Perhaps Steve can find another job terrorising Corey Masterson and Nerdlinger a la “School of Hard Knockers”
I thought this part was the most telling part of the most recent article:
I don’t think there is any justifiable requirement for a community college to keep a non-tenured adjunct professor who is combative or insulting to his students. But my read so far is that the teacher was trying to be provocative in order to generate some debate or discussion (the “fairy tale” comment seems not to be one that would withstand academic rigor), just so happened he had a classroom full of people waiting to be offended, and things spun out of control from there.
If the teacher had gotten good reviews in the past, bowing to the pressure of a small group of community college students who can’t believe that they’d be required to think in new ways (gasp!) in an academic setting is a pretty good example of administrative cowardice. If they’re apparently willing to fire a math professor for “political reasons,” one has got to take the administration’s claims with a big grain of salt.
I have been to Red Oak.
It is a tiny hick town in the middle of nowhere, and of no consequence.
Well it would certainly save me the bother of firing a fool so ignorant he thinks the First Amendment means that anything can be said anytime in any context with any degree of vulgarity or impropriety.
Or getting rid of a “student” so witless he thinks the anarchic chaos of an unrestricted pooling of ignorance is indistinguishable from “academic freedom.”
The only environment which promotes an effective exchange of ideas so that speech becomes Free Speech sets a priori constraints in order that it be coherent Speech. It is otherwise the babbling of twits and the privileged voices drowning out the weak. There are occasions when those constraints are non-existent, and appropriately so; those occasions are defined in advance. Where those constraints are defined in advance, and someone like you ignores 'em, I would enjoy having your sorry a$$ removed from the premises and get you to a school more inclined to cater to rude loudmouths. Or let you just go holler at the world as it passes by in Hyde Park.
The lecture was transmitted by video to another campus?
How long before we start seeing it on YouTube, I wonder?
I once took a course called History of the Bible at a fairly well-known univeristy in a large city. All the Christians dropped out by class three. Never found out why, but there was some light gasping when they found out that… gulp… the Bible was written – and edited by multiple human beings!
As crap as The DaVinci Code was, at the very least it pointed out to some people, the kind of people who forward Spam chain letters and can’t find Iraq on a map, that the Bible did not appear in its present form(s) after being beamed down from the clouds.
Huh? On what are you basing the absence of evidence assertion? Define “genetically equal,” while you’re at it, please.
I wonder how they’ll react when they discover the 1611 KJV they’re using is an edited version from a few years later.
You’re welcome
Cite, please, for the courts’ acceptance of your theory that the First Amendment doesn’t protect vulgar or improper speech.
I am afraid I am not equal to the intellectual pressures of the conversation.
This doesn’t surprise me one bit. I go to a university in Iowa, and either last year or the year before, almost the entirety of our scientific faculty signed a letter to the school newspaper stating that intelligent design and creationism had absolutely no scientific basis and that the prospect of “teaching both sides and letting the students decide” was preposterous and a complete waste of time.
That, of course, resulted in a bunch of people writing in to whine about how they didn’t know why it was “necessary for all these professors to attack their religion”, and all the other persecution of Christians and War on Christmas bullshit that they like to drag out.
Pardon this furriner, but is the first amendment an issue here? It’s my understanding that the goverment isn’t allowed to stop free speech, but when a person signs a contract for employment, there can be any kind of rules and regulations regarding “free speech”?
Community College Adjunct Prof is NOT EQUAL to tenured research professor.
Academic Freedom is first about the ability to research what you please, then about the ability to teach what may be politically incorrect or unpopular.
However, the community college typically gets cash based on enrollments (and pays its instructors based on the same). If the prof is an asshole, that is going to hit the bottom line. Firing an asshole is the President’s job. Keeping an asshole from getting tenure is also important, since once tenured it is much harder to dump the assholes.
This guy sounds like an asshole (based on a whoppin’ one article with student comments).
The First Amendment does not protect professors who insult their students (when done in a classroom setting). Now, we can argue about whether this guy did indeed insult his students, but a college (even a state college) can fire a professor over “improper speech” or “profane speech”, if it violates the college’s teaching code. I’m sure this college has such a code, and the professor might (or might not) win a lawsuit against them if it can be shown in court that no violation took place.
But just screaming “First Amendment” without knowing all the facts is plain stooopid.
It’s more complicated. You left off “…in the workplace”. If the guy stood on a street corner and said “All Christians are blithering idiots”, the first amendment protects him. If he says this in a classroom, it doesn’t necessarily protect him. Context, RTF, context. That was the key part of CP’s post you seem to be ignoring-- “anytime in any context”. What’s so hard to understand about that?
The difference being here is that the community college is run by the state, and so can be seen as the government acting. The same can also apply to private employers if they create a legitimate expectation that they will respect an employees freedom of speech, and then withdraw that protection.
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). If words are deem so vulgar or improper as to provoke violent actions by others, they are not protected speech. It is, IMHO, an utterly flawed decision, but it is there; its the “fighting words” exemption.
Now, under *Cohen v. California *, 403 U.S. 15 (1971) (“fuck the draft”) the words have to be directed at a person.
Of course, this is a different situation here - it is at work, where the standard is that any restriction on free speech has to be related to the job description in an acceptable way. You can’t fire someone for going on a stop the war rally in their spare time from being a (state) university professor, but you can fire them for teaching politics in a physics class, for example.
Based on the thread title, I was expecting this story to be about a Bible college.
For this to happen – just for the negative student reaction to happen, let alone the firing – at a community college is bizarrely disturbing.
:dubious: Eh? All he said was:
No, sir, Bitterman ain’t the asshole in this story!
Check out the other article:
and
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070925/NEWS02/709250379/1001/NEWS
Again, based on the sparse anecdotal comments, it sounds like the guy was a dick in the classroom. Some students complained that he was a dick in the classroom, and based on that they fired him. Yes, it was compounded by the fact that he was attacking their religion (and telling a student that she should take a pharmaceutical to compensate for her reaction to his attack).
I will also state that the students are probably whiny little bitches as well. I had plenty of classes where the instructor decided to pick fights over issues to create a debate - but that is different from telling people what to believe in a western civ class.