‘Academic freedom’ now apparently includes threatening to beat the shit out of someone

When last I wrote about the case of Melissa Click, I supported the University of Missouri’s decision to fire her because “the principle of academic freedom does not cover misdemeanor assault.”[1] Click had “called for ‘muscle’ to remove a student journalist” who was taking photographs for ESPN as Concerned Student 1950 “protesters form[ed] a giant circle around the encampment, arms interlocked, chanting, at one point, ‘Ho ho, reporters have got to go.'” A video recording of the incident recorded an unidentified voice saying, “Back off our personal space,” despite the fact that the protest occurred on the university quad—a very public space.[2] Suffice it to say, I was not impressed.[3]

“Legally, the photojournalist [Tim Tai] was on completely rock-solid ground,” said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. “That’s not debatable at all.” The entire episode unfolded in the middle of a public quad at a public university. The protesters had every right to camp out and rally, and Tai had every right to take photos, he said.[4]

I was also less than impressed when the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) announced an investigation of Click’s firing, saying “Click’s reinstatement is ‘the only acceptable resolution.’”[5] Unsurprisingly, the organization has now affirmed that

By denying Professor Click an adjudicative hearing of record before a duly constituted faculty body, the board of curators violated basic principles of academic due process. These principles exist for the purpose of safeguarding academic freedom, and thus, the board of curators’ action set a dangerous precedent that threatens the academic freedom of all faculty members at the University of Missouri.[6]

I continue to disagree that academic freedom includes implicitly threatening to beat the shit out of a student journalist who was perfectly within his rights (I will return to this point). The local prosecutor certainly seems to agree that the student’s rights were violated: Click agreed to a deal in which she “must complete 20 hours of community service and not break the law for a year to avoid [criminal] prosecution” for misdemeanor assault.[7]

In its statement, the AAUP also claims:

While the investigating committee cannot exclude the possibility that a review of the case by a representative faculty body might have produced a result similar to that reached by the curators, the committee is not convinced that Professor Click’s actions, even when viewed in the most unfavorable light, were adequate grounds for her dismissal. The AAUP maintains that adequate grounds for dismissal must be related, directly and substantially, to the fitness of faculty members in their professional capacities as teachers or researchers.[8]

This strikes me as an extraordinarily narrow view of what constitutes professional capacities or adequate grounds. I see three ways of picking this apart.

First, it seems to me that the AAUP is very narrowly delimiting power relationships between students and teachers to students presently enrolled in the teachers’ classes. This excludes the possibility that such students might need to enroll in these teachers’ classes in the future and the possibility that students’ reputations might affect their relationships even with non-involved teachers. It should hardly need saying that professors hold considerable power over students and anything that happens between professors and students, in or out of class, occurs in the context of a professional relationship (but not necessarily only a professional relationship) and therefore reflects on the fitness of both.

Second, Click was a communication professor.[9] It is inconceivable to me (in addition to my Ph.D., I have a B.A. in Mass Communication and an M.A. in Speech Communication) that she was unaware of the meaning of her command to get “some muscle over here.”[10] The implicit meaning of any call for force is that force will be used to gain compliance and the connotation of “muscle” in such a context is that the force to be used will be brute force, meaning that she was, as I earlier suggested, effectively threatening to have someone beat the shit out of that student photographer should he fail to comply, even though he had been acting entirely within his rights[11] and would have been entirely within his rights to refuse.

And Click claims she wants to be understood for her intention rather than her words. She claims that her intention was to protect protesters within an encampment and this may indeed have been the case,[12] but her fitness as a communication professor also entails an awareness that, as her department chair said, “Intimidation is never an acceptable form of communication.”[13] Her plea to be understood for her intention[14] makes clear that her carefully phrased apology, in which she “regret[s] the language and strategies [she] used,”[15] indeed excludes her intention. Which makes her apology pretty fucking weak for a ferocious connotation that she had to be well aware of even in the heat of the moment.

Third, given what Click’s department chair so mildly called ‘intimidation,’[16] the AAUP’s construction of ‘academic freedom’ is also breathtaking in the narrowness of its scope. This is academic freedom for Click and her colleagues, but in its statement (I have not reviewed the full report), the AAUP never mentions academic freedom for students,[17] a positively bizarre omission. Academic freedom properly applies to everyone involved in scholarship; institutionally, it applies to professors and students alike. But it appears the AAUP is unconcerned for any of the student photographer’s rights, let alone academic freedom rights, in this case.

I should acknowledge that I have been a member of the AAUP for many years now, stemming from when I was a graduate student and I taught public speaking at California State University, East Bay, in Hayward, California. I am deeply disappointed in the organization’s handling of this case.

  1. [1]David Benfell, “On the firing of Melissa Click,” Not Housebroken, February 25, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8765
  2. [2]Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors
  3. [3]David Benfell, “Squatting on the University of Missouri quad,” Not Housebroken, November 11, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8296
  4. [4]Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors
  5. [5]Rio Fernandes, “Melissa Click Says She Was Scapegoated, as AAUP Opens Investigation,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2016, http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/melissa-click-says-she-was-scapegoated-as-aaup-launches-investigation/109304
  6. [6]Henry Reichman to AAUP members, “Investigation at University of Missouri,” May 19, 2016.
  7. [7]Andy Thomason, “Missouri Professor Who Accosted Journalist Reaches Deal to Avoid Prosecution,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 2016, http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/missouri-professor-who-accosted-journalist-reaches-deal-to-avoid-prosecution/108210
  8. [8]Henry Reichman to AAUP members, “Investigation at University of Missouri,” May 19, 2016.
  9. [9]Deborah Douglas and Afi-Odelia Scruggs, “Mizzou protesters could use some media training,” Columbia Journalism Review, November 11, 2015, http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/mizzou_protesters_media.php; Rio Fernandes, “Melissa Click Says She Was Scapegoated, as AAUP Opens Investigation,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2016, http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/melissa-click-says-she-was-scapegoated-as-aaup-launches-investigation/109304; Steve Kolowich, “Melissa Click, U. of Missouri Professor Who Riled Free-Speech Advocates, Is Fired,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 25, 2016, http://chronicle.com/article/Melissa-Click-U-of-Missouri/235499; Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors; Richard Pérez-Peña and Christine Hauser, “University of Missouri Professor Who Confronted Photographer Quits Journalism Post,” New York Times, November 10, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/university-of-missouri-names-law-professor-to-diversity-post.html; Henry Reichman to AAUP members, “Investigation at University of Missouri,” May 19, 2016; Andy Thomason, “U. of Missouri Rejects Melissa Click’s Appeal of Her Firing,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 15, 2016, http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-missouri-rejects-melissa-clicks-appeal-of-her-firing/109474; Robin Wilson, “Being Melissa Click,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24, 2016, http://chronicle.com/article/Being-Melissa-Click/236226
  10. [10]Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors
  11. [11]Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors
  12. [12]Robin Wilson, “Being Melissa Click,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24, 2016, http://chronicle.com/article/Being-Melissa-Click/236226
  13. [13]Mitchell McKinney, quoted in Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors
  14. [14]Robin Wilson, “Being Melissa Click,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24, 2016, http://chronicle.com/article/Being-Melissa-Click/236226
  15. [15]Melissa Click, quoted in Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors
  16. [16]Mitchell McKinney, quoted in Josh Logue, “Journalists as the Enemy,” Inside Higher Ed, November 11, 2015, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/11/video-shows-mizzou-student-press-clash-protestors
  17. [17]Henry Reichman to AAUP members, “Investigation at University of Missouri,” May 19, 2016.

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