Honestly, that's grounds for firing in itself.
Melissa Click, the former University of Missouri communications professor who was fired for calling for “muscle” to remove a student journalist from a campus protest, says she should not have been fired because she just had “inexperience with how public protests work.”
“If you have had any exposure to American media in the last four months, you know the quick decision I made to stand with the students, you’ve seen my inexperience with public protests,” Click wrote in a piece in the Washington Post.
Um. Nice try, Click, but using this as a defense is insane for several reasons.
First of all: Being a communications professor affiliated with the journalism department who didn’t know the appropriate role of journalists at a public protest is not only no defense for what you did, but it’s also grounds for being fired in itself.
The student journalists you essentially threatened had every right to be at that protest and cover it, and any “Media studies scholar” — as you brag that you are in your Post piece — worth her marbles would know that.
Second of all: It doesn’t take much other than being a normal, civilized human being to know that calling for physical force against your students for doing their jobs is not okay.
#share#I mean, is this lady serious?
I get that it must be a total bummer to get fired. I also get that it must be even more of bummer to get fired in the view of the public eye.
But in trying to defend herself, Click only made it worse.
#related#Two things are possible: Either Ms. Click is totally making this up, and did in fact know that what she was doing was wrong, or she is actually admitting that she was never qualified for the job she got fired from in the first place.
Take your pick, Click. But in any case, it’s time for you to start looking for work elsewhere.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.
Editor’s Note: This article originally mistakenly stated that Melissa Click is a journalism professor. In fact, she is a communications professor who had a courtesy appointment to the University of Missouri’s journalism department, which was revoked after video of her threatening a student journalist was made public.