In short, an Indiana University professor had a blog on his website (hosted on an IU server) which expressed his views on homosexuality, religion, war in Iraq, and other things.
The site was brought to the attention of the GLBT office, who contacted the Dean of the Business School, who asked the professor to remove the site, which he did.
I really don’t think this is a good thing. Indiana University is a public institution. One is allowed to protest or present any views one likes on the grounds, providing they stay within the guidelines IU has set down in advance. Note that they aren’t restricting the IDEAS one can express, only the place and time one can express them.
Presumably their webspace is held to that same standard. This incident seems to imply otherwise.
Freedom of speech is sacred. One should have it, regardless of one’s circumstances.
One doesn’t shit where one eats. Freedom of speech should not be exercised on the job, because someone will almost always find a way to use it against you.
I do, however, believe that your freedom of speech is your right, but not necessarily on my server. By the same token, it’s your right to be… say… an obnoxious, vocal bigot, but that doesn’t mean I have to put up with it in my own living room.
Well, while i find this guy’s beliefs obnoxious and idiotic in the extreme, i think that he should be allowed to express them.
If he was breaking some procedural or administrative rule about using the university’s web server for personal blogging, then it would probably be acceptable to ask him to remove the stuff. In fact, it seems from the article that this is the main thing that concerned the people at the School of Business at the university:
Now, if it is found that other professors express personal opinions regarding issues outside their area of expertise on the IU website, then i believe that Rasmusen should be allowed to express his opinions in the same way.
If professors are allowed to do this sort sort of stuff, however, professional ethics and etiquette suggests that such comments should be on a different web-page from official, university-related material such as course syllabi, reading lists, etc.
As a matter of general principle, i believe that if an academic institution, public or private, allows faculty to maintain personal web pages on its server, then the faculty should have complete freedom to put whatever they want on those webpages (within the law, of course–no kiddy porn, obviously).
Also, i think that this very controversy shows the benefits of allowing such things, because now everyone knows what a fucking idiot this guy is. Anyone who agreed with his homophobic rants was probably already a homophobic moron anyway, and it’s probably good for gay men and women to know which professors they should be wary of.
I think the title of this thread is inflammatory and misleading. The professor was not required to give up his freedom of speech. He can hold these views and expound them on any website paid for by himself.
Posting personal opinions on a work-related website is not a Constitutional right, at best it’s a benefit extended by the employer and can be rescinded if the employer feels that the content is damaging its image. Universities are typically much more lenient about web usage but they don’t have to carry this to extremes.
Now * if * these opinions were somehow related to the professor’s field of endeavor, and were suppressed because they were unpopular with the school’s administration, you could easily make a case that the school was trampling with his academic freedom, but unless the school was federally funded, I’m still not sure that you could make a freedom of speech argument.
I am guessing that IU has rules about hate speech and some sort of committment to making their campus an “equal opportunity” location–mine certainly does. I don’t see why the college would be required to put up with this asshole’s bigotry, any more than the SDMB is required to ignore the rule “don’t be a jerk” in the name of free speech, the first amendment, blah blah.
Almost all website hosting services have their own TOS’s–I don’t always agree with them, but they do have that right. I’m guessing bigotry doesn’t sit well with IU. And it seems pretty obvious, given the subtitle of the article and the fact that it was the GLBT group that contacted authorities, that it wasn’t his opinion on the war or the death penalty that occasioned this. It was his bigotry, pure and simple.
It’s hardly a case of free speech–he’s not getting fired for this, is he? He just has to find somewhere else to host his spew. I’m sure one of his fellow homophobes would be glad to provide a LJ code.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this, and applaud IU’s quick reaction.
The SDMB is owned by a private corporation to which the First Amendment does not apply. It is free to set its own rules for the use of its server space.
Indiana University is, I assume, a publicly funded state school. IANAL and it’s been a while since I’ve reviewed the impact of the First Amendment on state-funded schools, but my recollection is that the First Amendment does apply and so the school does have to put up with the asshole’s bigotry.
That being said, I agree that the thread title is misleading. I see no coercion here. The dean of the school spoke with the professor after receiving complaints and the professor agreed to remove the material from university property. Absent some evidence of threat to the professor, to say he was coerced is incorrect at best and a deliberate lie at worst.
He’s not forbidded to express anything at all, no matter how moronic his views are. He’s just not going to have the assistance of a free employer-provided webpage to express it. He’s as free as any of the rest of us to go out and purchase a venue to spout stupidity.
Freedom of speech has very little to do with this case. However, academic freedom does. I am very uncomfortable with a university dictating what professors are allowed to say, even if it is on their dime. Now granted, the topic wasn’t in his area of expertise - far from it, in fact. This mitigates my discomfort to only a small degree. It’s not at all clear how much coercion might have been involved. He agreed to remove the material after a talk with the dean. Well, that could mean anything. There’s absolutely no telling what the dean might have said. “Look, I’m not ordering you to do anything, but the committee which is due to consider your tenure in x years will no doubt consider this in their deliberations.” Blah. I don’t like it, not one bit.
On the other hand, the man is clearly a blithering idiot on the issues he was writing about, given the number of outright false statements just in the bits quoted in the article. Blistering, scathing indictments of his character splashed all across the student newspaper are entirely in order. What an asshat.
Now y’all can bitch about violating the First Amendment. It’s just too funny that so many people raise this issue when some private party like, say, the Chicago Reader, does something but then largely ignore it when the issue may actually be there.
If the Kelley School of Business is a state actor, it has no business having any political “opinions” at all. It can either allow people to say whatever they want on their personal web pages or, possibly, strictly limit them to discussing business and educational topics. It most certainly cannot, however, allow people to say that X is good while prohibitting them from saying X is bad.
In other words, if IU’s GLBT group is entitled to have a website on IU’s server where they air their own political views, so are people who oppose those views.
The government cannot interfere with your political speech. It does not have an obligation to help you disseminate it, with public funds. Does IU offer similar server space to anyone who wants it, or only to those already on the public payroll?
The university also has an obligation to operate as a university, regardless of its funding source. Rules limiting the use of university resources to university-related activities cannot be unreasonable.
Garfield 226, those organizations may very well be “university-related” to the extent that they are organizations which recieve some funds, meeting space, etc. Our University has a GLBT office that is a part of the University. Other organizations, like the College Democrats, are registered with the student government association, take part in their activities fair, and apply for SGA funds.
Of course, one wonders if a student with similar views on a website would raise the same level of concern from the institution. The fact that the professor is an employee, maybe, makes a difference (at least to the institution).
Free speech issues aside, I’d be alarmed to know that a professor at my university believes such incredibly ignorant stuff (homosexual men like little boys and are promiscuous? COME ON). It’s like having a professor advocate that the earth is flat or AIDS can be spread by toilet seats.
I can tell you one thing, I’d much rather have a homosexual man teaching in my son’s classroom (or cutting on me in the operating room) than this kind of moron.
These types of cases are always tough. And I’m not an expert on First Amendment law, but I think IU might have a problem here.
A government-funded school has created a designated public forum that allows a wide variety of viewpoints from faculty. What they’ve chosen to do is disallow one professor’s website based on content.
IU might argue that it was outside the professor’s professional area, but that’s pretty weak. Any number of professors put opinions outside their area of expertise.
I think if Rasmussen pursues this he might have a good chance of winning.
Again, I disagree with the guy too, I think his views in this area are moronic. However, I don’t get how the organizations are more “university related” than the professor himself is.
If you’re going with the technical details of recieving funds, being provided meeting space, and being registered with the University, I’d argue that the professor is also all of the above HIMSELF. If you’re arguing with me that the views presented by the marijuana legalization and BDSM groups are university-related, I’d ask how those are more related than a professor’s views on homosexuality.
Interestingly, Rasmusen’s blog page suggests that the situation has now been cleared up:
Also, those wondering about the university’s general policy for personal web pages might be interested in this page, which says:
Certainly, there is no evidence that Rasmusen violated the law, and i was unable to find an outline of the university’s policies on its website.
Judging by his weblog, this Rasmusen guy is something of a wanker, but i see nothing there that would qualify as libel or hate speech. I’m sure plenty of the other personal web pages at IU contain political and social commentary (i couldn’t be bothered going through them).
Well said.
A question: If this professor were to state anti-gay or minority opinions on the IU website, and the IU allowed them, could that be used against IU if there was a lawsuit against the prof? In other words, could what’s on that website drag IU into a lawsuit?
So the government is allowed to censor views based on content in order to cover its ass from lawsuits? That’s news to me.
Stretching the argument, could IU NOT be sued using content on the marijuana advocates’ or the BDSM sites, if, say, a student died while engaging in one or the other?
Bull-fucking-shit. Where did they force the guy to take down his page? The dean met with him and the prof agreed to remove the material. There is still no evidence that the prof was forced, threatened, harassed, coerced or otherwise required to remove the material. The material was not “disallowed” by the university. It was (apparently temporarily) removed voluntarily by the author. Unless you can point to something concrete that states the prof was ordered under some penalty to remove the material, the charge that the university disallowed it or removed it or censored it is without merit.