So, what’s new and what’s the point.
Thank you.
Nothing can prevent a lawsuit, right? But I would think that yes, a university has responsibility for the activities of its employees when acting as such and using university resources while doing it.
The rest of this seems to be based on the misconception that all speech is protected. Hate speech is not.
I looked around a little and I’m more confident that IU is wrong here. The Supreme Court has smacked down a university in a similar set of circumstances.
In Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, UVa had a policy subsidizing printing costs for student publications. The policy excluded organizations that primarily promote a belief in a particular deity. Wide Awake Productions (WAP) published a Christian-oriented newspaper and was denied money for printing costs.
The Court held that UVa had violated the First Amendment because they had discriminated against WAP based on WAP’s viewpoint. The case addresses some of the arguments being made in this thread. IU could conceivably have a computer usage policy that discriminated based on content (and I used this terminology improperly in my first post which might cause confusion – told you I wasn’t a First Amendment scholar!) They could bar certain subject matters. But they can’t simultaneously set up a limited public forum and discriminate based on viewpoint. They can’t say it’s open unless you have ideas or viewpoints that are unacceptable. That’s what IU is doing in this case. They’re discriminating against Rasmussen specifically because of the views he holds.
This type of discrimination is not permitted in limited public forums, even if it is a forum the university created. The websites available to faculty are limited public forums under First Amendment law. The IU rules for computer use say:
They’ve created a public forum for the mission of “education, research and public service.” Professors traditionally publish ideas in Op-Eds, books, articles and other publications to enhance the mission of the university. Some ideas are obviously more valuable than others, but the dissemination of ideas is one of the core principles of the university.
Well, there’s a new story saying IU will allow Rasmusen to keep his website on the IU server.
The story I linked to says “A university attorney determined that the log did not violate any school policies, a day after the business school dean asked economics Professor Eric Rasmusen to remove it, IU spokeswoman Jane Jankowski said Friday.”
But even without the new story, I disagree with your assertion of “Bull-fucking-shit”. There certainly was evidence, but you were confusing evidence with proof. Rasmusen had a website that was on the IU server until a meeting with the Dean – his employer – based on complaints about Rasmusen’s website. Rasmusen took it down after the meeting and reposted it on a private server, so a change in viewpoint wasn’t the reason for removing it from the IU server. I think there’s evidence of coercion for a reasonable person to conclude Ramusen was compelled to remove the website.
I’d be interested in a cite for this proposition. There are some exceptions to First Amendment protection, but I’m unaware of precedent that says mere offensive speech is prohibited.
Seems to me that restricting, either by formal or informal (the ‘talking to’ this professor got) means, the free exchange of ideas strikes against the very principles that higher education is supposed to be about.
Don’t see how anyone could argue against this, in all honesty.
Were you in the meeting with the Dean and the Prof? I wasn’t. For all I know, the meeting consisted of the Dean saying to the prof, “Hey, we’ve gotten some complaints about your website, would you object to taking it down until we get this resolved? It’s your choice.” And the prof said “Dean, for the good of the university and in the interest of resolving this situation as quickly as possible, I will be happy to take down the site temporarily.”
Is this likely? No, but considering that there has been neither evidence nor proof that the professor was coerced into anything, I stand by my calling of bull-fucking-shit.
Let me restate from an earlier post. You are mistaking evidence and proof. You see, [url="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=evidence"evidence can consist of direct knowledge or reasonable inferences from available sources.
Complaint;
Meeting called with Dean – professor’s boss;
Website pulled down;
Website put up on private server; and
Rasmusen complaining about “the desire of some people to shut down discussion they dislike.”
From these facts a reasonable person can infer there was coercion, because the facts present some evidence (not proof) of coercion. A reasonable person can say “Wow, the guy’s boss called him in and told him to pull the site and make nice if he wants to keep his job. He pulls the site from the IU server, but reposts it and bitches to the media to see if he can stir something up that allows him to repost his site on the IU server.” Proof? No. Evidence? Yes. The fact that you disagree with a certain conclusion does not mean there was no evidence to support the conclusion.
In any event, it’s a moot point because subsequent stories seem to confirm Rasmusen was told to pull the site.
Are we governed by Indiana University now???
THAT’s new to me.:eek:
The government didn’t censor anything. Neither did IU. But I would think that those that run IU kinda have a duty to that school and it’s current and future students to protect itself from damage awards that could possibly cripple it.
IU is a state school so it’s an arm of the government for purposes of First Amendment analysis. So, yes, they are the government not a private organization.
IU’s Dean told Rasmusen to take the website down. The Dean is an agent of the government, so there was government action involved.
As for whether IU could be sued, you can try anything. But I don’t see what they would be sued for. From the snippets of Rasmusen’s site I’ve seen quoted, nothing he says gives rise to a cause of action. He apparently thinks gays shouldn’t teach. Not a brilliant position, but not a tort either.
That doesn’t mean IU can’t force a person to take down illegal content from their website. But Rasmusen’s website doesn’t contain anything illegal as far as we know.
Regardless, you do not have a right to express your opinion on a government website. If they find it objectionable, they can nix it. They just can’t throw you in jail for expressing it. They didn’t tell him he couldn’t express his opinion, they didn’t want it on the school server.
And if IU fires, or refues to hire a gay teacher (for whatever reason)? If his comments are allowed on IU’s server, could it not be argued that IU agreed with those comments? That might bolster an applicant’s, or recently fired gay teacher’s, position that the action was illegal.
I’ve addressed this in a previous post. As long as the school server is a limited public forum (which it is) they can not tell Rasmusen to take his website down. That’s impermissible viewpoint discrimination.
The case I linked to above discusses the various ways in which government can and can not dictate content. The way IU originally handled the issue was impermissible.
IU can make every website carry a disclaimer that the views don’t necessarily represent the views of the school. That is a narrowly tailored constitutional way to address this concern.
Are you saying IU’s action was illegal?
Yes. IU violated the First Amendment (via the Fourteenth Amendment) by making Rasmusen take down his website based on the viewpoints expressed on his website.
I cannot agree. Rasmusen was free to pay for his own site, as well as lecture, write for publication, etc…
IU was under no obligation to facilitate Rasmusen’s speech.
Can we get a ruling from one of our legal eagles, here?
Actually, it is. This isn’t Germany or France, you know.
That’s not relevant to the issue of whether IU violated the constitution. The UVa student organization was free to publish their newspaper without funding. A government entity does not have to extinguish free speech in one fell swoop for it to be a violation of the First Amendment.
Yes they are. If they choose to facilitate speech they cannot pick and choose viewpoints. You keep saying they don’t have to, but the law is against you.
I don’t mean to anoint myself a SDMB legal eagle, but I am a practicing attorney.
Um, excuse me folks. I don’t usually get miffed when people on this board ignore my posts–it happens often enough that i’m used to it. But i did post a quote above from IU’s website that makes it quite clear that personal websites can contain anything that doesn’t break the law or violate IU policy.
Thus, if Rasmusen’s weblog neither broke the law nor violated university policy, then they had no business asking him to take it down, because that would be suppression of one particular opinion, and would be in violation of the university’s own policy of not censoring content on personal web pages. And, according to the link provided by Zoff, the university’s own attorney found that the blog violated no school policies.
People who have written that the university is not obliged to provide personal web space might be correct. But, given that the university has chosen to provide personal web space, as a state-funded institution it must not allocate such web space based on people’s personal opinions.
I find this guy’s crap as offensive as most people in this thread do, but he has a right to say it. To tell you the truth, the whole storm in a teacup was probably caused by one over-zealous university official who has since been informed that he or she overstepped the mark. Rasmusen is promising to write up the full story on his blog today or tomorrow.
I think that an observation he makes on the blog should probably be read by the person who tried to censor him in the first place, because this observation points out very clearly a common result of cases like this:
Leaving aside the later stories for the moment, a reasonable person is just as likely to conclude based on the OP that there is a difference between someone’s being “asked” to take something off a website and someone’s being “told” to take something of the website, and that Rasmusen’s bitching about it on another site is venting about a situation he’s pissed off about. But if it’s really so fucking all-fired important that the word “evidence” is used, then fine. Do a little happy dance as I concede that there is extremely thin and completely indirect evidence that IU “told” Rasmusen to remove the site, but that there is much stronger and direct evidence that he was “asked” and voluntarily complied. I still contend that there is no evidence to support the charge of coercion, which is the point I have been making. IU can “tell” people what to do all it wants, but unless there’s an “or else” that goes with it, then the mere act of “telling” someone to do something does not constitute either proof or evidence of “coercion.” And in reviewing later stories I fail to find that evidence of coercion in them either. Every story linked to in this thread, and every story which I could read without subscriptions that Rasmusen himself links to in his blog, indicate he was “asked” rather than “told.” Rasmusen himself does not indicate that IU or the Dean “told” him to remove the blog; rather, he castigates “various people” for trying to get him shut down by making complaints which he characterizes as “intimidation.” Not that IU or the Dean tried to intimidate him, but that members of the IU community attempted to intimidate IU into making him remove it. Now I suppose if one were desperate for evidence of coercion one could cite the complaints, but since AFAIK those complaining had no power to remove the blog themselves or visit retribution upon Rasmusen, I disagree that the complaints constitute that evidence.
As I see it we lack enough of the story to say whether the Dean’s discussion with Rasmussen was of the cordial variety or if it was of the “or else” variety. Fantasizing scenarios which fit the view we like best doesn’t get us anywhere closer to the truth.
What seems bleedingly obvious however is that Rasmussen’s website, though offensive, does not violate any school policy and it would certainly be in violation of the first amendment if the school tried to use any degree of force in procuring it’s removal. Further, the anonymous complainers who attempted to use IU to violate Rasmussen’s first amendment rights are misguided.
Does anyone know if the university has a policy against “hate speech”? Isn’t that pretty commom these days?
Pash