment, a student wrote a fiction piece in which the President (the Bush) was assassinated; his professor turned him over to the FBI and Secret Service; he was imprisoned and interrogated without charges, access to counsel, or to his parents for 72 hours.
Under circumstances like these, in an environment like this, I am not particularly surprised that this professor made poor decisions, was over-emotional. And I won’t be surprised if she loses her job. Especially since she wears granny glasses and studies popular media from a feminist perspective. She’s a perfect Judas goat, no matter that she is loved by her students, etc. Yes, she screwed up, and she’ll pay. But I’m not inclined to crow over it.
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Thank you! (A Like wasn’t enough.)
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I can’t define an exact ‘line’(I certainly agree that there are plenty of ways to harass people under the guise of ‘journalism’ just as there are many ways to commit crimes under the guise of ‘speech’; but providing a workable general-purpose definition is devilishly tricky: my only contention in this case is that the photographer being ejected does not seem to be engaging in harassment-under-guise-of-journalism; nor do the people blocking him even seem to be accusing him of that.)
Perhaps I’ve just been lulled into a universalist complacency; but I think what bothers me about the strain of argument being used to try to get rid of this photographer is that it could so very easily slide right into the mouth of, say, [Chris Grayling][1], telling us that the FOIA isn’t for you, filthy journalists. Fact is, nobody likes the press unless they have a press release to deliver, or a nice neat story that they can expect to be approved and distributed without inconvenient modifications.
I realize, of course, that the sins of the powerful are vastly more dangerous(and likely to have much, much, better PR and more effective security forces); while the sins of the powerless are often so weak as to be effectively negligible(I strongly suspect that this attempt to suppress a journalist hid nothing of interest and hardly exerted much of a chilling effect on the press, nor did the people doing the suppressing have enough power to be committing very much malfeasance); but there is a difference between ‘too negligible to be of much harm’ and ‘good, or even acceptable’.
I would be the first to agree that, when it comes to the execution of shared values like ‘dislike of the press except when they serve your purposes’; the powerful are vastly more dangerous, since they are far more likely to succeed, markedly more likely to be up to something that really needs to be revealed, and typically quite good at cloaking their use of intimidation and force in assorted banal and respectable guises; while the powerless just aren’t able to be up to much, are less likely to successfully suppress journalists, and have access to only the least sympathetic means of doing so; but it’s the same sin writ small.
I dislike the amount of hubbub about this incident; because it serves to provide more attention than the situation deserves to a minor issue; while distracting us from far more dangerous; but less visible problems(in much the same way that a scary mugging that nets the perpetrator all of $50 gets more attention than a blandly white-collar ‘accounting irregularity’ that siphons off millions); but it’s impossible to feel good about a distasteful motive, no matter how limited the power behind it.
Again, I hope never to lose sight of the fact that your power is what ultimately makes your desires dangerous; and allows you to sugar coat them; and both scrutiny and condemnation should be apportioned accordingly; but there is no execution so weak that it turns an ugly motive into an acceptable one.
[1]: http://boingboing.net/2015/10/29/christ-what-an-asshole-2.html
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Even at the top-tier universities, you have to be a real rock god to be safe outside of the hard sciences.
Since science is expensive, you don’t get to play if you can’t swing enough grants, establish a lab and research program with sufficient funding, and so on; but if you can do that, you are also something of a kingdom unto yourself; and the university cuts you loose at its peril, since the funding, the research, and many of the key people are more tied to the lab head than to the university.
In subjects where the professor is the research cost, the university has the clear upper hand unless you are so prestigious as to be utterly indispensable; or tenured to hell and back and absolutely squeaky-clean on anything that admin might use as cause.
Unfortunately for Dr. Click, she is toast on both counts.
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I think it unlikely that Click will lose her job. She’s resigned her courtesy appointment at the MU J-school (where she never actually taught any journalism classes) and issued an apology. Journalist Tim Tai accepted her apology. Meanwhile, Click has been receiving death and rape threats. (I’m sure that will gratify those of you who are demanding her head.)
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Then they shouldn’t meet in a public space, out in the open air, right?
Really? This isn’t Reddit, MrShiv. Go home.
ablil is right. No one here critical of her actions has made mention of anything that could be construed into thinking that they wished violence on Ms. Click. Assuming someone had, a dragon would have eaten them.
So, yeah, if you’re cold, turn up the heat, you don’t need to set fire to straw men.
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Not sure what you mean. My home is in Columbia, MO, and I work at MU, where I’m seeing all this happen to people I know. I don’t read Reddit and don’t follow your reference here.
Maybe the “gratify” bit was a gratuitous swipe, but I DO think the witch-hunt tenor of this thread is pretty disgusting.
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I’m here because I care about the expansion of human knowledge and I care about the kids on my campus. I don’t blame you for not staying, but that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with those of us who do stay.
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