The Case of the Disinvited Producer

Dammit.

I was just about to curl up on the couch for a little nap before spending the evening doing some reading for class tomorrow. And then I came across this story, which unquestionably thrusts now-former Ronan, Montana High School principal Tom Stack into the running for a Curmie award. I thought about letting it slide, given that idiot school administrators are pretty thick on the ground across the rest of the country, so the fact that one popped up in Montana isn’t exactly news.

Stories about graduation speeches generally bore me nearly as much as the speeches themselves do. Why I’m writing is simple. Although this story is news to me, it’s been lighting up the right-wing blogosphere, and virtually only the right-wing blogosphere, for several days. And whereas I can’t stop those folks from claiming that no one on the left cares about censorship when it happens to someone on the right, I can at least provide evidence that such a claim isn’t true. So I do need to write this and get it up on the blogsite.

Here’s what happened: Oscar-winning Hollywood producer Gerald Molen was invited to address the seniors at Ronan High. When he arrived at the venue, he was disinvited by Principal Stack. As the graduation ceremony apparently wasn’t until June 4 and Molen was already describing the incident in the past tense on May 26, we can assume that this wasn’t a graduation speech per se, but perhaps a Senior Day activity of some sort. This particular detail doesn’t matter.

Here’s what does: Molen, whose Hollywood credits include the likes of Schindler’s List, the first two Jurassic Park movies, and Twister, had, in his own words, invested “three weeks of preparation, research and re-write after re-write.” He planned a presentation which

…dealt with my hopes for their futures. It was a cheerleading presentation that allowed me to remind them of their individual greatness and opportunities for the future. My intent was to inspire and motivate those looking for an encouraging word and message of hope beyond the walls of the institution they were leaving to the next chapter in their young lives. It spoke to the contributions and greatness of their teachers, administrators, parents and peers but with an emphasis on their ability to conceive, to believe and to achieve. But I guess I was wrong about teachers and/or school administrators.

Since my career had centered around the motion picture industry, I had set out to challenge them with the thought that they might each write their own movie script. A script that would have them as the writer, director, producer and star. A script filled with step-by-step goals of proper preparation and scenes depicting them as lawyers, doctors, captains of industry and/or having careers as they saw themselves in 20 or 30 or 40 years in the future.

Sounds pretty ominous, right? Well, you see, Mr. Molen is a “a right-wing conservative” (this description courtesy of the Department of Redundancy Department), and “some callers” had expressed concerns.

This is in Montana, remember, hardly to be confused with San Francisco. And Mr. Stack is, as Eugene Volokh notes, safe on 1st amendment grounds. But he is certainly as stupid as he is rude. Seriously, if you can’t muster the intestinal fortitude to say no to a couple of “callers” based on the principles of intellectual curiosity you’re supposed to be upholding, if you can’t at least tell Mr. Molen of your decision before he arrives at the end of his 90-minute drive out of common courtesy, if you can’t even look at the text of his speech before making your final decision out of due process, then at least behave professionally because the guy you’re about to insult has the Hollywood Reporter on speed-dial, and your sorry-ass provincialism is going to be national news.

Had Mr. Molen simply not be asked to begin with, of course, there would be no problem. And it is, of course, Mr. Stack’s prerogative to invite or disinvite whomever he chooses. That makes his decisions legal and constitutional. That’s a long way from smart. Finding an excuse for his behavior is impossible; finding an explanation is hard enough. Perhaps in asking Mr. Molen to speak to the students, Stack didn’t know in advance that his guest was (gasp!) a conservative. In other words, he didn’t do his homework. Perhaps he thinks that in Montana, of all places, no one wants to hear a conservative (because he, Stack, doesn’t?). Perhaps one of those complaining callers has compromising photographs of Stack with barnyard animals. Or perhaps, as Jack Marshall has suggested, he “made a cost-benefit analysis: mistreating one Hollywood producer whom he probably would never have anything to do with again, versus angering a group of bigoted, narrow-minded parents who could make his life miserable.”

I see no evidence that Molen said or did anything outrageous between the time he was invited and when he was disinvited, as, for example, when Tom Paulin’s fawning commentary on Slobodan Milošević got him disinvited from a speech at Harvard a few years ago. No, this was just a case of a high school principal who lacked the integrity, the intelligence, the moral courage, and the quotidian politeness to do the right thing.

Gentle Reader, if you’ve followed this blog at all closely for any period of time, you’ve seen me wish fondly that someone on “my side” politically or philosophically wasn’t such an ass. Assuming Mr. Molen’s account to be even generally accurate, I really don’t want the likes of Tom Stack representing me.

Mr. Molen, I doubt that you’ll read these words, but if you do, allow me to apologize on behalf of progressives and educators alike. We aren’t all like that. I promise.

Farewell, Fighting Sioux

I open by quoting myself, over six years ago:

Quick: what's the biggest crisis facing the NCAA? Graduation rates? Steroids? Illicit payments to players? Coaches trying to strong-arm faculty into changing grades for athletes who can't be bothered to go to class? The repercussions of the NBA's decision to impose a minimum age requirement? The fact that some programs produce more convicted felons than they do graduates? Tutors actually writing papers and even taking tests for athletes? The fact that an undefeated Division I football team has been denied the right to play for the national championship two of the last three years... or that a team whose only regular-season loss was to the #1 team in the country lost its BCS bid after beating a bowl team on the road in a rainstorm by “only” ten points (it would have been more except that 1) there was an outrageously bad referee's call and 2) they chose not to run up the score at the end of the game)? No, apparently the big crisis is Native American mascots.

The details have changed, but the NCAA’s absurd priorities haven’t.

I listened via computer today to the radio broadcast of today Kansas-North Dakota basketball game. It was, according to the KU announcers, at least, the last game UND will be allowed to play as the “Fighting Sioux,” because the NCAA still has nothing better to do with their time and resources than to impose Political Correctness on colleges and universities.

Certainly the disaster that is the BCS isn’t a problem. Nor is the considerable evidence that last year’s Heisman Trophy winner was bought and paid for by the eventual national champion. Nor are the proposals to expand the basketball tournament to a ridiculous number of teams, requiring players to spend yet more time out of the classroom for the sole purpose of lining the coffers of the NCAA, the networks, and the athletic departments. Nor is the confusion about eligibility, nor the underhanded attempts to circumvent the rules. Only the specifics of the real issues have changed, in other words, but at least this year’s BCS fiasco is different than the one I wrote about in that earlier post. The NCAA’s go-to choice for avoiding real issues, however, remains absolutely unaltered.

What makes this even more preposterous than the quotidian stupidity of the NCAA and apparently everyone with any position of authority in it is that virtually no one with a legitimate stake in the matter wants the change. The university and its fans like the symbol. Moreover, the Sioux mascot is, unlike, say, the grinning buffoon that is the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo (or the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s pugnacious leprechaun, for that matter), a simple and respectful emblem.

According to Time’s Sean Gregory,

Spirit Lake, the Sioux reservation closest to the University of North Dakota's campus in Grand Forks, overwhelmingly backs the name. The tribe argues, and evidence seems to support the case, that Spirit Lake and another local Sioux reservation, Standing Rock, actually gave UND its blessing to use the nickname in a religious ceremony over 40 years ago.

In other words, the people who are supposedly insulted by the mascot… aren’t. In fact, they’re suing the NCAA for violation of religious rights.

Here’s Gregory again:

Fighting Sioux supporters argue that the NCAA is violating their religious rights. The Grand Forks Herald reported on July 21, 1969, that “a band of Standing Rock Sioux formally gave UND teams the right to use the name of ‘Fighting Sioux’ for their athletic teams.” [Spirit Lake member Frank] Black Cloud insists that Spirit Lake members also took part in this ritual blessing. (UND recognizes that a ceremony took place but says the intent of it remains unclear.) So why should a current tribal council, the NCAA or anyone else reverse the wishes of the elders who are so respected in Native American culture? “If we let an outside entity dictate to us how we should feel about our sacred ceremonies,” says Black Cloud, “what does that say about us?”

True, when the university sued the NCAA over the latter’s interventionist nannyism, the settlement gave UND three years to secure the blessing of the two Sioux tribes closest to the Grand Forks campus: Spirit Lake and Standing Rock. Of course, the latter had already done so in 1969, and even if Black Cloud is wrong about Spirit Lake joining in, a full tribal vote overwhelmingly supported maintaining the Fight Sioux symbol for the university. “‘UND has allowed us to participate and have input on some of the Indian programs they have developed,’ says John Chaske, a Spirit Lake member. ‘The school deserves to use our name. We should take pride in that. There's nothing wrong with that.’”

Ah, but despite that religious ceremony four decades ago, the Standing Rock tribal council voted against the name, and apparently refuse to put the issue to a full tribal vote, where the results might be different: “‘Aw, man, it's not right for people not to have a say,’ says Archie D. Fool Bear, a member of Standing Rock. Fool Bear says he has petition signatures from 1,000 Standing Rock residents opposing the nickname change, and he is confident his side would prevail in a full vote.”

Of course, other people who have no particular interest have weighed in. The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, for example, has voiced its objection. If I remember my history correctly, this is rather like the British Prime Minister condemning a depiction of Frenchmen that the folks in Paris, Calais, and Marseilles think is fine. Black Cloud’s response: “We, as tribal members and Sioux, we don't tell other tribes what to do. We would expect that same respect from them as well.” Good luck with that.

I’d quote myself again:

I come at this issue from three perspectives which some people don't have. I have some Native American heritage: I'm two generations removed from having enough Narragansett to qualify for tribal membership; I've always been at least as proud of that part of my bloodline as I am of any of the rest of the hodge-podge of English, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, Scots, and whatever else which comprises my ancestry. As an undergrad I attended a college which, because it started as a school for the Native American population of western New Hampshire, was for many years represented by an Indian symbol, although its official use stopped a year or two before I matriculated.

I am a former resident of Lawrence, Kansas, where there are two universities with sports teams: the University of Kansas Jayhawks and the Haskell Indian Nations University Indians. That's right, at a school that might reasonably be expected to be as sensitive as any to portrayals of Native American populations, they're not the Haskell Indigenous Peoples Thunderstorms or the Haskell Native American Rottweilers: the word “Indian” appears in the school name, and it is the symbol of the university.

But, of course, the NCAA adopts a profoundly racist attitude in its attempt to be inclusive (or whatever the pet phrase is these days). Essentially it is this: actual members of the Sioux nation aren’t intelligent or worldly enough to know they’re being insulted. That linkage—unlike, say, the Fighting Scots of Monmouth College—is “hostile” and “abusive” because a bunch of people who have never come closer to Sioux culture than buying a cassette tape of Siouxsie and the Banshees (anybody but me remember them?) say so.

One more snippet from days gone by:

Of course, only Native American imagery is affected. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish, a representation which really does perpetuate a negative stereo, is unaffected. So is the oxymoronic Fighting Quaker of the University of Pennsylvania. “Warriors” are OK if they're not Native Americans: apparently Anglo-Saxon Warriors are fine. So are Spartans, Trojans, Vikings, Aztecs, and other no-doubt caricatured representations of real civilizations.

But give the NCAA time. They’ll start coming after parodies of professions next: the Oklahoma State Cowboys, Purdue Boilermakers, Santa Barbara Gauchos, and Nebraska Cornhuskers. The Sooners of Oklahoma will be forced to adopt a less euphemistic mascot and become the Land Thieves. Anyway who lost a loved one to the UDF will be offended by the Syracuse Orangemen. Then, perhaps, the NCAA will start arguing that real people's lives have been disrupted by natural phenomena, so the Miami Hurricanes, Tulane Green Wave, and Iowa State Cyclones will have to go. And just wait ‘til the feminists really start thinking about the implications of the Kennesaw State Hooters or the Oregon State Beavers.

Yeah, what that guy said.

Happy New Year, everyone. And if you haven’t done so already, please vote for the Curmie. Details here.

Sorry: Patriotism Is Not Welcome Here

It has been too long since I posted here, and much has happened in the interim. I do want to talk about the #Occupy movement, both in theory and in practice, but that post will require more time than I have tonight, and I want to get something posted (among other things, I promised someone who included me on their blogroll that I’d post at least once a month… a promise I technically didn’t quite keep, as it is).

Anyway, one of the stories that attracted little attention amidst the horrific actions of police across the country and the antics of whoever happens to be the current GOP Flavor of the Month, is the follow-up to an incident I outlined a year and a half ago. Here was my take at the time:

In Morgan Hill, CA, a group of five boys wore American flag clothing—bandanas, shirts, shorts—and were told that such apparel was inappropriate. So far, it sounds like something from my youth: in those halcyon days, clothing featuring a flag motif was often worn by protesters against the Vietnam War, and, because such designs tended to be found on the seats of jeans, or in other places where the symbol might touch the ground or otherwise be defaced, we were forbidden to wear anything with an American flag. Now, of course, such apparel is considered patriotic.

Anyway, these guys show up at school wearing this stuff and the Head Moron Assistant Principal tells them they’ve got to take it off, go home, or face suspension. You see, it was Cinco de Mayo, and expressions of American patriotism were deemed insensitive to Hispanic students. OK, I’ll say this once: Give me a damned break.

A month or so later, the boys’ parents filed suit: their lawyer spelled out what they wanted: “‘We’re not seeking money damages, we are asking the court for an order that the school acted unconstitutionally by restricting the students first amendment rights. And we are also asking the court for an injunctive relief, indicating the school is forbidden from practicing those policies in the future,’ said Attorney William Becker.”

All things considered, that was a pretty reasonable demand, given the state of the American judicial system, in which suing people for the most insignificant of slights has become de rigeur.

Now comes word that the suit was dismissed by federal judge James Ware (yes, that would be the James Ware whose nomination to the Court of Appeals in 1997-98 was derailed by evidence that he is a serial liar. For the record, he was appointed to his current post by Bush I and subsequently nominated to the Court of Appeals by Clinton: he is, then, a non-partisan incompetent). The defendants—the school district and the (now former) Principal and (still, apparently) Assistant Principal—argued:

• that the claim against the district was banned by the 11th amendment

• that free speech rights don’t apply in this case because the school officials suspected the potential for “disruption”

• that the plaintiffs offered no evidence they were discriminated against

• that the school’s dress code provides “adequate notice of what attire is prohibited”

OK, I’m not a lawyer, so I look at what makes sense, not what legal precedent might be. The fact that “the Ninth Circuit has consistently held in California, because of the manner in which funds are dispersed to school districts by the state, school districts are agencies of the state for sovereign immunity purposes” tells me only that the Ninth Circuit may well have been home to some rather dim bulbs over the years.

More importantly, the whole “potential for disruption” argument is now, and frankly always has been, little more than an excuse for intellectual cowardice. It’s what gets controversial speakers uninvited from college campuses. It’s what justifies the worst excesses of “political correctness.” It’s what craven administrators, mayors, and police chiefs hide behind when they really, really, really want to censor speech (cf. the #Occupy folks) but know they have to circumvent that pesky First Amendment somehow.

Which brings us to the most colossally, stupendously, mind-meltingly inane part of Judge Ware’s cretinous decision:

Defendants have provided a non-discriminatory basis for asking Plaintiffs to remove their American flag attire. Defendants have put forth significant evidence demonstrating that Plaintiffs were asked to change clothes in order to protect their own safety. Plaintiffs have not offered any evidence demonstrating that students wearing the colors of the Mexican flag were targeted for violence. To the contrary, the undisputed evidence shows that Plaintiffs were the only students on campus whose safety was threatened that day, at least to the knowledge of Defendants. In addition, Defendant Rodriguez [the Assistant Principal] has testified that he did not see any students wearing the Mexican flag on their clothing during the day. He also testified that he did not see any students with Mexican flags displayed on their person until he saw photos in the newspaper in the days following Cinco de Mayo.

Ware therefore dismissed the “equal protection” argument. Please, someone, tell me that Ware is indeed the stupidest federal judge in the country, because if he isn’t, then all is lost. Let’s parse out what passes for argument here. Basically, it boils down to this:

“You have freedom of speech unless you do something completely inoffensive—as evidenced by the statement at the time that the students are free to wear American flag clothing any other day of the school year—that some over-sensitive jackass who disagrees with you might use as a pretense for violence. In that case, of course, it is not that student’s right to commit a felony that ought to be curtailed, but your 1st Amendment rights to free expression. Moreover, since the Assistant Principal can’t be expected to do his damned job and know what’s going on in the school, he can claim that your self-evident claim to unequal treatment doesn’t really hold because he didn’t see what everyone else in the school saw... and what appeared in the local media.” [I think he’s bucking for a job in the UC-Davis administration.]

Seriously, what would happen if the roles were reversed: if it were the Hispanic students who were prevented from expressing their ethnic pride on this trumped-up holiday little celebrated in their ancestral homeland because of the threat of violence from a gang of Anglo punks? How condescending would the “for your own protection” pabulum sound? How stupid would suppressing the inoffensive in order to pander to the potentially violent seem? How outraged would the left-leaning punditry (other than moi, bien sûr) be?

I have little doubt that the plaintiffs in this case are right little assholes, and quite possibly racists. But anyone who thinks Judge Ware would have ruled the same way had it been the “minority” students whose rights were being infringed is stupider than he is. And that’s saying rather a lot.

It's OK to Kill Santa Claus, But Not Your Dean

A recent blurb on the Chronicle of Higher Education website links to this article about an associate professor at the Widener School of Law, a 26-year veteran teacher named Lawrence Connell, who is fighting to keep his job after he used a hypothetical story about killing his dean as a means of illustrating a point and attempting to provide a little mnemonic assistance to his students.

Wade Malcolm reports that “at least two students filed complaints with administrators, calling it violent, racist and sexist, according to Connell's attorney, Thomas Neuberger.” The dean in question, you see, is black and female. And… cue the Rorschach Test.

The story really couldn’t be more predictable. On the one side, we have a hand-wringing bureaucracy concerned about the tender sensibilities of law students. It’s not that the dean is hyper-sensitive, you see, it’s that this is an “‘ongoing pattern’ of misconduct” such as “cursing and coarse behavior,” “racist and sexist statements,” and “violent, personal scenarios that demean and threaten [his] colleagues.”

On the other side, Mr. Connell’s academic freedom is being threatened, he wouldn’t be being harassed by the administration if he weren’t a conservative, and besides, some of his best friends… Cripes, I can’t even finish the sentence, it’s so trite.

The truth? Well, I know what I believe, but I also note for the record that my belief is set firmly in Jello: it is perfectly possible that I’m backing the wrong horse in this race. It may well be, in other words, that Mr. Connell really is crossing a line. Or that the administration’s concerns are politically motivated. Or that he’s quite consciously pushing the envelope and they’re over-reacting.

What do know is this: short of actual threats against colleagues, and by this I mean statements that a reasonable observer could not construe otherwise, there are no grounds here to revoke Mr. Connell’s tenure. (I assume he’s tenured, given his rank and his length of service, although the article doesn’t explicitly say so.) The whole idea of academic freedom, and indeed of the tenure system, is to protect faculty from the political or personal agendas of those up the food chain from them. It means nothing if “controversial” is allowed to be conflated with “bad.” I’m not arguing here that sexist or racist comments aren’t problematic, but this is a freaking law school, and I confess I have difficulty mustering a considerable amount of sympathy for the fragile little flowers who can’t endure a bit of a challenge to their world-view.

More to the point, the kinds of examples noted in the article—assuming, of course, that these scenaria really are the crux of the contretemps—sound more than a little familiar to me. I don’t recall ever using my dean in such a hypothetical situation, but I very well might have. I know that in discussing Aristotle I’ve hypothesized that George W. Bush got hit by a bus (tragedy requires the protagonist be important). But, curiously enough, I never got visited by the Secret Service for that flight of fancy, because it was clear that I was making a very different point than threatening the President. And, of course, the victim of that purely theoretical bus accident is now Barack Obama.

Actually, of course, my style is more to use students in the room for my musings: this one is the playwright; that one, the producer; the one over there, the angel. On the very day I read about the Widener case, I was talking of Bertolt Brecht’s “Street Scene,” and created a story in which a driver ran over a pedestrian because he was distracted by trying to get his Egg McMuffin out of the bag. The driver and pedestrian were both students in the class—and, get this—the driver was an African-American man and the victim was a petite white woman. No rational observer, certainly not one who had seen previous classes with different students as characters in these hypothetical examples, would come to the conclusion that there was any message in my “casting” decision—it was simply these students’ turn, as it were. But someone with an agenda might see it differently.

This happens all the time, by the way. There was the student who complained to my superiors that she received the only failing grade on a speech because she was black. It clearly had nothing to do with the fact that her 6-minute-maximum speech rambled on largely incoherently for 17 minutes. There was the student who quoted me to my dean as saying “women simply aren’t very important,” oh-so-casually omitting that the context of that statement made it clear I was discussing the socio-political mores of Ancient Greece. (Did I mention that she didn’t get the role she wanted at auditions the previous week?) There are other examples, just from my own experience, but you get the idea. To be a teacher at any level is ultimately to face situations like this.

As for cursing and coarse behavior—I doubt that I often go a full week without doing something along these lines that someone might not like. It is a strategy I employ to make a point, to loosen up the classroom environment, to try to make an idea more memorable. It works for me, and, if student and administrative evaluations are to be believed, it seems to have its desired effect. I’ve taught a couple thousand students in my current position, and I recall no complaints. On the other hand, in a previous job at a not dissimilar university, I got a half-dozen negative comments in the first semester. So I changed my approach, because the tactics I had been employing were actually counter-productive in that place and time for enough students that a change of direction seemed warranted. So I adapted for the short term and reverted to my old vulgar self as soon as I left that school.

That said, while I don’t claim to know what’s really going on in Mr. Connell’s case, I’m virtually certain it has, well, not a f*cking thing to do with being a little crude. That’s a throw-in complaint, something that is at least objective: he used a certain word derived from the Anglo-Saxon or he didn’t.

But back to my earlier point: this is the kind of case where what we think is largely a reflection of who we are, rather than of the facts of the case. A glance at the comments on the article confirms this. Here’s thelawone:

Mr. Connell is no saint, he once referred to students in such a disparaging way during an in-school debate that he was barred by an earlier dean of the law school from ever participating in a debate again. His rhetoric is not provoke thought as any good professor should, it incites anger and promotes fear which no professor should. As a Widener student, his leaving, if it comes to that, is a win for Widener students ... not a loss.

By contrast, here are the comments of AmazedinDE:

How much does one wish to bet that the two complaining students are African-American? If they can't deal with hypothetical situations offered by their professor to make a point of law understandable, if not memorable, then they should quit law school and get a job at McDonald's where they won't have to think about anything but Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets.

Probably the most valuable insight is offered by ClassicFriend:

I am a Widener Law Alumni and I had professor Connell for Criminal Law and everything they said about his teaching methods are true. He killed people, he made them sell drugs, and yes he cussed. But, last I looked we are adults and can handle a cuss word. I remember he always used to go back to killing Dean Ammons as a default and quite honestly could you think of a better person that everyone in the class room is guaranteed to know? He also killed celebrities, politicians, he even killed Santa Claus. He was an equal opportunist hypothetical murderer….

I sincerely hope Widener and Dean Ammons do what they told me to do on graduation day. Show courage and do the right thing in the face of pressure. Professor Connell is a good, effective and unique professor. The students need to lighten up, I experienced what they experienced and I can tell you, they are over reacting.

My first thought is that this case sure is populated by lawyers who don’t understand grammar or punctuation. My second thought is that Mr. Connell is, quite possibly, an ass. And he is, even more probably, good at his job. Is he being persecuted because he’s a conservative? Possibly, but I doubt it. More likely he’s just a pain in some administrator’s butt. I’m not betting the mortgage payment, but I’ve got 20 bucks that says the dean (or someone) is a little thin-skinned and wants to get rid of an annoyance: not the smartest thing to do, given the fact that he’s a law professor and all…