36 thoughts on “FIRE!”

1. First of all, shouting fire in a crowded theater where a fire has broken out is not only legal, it is highly recommended. Shouting fire FALSELY in such a situation is a problem.

   Second of all, I watched the training video in question, and one of the graduate student trainers said the following: “The Supreme Court has actually upheld that hate speech, derogatory speech, any of the -isms do not apply in the classroom because they do not foster a productive learning environment. And so, as instructors we can tell our students: ‘no, you do not have the right to say that. Stop talking right now’, right?”

   Please show me a US Supreme Court decision that stipulates what she claims. There is none.

   Third of all, this column falsely suggests that FIRE takes an “absolutist” stance on free speech. This is not true. They are well aware that there are limits, such as . . .. shouting fire FALSELY in a crowded theater. But they are also stout defenders of free speech and academic freedom by those across the political spectrum.

   • It is a not uncommon misconception among some people on the left that something called “hate speech” has been deemed illegal by the Supreme Court. It hasn’t, but it’s hardly shocking that a graduate student writing instructor might mistakenly believe it has. Similarly, it is a common misconception among some on the right that the Court has deemed the U.S. to be “a Christian country.” It hasn’t, but it would hardly be shocking if a similarly situated instructor at, say, Baylor, might in some setting make that claim. There must be many thousands of these sorts of training workshops at U.S. colleges and universities every semester; should the voicing at one of them of either of these misconceptions justify charges of censorship and intimidation like those made by FIRE in this case? I think not.

2. Harassment or intimidation targeted against particular individuals is not protected by the First Amendment, but students have a right to believe whatever they believe, to maintain or modify their beliefs as they see fit, and to express their views on matters under discussion in a classroom, even if others find those views offensive or otherwise objectionable. Students may be asked to explain and justify their ideas and evaluated on the ability to do so, but to silence or punish them simply because their beliefs are unacceptable violates their academic freedom. Rather than attacking FIRE for positions it does not hold, we need to discuss how best to maintain classroom civility while respecting student freedom of expression.

3. Threatening people is “like shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” Disruptive classroom behavior is not about “speech,” free or otherwise. Disruptive classroom behavior interferes with learning; it is covered in student codes of conduct for a reason, and that reason is not about giving or taking away freedoms.

   If the students’ behavior disrupts the leaning goals, it’s disruptive behavior. This disruptive behavior is not like “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. At least in my experience, there are ways to deal with this kind of problem of which the end point may be dropping students from a course.

   Now, are there practical problems–i.e. the economic model on which higher education now runs where student fees and tuition constitute the largest chunk of revenue covering operating costs, thus positioning students as financial patrons who administrators are often too quick to appease? Absolutely. So practically speaking, I get the difficulty with students hell bent on disrupting an educational experience wasting everyone’s time and energies on their often initial launching of their political careers.

   Nonetheless, I don’t see the advantage of turning an issue of classroom disruption into yet another exercise of academics inventing new modifiers for “free speech,” such as “absolutist.” This kind of reconfiguration of speech tends to operate in the real world as a signal one is part of an “in the know” group rather than referring to anything substantive. That is, I don’t believe that adding that term, absolutist, does anything to change existing and well established legal precedence in which the US Constitution has a “robust” view of freedom of speech.

   We should drop the pretentions involved in this kind of ritualized purely academic game around “speech.” We should organize around insuring that disruptive behavior on the part of any students does not stand just because politicians, regents, administrators, etc. don’t have any good ideas about how to shift our economic models of funding higher ed.

4. The author of the original article is identified as a professor. Whatever else, professors are in charge of the classroom. Any professor worth his/her salt should now how to turn an incident of hateful speech into a learning opportunity. Blanket condemnation of speech, especially that of students, should not be welcome on any campus. Or, if you don;t know how to control your classroom, you shouldn’t be in it.

5. The comments to this post do not acknowledge the context in which these kinds of incidents are taking place and the fact that F.I.R.E. cannot — indeed, everyone cannot — in good faith take a “values neutral” approach to speech at this moment in history, if we ever could. What is “disruptive’ behavior to one person might be “free speech” to another and that is the problem. Faculty need to have the ability to make this call for their own classrooms and not have F.I.R.E. take a page out of Campus Reform and post videos and names of instructors that they determine (on the basis of what? one video? one student complaint?) have “censored” someone.

   We also need to acknowledge that F.I.R.E does take a relatively “absolutist” position on free speech in that they will sacrifice nuance to protect speech. It’s faculty’s job to supply the nuance and we need to have the autonomy to do that without having campaigns targeting us every time someone decides they want to make a name for themselves in the “culture wars” by attacking an instructor.

6. It would be difficult for me to disagree more with Michael Givel and his support for censorship in the name of “shouting fire in a crowded movie theater.” Falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater should be prohibited because you are physically endangering people by asserting a physical threat of fire, the equivalent of falsely pulling a fire alarm. The legal standard here is “clear and present danger.” If you agree with the Supreme Court in Schenck v. US, that sending letters to conscripted soldiers opposing the draft is the same as immediately endangering human life, then you might accept Givel’s belief that causing “acrimony” in a class is the same “clear and present danger” to human life as shouting fire in a theater. But I think causing a panic by maliciously announcing a physical threat is fundamentally different from causing controversy in a classroom with an offensive idea.

   Many of the laws seeking to ban Critical Race Theory use exactly the same legal theory Givel embraces. He says racist ideas should be banned from class, and the right-wing anti-CRT laws use precisely the same logic–they just disagree about what counts as racist. The anti-CRT laws are a good reason why we shouldn’t ban speech just because someone doesn’t like it.

   Of course, there isn’t any “absolutist right to espouse any racist, sexist, and homophobic comments in a classroom,” and nobody (including FIRE) says this. When comments meet a legal standard of harassment, they can be punished. And professors have broad latitude to control the discussion in a classroom even when there’s no wrongdoing. But none of this has anything to do with a “clear and present danger” and dubious standards that are used to silence dissent.

   Givel misstates OU’s student code of conduct, claiming: “Abusive conduct—including intimidation, harassment, and humiliation—is prohibited, per se.” No, the code says that such abuse is only prohibited if it is “sufficiently severe and pervasive that it alters the conditions of education or employment” and adds, “offhanded comments and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not amount to abusive conduct.” Givel also claims that the disruption standard should apply to controversial ideas, which is an extraordinarily dangerous power to give to the administration to silence critical thought.

   Whether it’s Justice Holmes or Givel doing it, misusing the theater analogy to ban any speech you dislike is a dangerous idea. It’s like playing with fire.

   • Hi John, You have not held a faculty appointment and been responsible for a classroom for an entire term, is that right? Professor Givel talks about his job becoming much harder when FIRE and his own DEI office respond to trainings designed to make classrooms inclusive spaces for the exchange of critical ideas by proclaiming their unqualified commitment to students’ “free speech.” I’ve had the experience of letting students intimidate other students without intervening in an effective way and seen the entire class suffer as a result for the rest of the term. Boundaries need to be set and these kinds of reactions to the training that was conducted undermine faculty’s ability to set boundaries.

     Cynthia Miller-Idris, Professor in the School of Public Affairs and in the School of Education, writes in Hate in the Homeland (Princeton 2020), about an incident at Georgia Southern University in November 2019 in which a student “made a class presentation about ‘replacement theory’ and encouraged followers to join the white supremacist group AIM.” “The presentation was noteworthy,” she writes, “not only because it used a mainstream college classroom to promote a white-supremacist conspiracy theory but also for its reach outside of the campus gates. The day after the class presentation, the student uploaded a recording to YouTube, where it was viewed over 100,000 times before mid-December, garnering 8500 likes.” If that were my classroom and I allowed this student to continue his presentation once I understood where it was going, I would consider that a failure that rightly earned me the mistrust of the rest of the class. You may not agree but this is the kind of thing faculty face now — rising extremism which can and does lead to domestic terrorism.

     • Hi Jennifer–In my book–and for what it’s worth I’ve been teaching on the college level for about 25 years, at a range of institutions–there’s a difference between students engaging in harassment and intimidation AND students expressing ideas that may make some people uncomfortable. I’m not a fan of replacement theory either, but once you go down the road of squashing some students’ presentations because you dislike their ideas or find them to be harmful, you are on a very slippery slope. Keep in mind that for Christian conservatives, e.g., expressing support for abortion rights is equivalent to speaking in favor of murder. That’s now how I see it, but the fact is that almost ANY political position can be perceived as harmful and leading to bad behavior. Where do you draw the line? Do you have a list of political positions that are OK to express in the class and a list of those that are not?

       • To be clear, I meant to type “that’s NOT how I see it” : )

       • Do you think a person promoting white supremacy in a classroom is not an act of intimidation? I’m white but I would feel threatened by this. I would also experience someone promoting male supremacy in a classroom an act of intimidation.

         • So, if the content of the ideas expressed can constitute intimidation, even if expressed in a civil manner, then almost any idea can be ruled out. I support revolutionary socialist politics. What if someone comes along–as they have done many times historically–and said that mere expression of my ideas constitutes a “clear and present danger”? Should my ideas also be banned from the classroom because a student who owns stock in a company where workers are on strike feels “intimidated”? Who am I to tell them not to feel intimidated? Again, do you have a list of non-intimidating and intimidating ideas that students can express in your classroom?

   • Wilson’s curious mischaracterization that I am, somehow, calling for “censorship” is an amazing, creative, and unwarranted misinterpretation of what in fact I was writing about. Vigorous classroom critiques and discussions of various topics including for example CRT from a variety of perspectives are necessary to the learning process. What Wilson glosses over is that intimidating and harrassing someone with hate speech is not and this shuts down these critiques. That is *real* censorship among other things. His further use of the “clear and present danger” doctrine also misses the key point that this shouting fire was an analogy stated more than once in my piece. The OU miscondict code is plain for anyone to see and read. It includes physical and emotional abuse. And this harrassment and intimidation when it occurs is a legal standard. Based both on facts and laws. So, if racist comments in a classroom meet this standard it is prohibited. Several times I have read from defenders of F.I.R.E. in these comments speaking in a vague and most general way above that they are not “absolutist”. Do tell. Provide us with real examples as it applies to a situation at OU.

     • Well, you are calling for censorship, and censorship is perfectly normal and sometimes justified. One example of good censorship is the professor’s control over the classroom, to silence a discussion and move on when it is desirable. Another example of good censorship is stopping harassment (and FIRE has repeatedly supported the legal standard of harassment), which can also be punishable under the conduct code. The problem is that this whole essay is devoted to a completely different approach to legal censorship, the fire in a crowded theater analogy, one that is rooted in the suppression of political dissent, and that has very alarming tendencies in claiming that expressing a controversial idea is the equivalent of creating a physical danger by pulling a fire alarm.

       I believe that Donald Trump is a white supremacist and that Republican efforts at voter suppression are racist. So if racist opinions are to be banned in classes (and punished by colleges), under your theory that would mean censoring half of the electorate who support the Republicans. That’s why I say we should not ban or punish racist Republican ideas in the classroom, we should not say that racist Republican ideas are by definition harassment, and we certainly should not ban racist Republican ideas under the “fire in a crowded theater” standard.

       • John, I do wonder whether your lack of experience running a classroom and the fact that you are not engaged with colleagues on a daily basis who also run classrooms affects your interpretations/analyses and leads you to abstractions that simply aren’t relevant. Nobody is going to make space for a discussion of voter suppression and then tell a student who says that they are Republican and believe that more stringent requirements are reasonable that they are banned from saying this. Nobody is going to tell a student who says they voted for Donald Trump and think that he was good for the country that they are not allowed to say that. People, like FIRE staff and maybe you?, who are not in touch with actual faculty jump to extreme conclusions because they are overly influenced by the headlines about the “culture wars” and the claim that a new leftist totalitarianism is on the rise. Faculty are asking hard questions about racism, sexism, and transphobia in higher education but the answers have not congealed into anything hard and the kinds of discussions being held are much more thoughtful than the caricatures make them out to be.

         • In the case of OU, which was the subject of the blog post, I refer you and everyone back to the quote from the OU graduate instructor orientation leader who claimed: “The Supreme Court has actually upheld that hate speech, derogatory speech, any of the -isms do not apply in the classroom because they do not foster a productive learning environment. And so, as instructors we can tell our students: ‘no, you do not have the right to say that. Stop talking right now’, right?”

           I have no way of knowing how widespread such misconceptions are, but this particular case is a concrete, and not abstract, act of censorship.

       • Hello. No, that is not what I am saying. Conflicting ideas that are carefully analyzed and encourage educational learing in a classroom as long as they are not *personalized* and ad hominem, harassment, intimidation, and humiliation should always be encouraged. Yes, professors need to discern is personalized attacks are happen and address them immediately

7. Hi Carl, I do not have a list because, as I said in my earlier comment, the professor has to supply the nuance and make judgment calls based on context and the history of interactions. In this conversation, it seems to me that the burden is not on me to prove that limits need to be set sometimes but rather on you and others who find it difficult to imagine any situation in which limits would be set. The slippery slope is yours, not mine. Faculty set boundaries all the time. If a situation arises in which I have, in a student’s eyes, set an unfair boundary, then they have the right to complain and I will be investigated. Ideally, I’d like a faculty peers to adjudicate the case but if it’s my DEI office, so be it. Either way, it shouldn’t be adjudicated by FIRE by way of YouTube.

   • I think the point here is that racist, sexist, and other forms of derogatory speech work against higher education’s role if the goal is to produce a functioning multiracial democracy. The United States is not now nor has it ever been a multiracial democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. We need look no further than the Supreme Court’s decision in the Brnovich case two weeks ago that gives the green light to state legislatures that are busily creating laws that will make it much harder for millions of US citizens to vote. These new restrictions will undermine the Voting Rights Act and have a disproportionate effect on Black, Latinx, and Indigenous voters. That is the intent, bogus concerns about voter fraud notwithstanding.

     In a functioning multiracial democracy a decision like this one would literally be unthinkable. We would be committed to increasing rather than decreasing access to the vote for all Americans. Therefore, the United States is certainly no closer to becoming a multiracial democracy because Alito and his concurring justices are capable of thinking that way. Alito’s tortured logic goes like this: because a burden or inconvenience will only affect about 2% of actually existing voters in Arizona, then it is permissible, even if the stated goal is to prevent voter fraud, which doesn’t actually exist. This from the highest court in the land.

     As we have seen in the Nikole Hannah-Jones case and elsewhere, institutions of higher education like UNC are also susceptible to those who actively oppose the creation of a multiracial democracy. In fact, like the Supreme Court, most institutions of higher education have long histories of not only excluding women, people of color, the poor, etc., but have also produced ways of knowing and ways of doing things that tend to favor relatively well-to-do White young men. In other words, they are not neutral spaces, and those of us from these formerly excluded groups are reminded in a host of subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we are “space invaders,” as Nirwal Puwar put it. However, we bring the forms of knowledge and experience that are necessary to not only convert institutions of higher ed into multiracial democracies themselves, but to produce new forms of knowledge and expertise to help convert our states and the nation as well.

     The existence and success of the graduates of HBCUs proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that racist speech contributes nothing meaningful for academic discussion, let alone the production of a multiracial democracy. At HBCUs it is not controversial to say Black lives matter. It is the given upon which all other knowledge is built. Even though HBCUs have their share of conservative students, my hunch is that many of the racist comments that concern teachers like me, Jennifer, Michael, and others are exceedingly rare, if they happen at all. And if they do happen, I bet the students who make those comments hear something that is very much along the lines of “no, you do not have the right to say that. Stop talking now and listen.” Precisely because there is no institutionalized support for those views, unlike at PWIs, they shut up, they listen, and they learn. Some may say these students have been censored, but I would say they have been educated.

     One might expect that graduates of HBCUs receive an inferior education. However, as Hannah-Jones points out in her statement, HBCUs “punch above their weight” because their graduates are overrepresented as Black doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, entrepreneurs, and the full range of careers in the US. In fact, a Howard alum is currently serving as Vice President of the United States. I have yet to meet a graduate from an HBCU who cannot discuss anything and everything one expects a college-educated person to be able to discuss, and they often know a great deal more about what it would take to create a multiracial democracy than their PWI peers.

     • You have not made e case for racist speech going against the goals of higher education. One could argue that it is in fact the purpose of higher education, which, in a stratified society, is a central purpose as it helps preserve the social structure.

       • Correct. That was exactly my point. One can make the argument that racist speech “is in fact the purpose of higher education, which, in a stratified society, is a central purpose as it helps preserve the social structure.” In many ways, people at PWIs do make this argument, saying that not only racist speech, but sexist speech and a host of others are legitimate forms of knowledge.

         But guess what? They’re wrong. I don’t mean we have a difference of opinion and I think they’re wrong. They’re wrong. Read any mission statement of any college or university. I defy you to find any that support the notion that the goal is to preserve a stratified social structure or anything like it. Instead, you will find statement after statement affirming values consistent with the formation of a multiracial democracy. The final clause in the mission statement of the AAUP itself commits the association to “ensuring higher education’s contribution to the common good.” It’s true that for much of its history the association has tacitly endorsed the view that the common good could be defined by a small, exceedingly privileged group of mostly White men and a few women, but the current president campaigned and was elected on a promise to ensure that the association’s conception of the common good is a multiracial democracy. She can correct me if I am wrong.

         If the explicit mission of every college and university across the country and the mission of the AAUP itself is to promote values that lead to a multiracial democracy, then by definition hate speech, as well as the ideologies of white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression, are an explicit rejection of the mission of higher education and should be condemned as such. Rafael Jaime’s post confirms this.

         This is not to say we should not discuss these things in our classes, but teachers who fail to impress upon their students that to be educated is to reject these views have failed the mission of higher education as it is now understood. I’m saying that faculty, students, and staff at HBCUs are in a position to do a better job of this. Those of us at PWIs who are more vulnerable for a variety of reasons encounter a range of obstacles.

         • I agree with your general point of View, but taking mission statements and the like for the reality of the way institutions function is bad social research. Before we can have real higher education, we have to recognize the nature of social reality in the USA, and more generally the West. It is racist and sexist. White supremacy and patriarchy are twin pillars of Western, capitalist society. Colleges and universities are designed to perpetuate that reality, not change it, else they would not exist. When was the last time a university (public or private) taught revolution?

         • Thank you, but that again goes to my point. I take it you concede that the mission statements of colleges and universities, as well as the AAUP itself, commit them to the goal of a multiracial democracy rather than the reproduction of a stratified society based on race, gender, class, etc. If that is the case, then that necessarily commits these institutions to privileging the production and dissemination of knowledges that contribute to the dismantling of existing forms of oppression over the production and dissemination of knowledge that perpetuates them. Therefore, it is permissible for educators to compel students (faculty, administrators, and staff) to be exposed to these new knowledges, and to explain how opinions, values, and beliefs that reinforce existing, unwanted, and outdated forms of stratification are no longer acceptable.

           In other words, in a multiracial democracy, not all ways of knowing and doing things are acceptable, and some, such as those that justify systems of oppression, are prohibited. It is important to continue to discuss all ideas and how they work, of course, but those who express and believe in racist, sexist, and other views that run counter to the goal of a multiracial democracy should understand that these views are unacceptable. That is not censorship, as John and others would have it, but a proper education for success in a multiracial democracy.

           An implicit argument raging between Jennifer, Michael, Kelli, and myself versus John, you, freespeechlover,and to a lesser extent Hank, seems to be the status of claims like Black lives matter at PWIs. I suspect you would agree that citing real world examples to back up my claims is “good” social research, would you not? And so I have. Again, I’m saying that if the goal of PWIs is a multiracial democracy, then they provide an inferior education relative to HBCUs, and it is precisely because we are stuck debating whether or not Black lives matter. That “controversy” has been settled at HBCUs like Howard for more than 150 years, and they have gone on to produce and disseminate knowledge consistent with establishing a multiracial democracy with little if any interruption from this tiresome farce of a debate. The only possible reason PWIs keep pretending that this controversy has any intellectual or academic legitimacy is because of the social, political, and economic power of those at PWIs vehemently opposed to the establishment of a multiracial democracy.

         • Mission statement never committed anyone to anything, as anyone who has been on a committee to devise a mission statement knows.

         • I assume, then, that you’re not very good at defending students or faculty at your institution. I’ve cited my institution’s mission statement to great effect on numerous occasions.

         • You assume wrongly.

         • If you have been successful defending faculty and students without citing your institution’s mission statement, then I’m glad to hear it! That doesn’t negate the fact that mission statements are indeed powerful instruments that do indeed bind institutions of higher education to certain values over others. Just ask any accrediting agency. Ours is Middle States, and as you can see, the very first standard that they look for is how well the institutions live up to their missions. If an institution does not live up to is mission statement, it risks losing accreditation. Therefore, administrations are very keen to make sure their institutional practices are consistent with their missions. Therefore, your claim that mission statements “do not commit anyone to anything” is false.

         • What are PWIs?

         • Predominantly White Institutions, where 50% or more of the students identify as White.

         • I have a feeling we are ore in agreement than not. I never tell students what they can or cannot say. I do question them and occasionally offer different perspectives or have them think through the consequences of proposals. I reject administrators attempts to control classroom discourse, successfully in all cases when it has occurred. I see nothing controversial in these practices.

         • I think I am more in agreement than not with almost everyone who posts here. The small differences are crucial.

           You’re right. There is nothing controversial about the pedagogy you describe. Nor do I detect anything about your race or gender that would invite administrators, students, faculty, or staff to question your status as a professor. It seems that as long as the administration left you alone to teach your subject as you saw fit, you would have taught as uncontroversially in 1840, 1915, or 1968 as you do now. More importantly, unless you’re a member of a religious minority or come from an ethnic group that has subsequently become White, it seems unlikely there would have been any resistance to allowing someone like you to teach.

           Those of us who have to defend our right to even be on campus as students, let alone to teach, have a very different experience than you. When the consequence of a student’s proposal would be the removal of everyone who looks like me from campus and/or the discontinuation of a subject I teach (the African American experience in the United States), I don’t get the luxury of pretending it’s just an abstract academic exercise or a thought experiment. It has the force of both history and the current political moment behind it.

           You may have a problem with governments and administrations telling us that we can’t teach anything tangentially related to critical race theory, but you seem completely unaware that as long as colleagues like you treat the racist and sexist speech in your class as legitimate forms of expression, then not only do our students continue to treat my existence on campus and the knowledge I produce as just a matter of opinion, but you give the green light to administrations, boards of trustees, and others to question my legitimacy as well.

           So, no, there is nothing controversial about your approach at all. I can see how it works very nicely for you and others like you. And that is why it is part of the problem for those of us who are not like you.

8. Hello. Interesting comments, so far, related to my blog piece about this being the analogous equivalent of screaming fire in a crowded theater. An observation. There is big difference between engaging in a subject matter relevant analysis of topics including controversial topics in classes like mine (such as CRT) and engaging in intimidation, harassment, and humiliation. OU’s student misconduct code, which as an OU professor, I am required to enforce provides more clarity. It says: “Abusive conduct: Unwelcome conduct that is sufficiently severe and pervasive that it alters the conditions of education or employment and creates an environment that a reasonable person would find intimidating, harassing, or humiliating. The frequency of the conduct, its severity, and whether it is threatening or humiliating are factors that will be considered in determining whether conduct is abusive. Abusive conduct includes verbal abuse, physical abuse, or holding a person against his or her will. Simple teasing, offhanded comments and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not amount to abusive conduct.”

   Who is decide at OU what this is? Well the instructor in a classroom needs to report it to the OU academic integrity office. From there, there are due process requirements of appeal and rebuttal by a student.

   I also note that there have been no comments on another section of the OU student misconduct code, I mentioned, so far. Namely, “Interference with, obstruction or disruption of University activities such as teaching, research, recreation, meetings, public events and disciplinary proceedings.” Regarding that if an OU student engaged in a nationwide YouTube campaign complete with revealing the name and picture of an instructor leading to severe harassment, that in my view would be a violation of this provision. When an outside actor does it, that is the *equivalent* by analogy of screaming fire in a crowded movie theater.

   • Regarding the disruption standard, I wish colleges would get rid of it or more clearly define it, to avoid misunderstandings, such as your mistaken belief that publicly criticizing a professor is a “disruption.” That is clearly wrong: in my view, disruption means physically preventing the operations of a class or an event, by screaming so that no one can hear, or falsely pulling a fire alarm to force an evacuation, or barricading doors so that no one can enter. It does not mean publicly criticizing someone. If public criticism leads to severe harassment, should that be punishable? No, absolutely not, in my view, and this is the John McAdams case at Marquette. When harassment occurs, the harassers can be punished, but not the critics or journalists who publicize someone’s name that leads to the harassment. Just imagine if we gave the administration the power to fire and expel all faculty and student critics if someone is inspired by them to harass or threaten an administrator (for example, if someone did so after reading your critique of an administrator in this essay). That’s why disruption needs to be limited to physical acts of disruption, and not the expression of unpopular opinions.

     • Hello. I was not referring to public criticism of an instructor, per se. It is the actions resulting from the criticism that is key. Mere criticism is one thing. If the intent is harassment, intimidation, or humiliation (in whatever manner) making the instructor fearful in their personal life and / or employment, for instance by running a national YouTube clip (with not all the facts known) and pouring gasoline on the fire that is another.

       • I agree with Wilson.”Disruption” is far too vague and malleable in the hands of administrators. It’s a Humpty Dumpty word. If instructors are fearful, their recurse is the police. A realistic threat of violence s a crime, and that is how it should be handled. Personally, I would never go to the police. In this I am with Brendan Behan, who said, “There is no human situation so ad that t cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman.
         Nevertheless, I thought this was about student conduct codes, which have always been a crock. No instructor should ever be a snitch against students.
         Recent history suggests that public (extramural) criticism of instructors is supported by administrators against their own staff. The administrators are he problem, and always have been.

9. Oh, my. What a world!

   FIRE has just weighed in on this and corrected and / or clarified their position (but not actions): https://www.thefire.org/what-exactly-is-the-problem-with-the-university-of-oklahomas-anti-racist-rhetoric-pedagogies-workshop/ For the first time in this sad affair they acknowledge that there is no right to absolute speech in a college classroom.

   Quoting FIRE: “Givel’s right about one thing, though. Unlawful harassment — properly defined — is rightfully prohibited. And professors have wide latitude to restrict inside their classrooms what otherwise would be considered constitutional expression outside their classrooms.”

   EXACTLY!

   But here is the kicker. What FIRE fails to mention is that their OWN Youtube and “two clicks away” actions outside of the classroom were, well a form of harrassment, intimidation, and humilation. In fact there were threats of violence, etc. No word from FIRE yet on what they think of that or how they will correct it. And disturbingly they continue to (purposely evidently) misconstrue a metaphor of screaming FIRE in a movie theater (when there is none [not when there is one] as indicated in the Schenck case) as not being the equivalent of ongoing (using FIRE’s language) “unlawful harrassment”. And for you defenders of FIRE out there, isn’t FIRE’s in and out of the classroom standard above a form of “censorship.” I don’t think so, but maybe you might.

   Regardless, without a repudiation of FIRE’s “two clicks away” and Youtube action the fire continues to burn out of control. Just check out the end of this article where the Youtube video is posted.

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