When government regulates what we can and can’t say, we often complain about the “speech police” shutting us up. But at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, that characterization is literally true.
Earlier this week, campus police showed up at the office of theater professor James Miller to take down a poster he had displayed on his office door. The poster featured a quote from the short-lived television show Firefly, Joss Whedon’s libertarian cult classic that is part throwback Western, part space fiction, and features characters (ironically) who battle an authoritarian government.
The poster on Miller’s door featured the following quote, from a characted named “Mal” Reynolds, explaining why he could be trusted not to kill another character in his sleep:
“You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.”
Reaction from the UW–Stout administration was typically hysterical (in both common senses of the word), saying they could not allow the poster, as it represented a threat of violence. UW–Stout police chief Lisa Walter e-mailed Miller, saying the poster “depicts violence and mentions violence and death” and that the campus’s threat-assessment team agreed the poster could be “constituted as a threat.”
“We have a responsibility as a university to provide an atmosphere for our students, faculty and staff that is safe,” university spokesman Doug Mell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, arguing that such incidents need to be examined in the light of mass shootings that have happened at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities in recent years. “Something like that had better change your perception.”
So apparently the university’s appropriateness standard rests on whether something “mentions violence and death.” Let this be a warning to faculty — you had better not post a copy of the Gettysburg Address on your door, as Lincoln pleaded that “these dead shall not have died in vain.” Don’t attempt to prove your patriotism by endorsing Patrick Henry’s plea to “give me liberty or give me death.”
Of course, if you stroll through any faculty lounge at the UW–Madison campus, you’re bound to find implicit threats against Gov. Scott Walker posted everywhere. You know, because he runs a totalitarian regime and all. One that might, uh, suppress free speech.
— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
Pretty good post Christian, but word to the wise: don't try to match wits with Mark Steyn again.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd really love to know what the individual officers are actually thinking when they enforce something like this.
Is it, "I am just doing my job."
Is it, "He's a thought criminal and he has it coming."
I've said it several times on these threads (and will say it until somebody starts attributing to me the quote, ha!):
"The Police are only as good as the laws they enforce."
I want to be a "law and order" man and have respect for officers, but really I have no respect for the campus police here. None.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBlaming the campus cops is downright moronic, like blaming the troops in Afghanistan because you dislike American foreign policy. Place the blame, all of it, on the university president, whoever that idiot is. He's the one deserves it. Cordially, Bill
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am still beside myself reading this article:
"'We have a responsibility as a university to provide an atmosphere for our students, faculty and staff that is safe,' Mell said, arguing such incidents need to be examined in the light of mass shootings that have happened at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities in recent years. 'Something like that had better change your perception.'"
Yes, in this age of enlightenment there's no room for this kind of trash.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYour comment just perked this out of me:
Words don't kill people. People kill people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid you eve READ THE QUOTE.
It isn't about violence. It is about honor and respect and espouses a world view, and a attitude about violence, completely the opposite of the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois cases.
Mal is promising that if he tries to kill you it will be in a fair fight where you are aware and equally armed. Compare that to the shooters you cite who attacked unarmed and unaware people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think Patrick Henry's most famous line should be immediately posted on the professor's door. Dare them to make him take it down. It would be a blistering retort to the linguini-spined administrators who get the vapors at the very thought of any expressions of courage.
And I would like to know some of the things that are posted in the faculty lounge. Could you oblige, please?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePeople like this are why we have a Second Amendment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrom the article...
"University officials say they believe in free speech but..."
I'd say more but...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI generally follow the rule that anything that comes before the "but" in a sentence like that is an outright lie.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseForget it, Jake - it's Cheeseheads.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSpeech police RETURN to campus? Tell me, when did they ever leave?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAll these posts WRT to the issues in the Wisconsin Higher (High?)Education.
Gotta be something in the Cheese...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am a proud, card-carrying member of the conservative religious right (and that would be clear through more posts if The Corner would ever give me one of those poster-stars so my remarks would show up at some time relevant to the post)
That said - a couple points. The comparison to the Gettysburg Address is very weak, and on par with the left's attempt to equate criticism of children accessing p&rn in a library with banning the Bible, since of course it contains incest, rape, and adultery.
Also, I actually can see why a college campus might be skittish here, given the occasional campus shootings we have seen over the years. If the school in question in the above article was Virginia Tech, would we be more sympathetic?
Finally, it is not good enough to assume we are 'bound' to find implicit threats on anti-Walker posters in the faculty lounge. Do the legwork and find out if they are there, report it, and THEN express outrage for the double standard. Otherwise, once more, you are just using the tactics of the left, for example when they assume without any proof that there are plenty of racist, violent signs and slogans at Tea Party rallies.
Let's up OUR game people.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I am a proud, card-carrying member of the conservative religious right…"
No need to flash your credentials, son. Your argument has to stand or fall on its own merits.
And in this case: fall.
"If the school in question in the above article was Virginia Tech, would we be more sympathetic?"
Absolutely not.
The idea that nutjobs are "triggered" by exposure to "violent" speech needs to be ridiculed and dumped for the opportunistic lie that it is. Schizophrenics and other crazies who murder are motivated entirely by the dark voices in their heads, not by words or symbols that they encounter on the street or the Internet.
The Left insists that the targets on Palin's web site "caused" Giffords's shooting not because they actually believe it but because they'll take ANY opportunity to shut down opposing voices.
If you want us to up our game, how about not buying into the Left's false paradigms or absurd premises for even a second?
Or can you not see their lies clearly enough to identify them as such? Maybe you're the one who needs to "up" his game.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe 'up our game' comment was directed more to the two other points I made (that you did not address), but I see I could have made that clearer.
That said, nowhere did I put forward the argument that this would 'trigger violence'.
Surely you do not believe Constitutional free speech is unhindered at the workplace - even a college campus?
To go back to Virginia Tech, I would care that parents of deceased children (i.e. my customers) might walk the halls and see one of my employers with a poster that could be seen as tasteless for the times.
As an employer, where would you limit free speech for your employees as to posters in the halls outside their offices? The Supreme Court has deemed a Hustler centerfold free speech too. How about a picture of a gun to the head of a public figure instead.
I don't care what the professor has at home, but he is an employee of his university, and "free speech" is not the issue.
I'm sure, as a good conservative yourself, you recognize that simple reality.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I'm sure, as a good conservative yourself, you recognize that simple reality."
86 the team-jersey politics, please. How I self-identify is irrelevant; my arguments are all that matter here.
"I don't care what the professor has at home, but he is an employee of his university, and 'free speech' is not the issue."
Except that the suits justified their actions with the following:
"…the poster can be interpreted as a threat by others and/or could cause those that [sic] view it to believe that you are willing/able to carry out actions similar to what is listed…"
You indicated that the "poster … could be seen as tasteless for the times." Tasteless, maybe, but an implicit threat of actual violence?
"nowhere did I put forward the argument that this would 'trigger violence'."
But the university DID.
Only a moron would interpret the poster thusly: it's obvious to anyone not brainwashed by university sensibilities that the professor just digs Captain Mal and Firefly (as everyone should), but universities have embraced a nonsensical theory of interpretation: if SOMEONE can "misinterpret" your words (though usually it's malicious twisting), you're guilty.
They use this idiotic paradigm all the time to bully the opposition into silence, and they're using it here because they just can't help themselves anymore.
An attempt to keep things civil in the workplace? IF ONLY!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo the University frames it as a potential violence inciter issue...
But The Corner, and some commentators, frame it as a free speech issue...
Both sides look rather foolish in their respective choices.
I see a likely leftist organization, the University, using its power as employer to remove an employee's poster. As an employer, that is a freedom I too enjoy and exercise over my employees.
So if the poster is crucial, let the professor go find work somewhere else where his messages are tolerated, or let him show a blatant double standard by the school by finding evidence of tolerated leftist messages.
Because you can bet my employees don't have freedom to display publically at the workspace I pay for, anything that I don't like.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot quite, sir.
Do you promote your business as a place where your employees have such freedom? It seems you don't.
Universities act like they do extend such freedom. The love to trump their diversity etc. They lie. Double standards are bad form at best.
Not sure you bother with clause, "let him show a blatant double standard by the school by finding evidence of tolerated leftist messages." I have to believe that there is a good chance that you as an employer, if told about such a double-standard, would still say, "So what? Take the posters down."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFirst, providing 'bonafides' is a general indicator that the poster may not be what those bonafides say he is. Just an FYI. An important FYI since you're providing a big 'but' after those bonafides.
The Gettysburg Address was weak--but the Patrick Henry was better. Not direct, but better.
The school is not 'skittish about shootings'--nothing it has done in this case would indicate that--because nothing it has done could help to stop a shooting--in fact quite the opposite. That poster might have given a potential shooter second thoughts--a professor who seems to be saying that'd he'd shoot(that's not AT ALL what the poster means, but there is an implication that needed violence will be done). Virginia Tech could have used an armload of these posters.
There is ample evidence that these people had no qualms with violent rhetoric during the protests against Walker--and there are numerous violent signs and whatnot documented on the internet--does Schnieder need to include those photos to make his point? to 'up' his game?
Conservatives have seen them--over and over again. We KNOW the double standard exists. There's no 'if' here, Steve.
A 'true conservative' would know that.
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