Intolerance On Campus: Crosses They Can't Bear
Picked this puppy up from Michelle Malkin. It seems than another unhinged college professor has decided to cut loose, and in a blazing move of intolerance, destroyed a pro-life display on campus. From NKY.com:
A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening.
I think that it should be noted here that Michelle has a picture up on her site that shows Sally Jacobson, the professor in question, participating in the display's destruction. This is something that greatly irritates me, and this sort of behavior is the kind I'm sick of from tenured professors. On top of that, I'm sick of the "dhimmitude" expressed by college administrators that they can'tr get rid of these teachers out of fear of reprisal. Ms. Jacobson has committed a crime, and that should be grounds for dismissal.
NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials.
Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Witnesses reported "a group of females of various ages" committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.
Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU's literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.
"I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to," Jacobsen said.
Now, isn't that wonderful? A teacher who encourages her students to act like pack animals, and destroy a display of something they disagree with. Similar tactics have been used by the Left for years, and they generally mirror the acts of Hitler's thugs during his rise to power. I suppose Ms. Jacobson should be happy that she's turning out little Nazis to carry forth the crusade of intolerance the Left seems to show more often than not.
Asked whether she participated in pulling up the crosses, the professor said, "I have no comment."
Yes, she has no comment, but a picture is worth a thousand words. How long will it take us to say "guilty" 1000 times for Ms. Jacobson?
She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a "slap in the face" to women who might be making "the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion.'"
And who died and made her the ultimate interpreter of the First Amendment? The First Amendment applies to ALL citizens, regardless of ideological beliefs. If these loony moonbat professors can have admitted communists and America-haters on campus to slander this nation, and her troops in harm's way, then we can stage a counter-protest to that. The same thing goes for abortion. A right-to-life student group on campus has just as much right to set up a display as pro-abortionists do. But, tolerance is tolerance. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, and this professor had no right, whatsoever, to order the destruction of this display.
Jacobsen said it originally wasn't clear who had placed the crosses on campus.
She said that could make it appear that NKU endorsed the message.
And what, pray tell, is wrong with that? I can understand the nutty Left and their infatuation with abortion. They got what they wanted in 1973, but even they can't argue the jurisprudence used int hat decision was faulty. Legal acholars--liberal and conservative--have agreed that Roe made no sense at the time, and was decided outside the confines of the letter of the law. These same scholars have argued for over thirty years that the Supreme Court needs to revisit the subject, and fix it. And for people like Sally Jacobson who cringe at that possibility, they should be. Even the more liberal members of the high court--including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--has stated that the court needs to reevaluate Roe.
Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said.
No, pulling up the crosses and destroying that display was similar to the Nazi youth who used to terrorize those who disagreed and disliked Hitler. Their behavior is pure intolerance, and as I stated above, similar to the tactics used by their heroes like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler. I don't use this comparison lightly. I know that there could be a lot of Hell that drops on me for comparing their behavior to that of some of history's nastiest people. But that is how I see it.
"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.
Then PROTEST it, don't destroy it. That was, in essence, private property her and her students destroyed. That is a crime, and it isn't protected under the First Amendment. That was not her acting within the confines of freedom of speech. It was her gathering up a number of her emotionally-charged students, walking across campus, and wrecking something they completely disagreed with. And now they're trying to hide behind First Amendment protections. This won't work, and as was observed earlier in the story, the Supreme Court has ruled that these sorts of displays fall within the protections of the First Amendment.
NKU President James Votruba said any evidence of criminal conduct in the incident will be turned over to prosecutors. He said he appreciated the emotional nature of the abortion debate and was glad that diverse viewpoints are represented at the school, but he condemned the destruction of the crosses.
"Freedom-of-speech rights end where you infringe on someone else's freedom of speech," Votruba said.
Kudos to the university president for recognizing something that a tenured professor should have known, and likely did, but opted to act like an animal; on impulse and emotion rather than logic, common sense, and sound reasoning.
"I don't buy the claim that this is an act of freedom of speech, to destroy property."
He said he was gathering information about the extent of Jacobsen's participation.
"I don't know if she was pulling up the crosses, but I think she was out there with the students. If so, as far as I'm concerned, she went outside the conditions of her employment," Votruba said.
Yes, she did. And for that she should be dismissed. There is a difference between wacky Ward Churchill spewing his garbage. People attend his speaking engagements to either cheer him on, or protest against him. But those who stand against him do not go rampaging throughout the speaking engagement destroying property. As a matter of fact, many who protest people like Ward Churchill are fairly subdued; choosing to confront him in Q & A sessions, and allowing him to hang himself with his own words. What Sally Jacobson did was commit a crime, and it's one she should be charged with, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And after it's all said and done (because during the investigation and any prosecution, she is liable to be on "leave") she should be fired. Period.
He declined to say what consequences she might face. Jacobsen is a tenured professor who has been at NKU since 1980.
Katie Walker, a sophomore who is president of the school's Northern Right to Life, said the group would like to see charges filed against those responsible.
"Campuses are supposed to be public forums. I think professors should encourage that," Walker said.
The sign explaining the cross display could not be found after the vandalism. But students retrieved the crosses, replanted them and put up a new sign.
Thursday night, Walker and others planned to camp out near NKU's main plaza and guard the display until this morning.
The Right to Life organization formed last month in response to activity by faculty members on the other side of the issue.
Ah, see. We have students reacting to more faculty political statements and beliefs. This sort of debate and engagement should be encouraged on a college campus. The faculty shouldn't be acting like Ms. Jacobson did, and stifle that debate with an act of groos intolerance.
The faculty group is called Educators for Reproductive Freedom. So far, it has held two lunchtime discussions on campus with speakers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.
The group's purpose is to learn more about laws and pending legislation that affect women's reproductive rights, said philosophy professor Nancy Hancock, one of the organizers.
Pro-life students got wind of the meetings and passed out literature near the doors. They also quickly elected officers, wrote a constitution and mounted the cross display.
Hancock said she considered the student activity an overreaction.
Yes, I'm sure she does. I'm sure she is sickened and dismayed over those who protest outside of abortion clinics. I'm sure she thinks everyone is a nut who thinks that life begins at conception. And I'm sure she thinks people like Marcie, Sabrina, and I--who argue the legal jurisprudence of Roe, and believe it was decided incorrectly on that basis--are idiots. When Sally Jaconbson has a law degree, she can argue that point. Until then, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
But Thursday, she said her group was appalled by the destruction of the cross display. None of the members had anything to do with it, she said.
"We would like to see respect for freedom of speech on this campus," Hancock said.
Personally, I'd like to see more respect, period, from professors. For a very long time now the Left has permeated the institutions of higher learning, believing that the way to change things they don't like is to twist what is taught, and create a whole new bloc of like-minded individuals. I avoided this sort of garbage when I was in college. Marcie has had a run-in or two with a couple of her professors over ideological differences, but nothing to this extent, and nothing they've said to her has sunk in. That's the good thing.
The bad thing is that for every one "Marcie" in school, there are fifty willing minions who would have followed Ms. Jacobson out to that display to wreck it. So, while the fight for academic freedom and students' rights on campus is a little lopsided right now, it's far from over, and we're not yet ready to concede the field of battle to these brutish ideologues.
Publius II
Picked this puppy up from Michelle Malkin. It seems than another unhinged college professor has decided to cut loose, and in a blazing move of intolerance, destroyed a pro-life display on campus. From NKY.com:
A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening.
I think that it should be noted here that Michelle has a picture up on her site that shows Sally Jacobson, the professor in question, participating in the display's destruction. This is something that greatly irritates me, and this sort of behavior is the kind I'm sick of from tenured professors. On top of that, I'm sick of the "dhimmitude" expressed by college administrators that they can'tr get rid of these teachers out of fear of reprisal. Ms. Jacobson has committed a crime, and that should be grounds for dismissal.
NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials.
Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Witnesses reported "a group of females of various ages" committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.
Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU's literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.
"I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to," Jacobsen said.
Now, isn't that wonderful? A teacher who encourages her students to act like pack animals, and destroy a display of something they disagree with. Similar tactics have been used by the Left for years, and they generally mirror the acts of Hitler's thugs during his rise to power. I suppose Ms. Jacobson should be happy that she's turning out little Nazis to carry forth the crusade of intolerance the Left seems to show more often than not.
Asked whether she participated in pulling up the crosses, the professor said, "I have no comment."
Yes, she has no comment, but a picture is worth a thousand words. How long will it take us to say "guilty" 1000 times for Ms. Jacobson?
She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a "slap in the face" to women who might be making "the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion.'"
And who died and made her the ultimate interpreter of the First Amendment? The First Amendment applies to ALL citizens, regardless of ideological beliefs. If these loony moonbat professors can have admitted communists and America-haters on campus to slander this nation, and her troops in harm's way, then we can stage a counter-protest to that. The same thing goes for abortion. A right-to-life student group on campus has just as much right to set up a display as pro-abortionists do. But, tolerance is tolerance. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, and this professor had no right, whatsoever, to order the destruction of this display.
Jacobsen said it originally wasn't clear who had placed the crosses on campus.
She said that could make it appear that NKU endorsed the message.
And what, pray tell, is wrong with that? I can understand the nutty Left and their infatuation with abortion. They got what they wanted in 1973, but even they can't argue the jurisprudence used int hat decision was faulty. Legal acholars--liberal and conservative--have agreed that Roe made no sense at the time, and was decided outside the confines of the letter of the law. These same scholars have argued for over thirty years that the Supreme Court needs to revisit the subject, and fix it. And for people like Sally Jacobson who cringe at that possibility, they should be. Even the more liberal members of the high court--including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--has stated that the court needs to reevaluate Roe.
Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said.
No, pulling up the crosses and destroying that display was similar to the Nazi youth who used to terrorize those who disagreed and disliked Hitler. Their behavior is pure intolerance, and as I stated above, similar to the tactics used by their heroes like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler. I don't use this comparison lightly. I know that there could be a lot of Hell that drops on me for comparing their behavior to that of some of history's nastiest people. But that is how I see it.
"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.
Then PROTEST it, don't destroy it. That was, in essence, private property her and her students destroyed. That is a crime, and it isn't protected under the First Amendment. That was not her acting within the confines of freedom of speech. It was her gathering up a number of her emotionally-charged students, walking across campus, and wrecking something they completely disagreed with. And now they're trying to hide behind First Amendment protections. This won't work, and as was observed earlier in the story, the Supreme Court has ruled that these sorts of displays fall within the protections of the First Amendment.
NKU President James Votruba said any evidence of criminal conduct in the incident will be turned over to prosecutors. He said he appreciated the emotional nature of the abortion debate and was glad that diverse viewpoints are represented at the school, but he condemned the destruction of the crosses.
"Freedom-of-speech rights end where you infringe on someone else's freedom of speech," Votruba said.
Kudos to the university president for recognizing something that a tenured professor should have known, and likely did, but opted to act like an animal; on impulse and emotion rather than logic, common sense, and sound reasoning.
"I don't buy the claim that this is an act of freedom of speech, to destroy property."
He said he was gathering information about the extent of Jacobsen's participation.
"I don't know if she was pulling up the crosses, but I think she was out there with the students. If so, as far as I'm concerned, she went outside the conditions of her employment," Votruba said.
Yes, she did. And for that she should be dismissed. There is a difference between wacky Ward Churchill spewing his garbage. People attend his speaking engagements to either cheer him on, or protest against him. But those who stand against him do not go rampaging throughout the speaking engagement destroying property. As a matter of fact, many who protest people like Ward Churchill are fairly subdued; choosing to confront him in Q & A sessions, and allowing him to hang himself with his own words. What Sally Jacobson did was commit a crime, and it's one she should be charged with, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And after it's all said and done (because during the investigation and any prosecution, she is liable to be on "leave") she should be fired. Period.
He declined to say what consequences she might face. Jacobsen is a tenured professor who has been at NKU since 1980.
Katie Walker, a sophomore who is president of the school's Northern Right to Life, said the group would like to see charges filed against those responsible.
"Campuses are supposed to be public forums. I think professors should encourage that," Walker said.
The sign explaining the cross display could not be found after the vandalism. But students retrieved the crosses, replanted them and put up a new sign.
Thursday night, Walker and others planned to camp out near NKU's main plaza and guard the display until this morning.
The Right to Life organization formed last month in response to activity by faculty members on the other side of the issue.
Ah, see. We have students reacting to more faculty political statements and beliefs. This sort of debate and engagement should be encouraged on a college campus. The faculty shouldn't be acting like Ms. Jacobson did, and stifle that debate with an act of groos intolerance.
The faculty group is called Educators for Reproductive Freedom. So far, it has held two lunchtime discussions on campus with speakers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.
The group's purpose is to learn more about laws and pending legislation that affect women's reproductive rights, said philosophy professor Nancy Hancock, one of the organizers.
Pro-life students got wind of the meetings and passed out literature near the doors. They also quickly elected officers, wrote a constitution and mounted the cross display.
Hancock said she considered the student activity an overreaction.
Yes, I'm sure she does. I'm sure she is sickened and dismayed over those who protest outside of abortion clinics. I'm sure she thinks everyone is a nut who thinks that life begins at conception. And I'm sure she thinks people like Marcie, Sabrina, and I--who argue the legal jurisprudence of Roe, and believe it was decided incorrectly on that basis--are idiots. When Sally Jaconbson has a law degree, she can argue that point. Until then, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
But Thursday, she said her group was appalled by the destruction of the cross display. None of the members had anything to do with it, she said.
"We would like to see respect for freedom of speech on this campus," Hancock said.
Personally, I'd like to see more respect, period, from professors. For a very long time now the Left has permeated the institutions of higher learning, believing that the way to change things they don't like is to twist what is taught, and create a whole new bloc of like-minded individuals. I avoided this sort of garbage when I was in college. Marcie has had a run-in or two with a couple of her professors over ideological differences, but nothing to this extent, and nothing they've said to her has sunk in. That's the good thing.
The bad thing is that for every one "Marcie" in school, there are fifty willing minions who would have followed Ms. Jacobson out to that display to wreck it. So, while the fight for academic freedom and students' rights on campus is a little lopsided right now, it's far from over, and we're not yet ready to concede the field of battle to these brutish ideologues.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 1:44 PM
1 Comments:
Being a private citizen, I'm permitted to prepare a list I call Anti America and terrorist. At one time it was called un-American but that's in disfavor. The Professor referred to has made my Anti-America list. Why is it that a professor doesn't understand freedom of speech, private property rights? Rawriter
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