Where do you draw the line? What about a history prof who argues that the Civil War was not about slavery?
Florida Atlantic University professor making a career out of calling the Sandy Hook shootings a hoax
This guy is more like a history professor teaching that the Civil War never happened.
“Where do you draw the line? What about a history prof who argues that the Civil War was not about slavery?”
That history professor would not be politically correct, but he or she would not be an outlier. There are many people who believe that it was more about state’s rights. My liberal Democrat MIL believes that quite firmly. She is elderly, lives in the deep South, and feels very strongly about the matter. She is far older than I, and was much closer to the issue. So how do I argue with her? Well, MIL, I live in the NW, and the history books say…
Maybe not what I think, but a difference of opinion is completely different than denying something ever happened.
With documents written by the seceding state governments:
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html
^Well, given her being far older, and your MIL, and that she feels so strongly, you might just nod and smile and NOT show her the documents which would show her how “simplistic” the state’s rights theory is, but yeah, their own words do undermine that view.
So do you fire the tenured prof who holds that view or not? What is the standard? This is my point. The standard can’t be how offensive the viewpoint is.
@Hunt Problem is, it’s not a “viewpoint.” It’s a mental illness to stalk a grieving family 1,000 miles away, whom you have never met, and demand documentation that their murdered 6 year old ever existed. And accuse them of fabricating the event for profit. It’s a sickness.
Right. I think there’s a clear bright line between viewpoints based on interpretation of facts, and viewpoints about what are facts. And an instructor who’s so far gone they can’t see that line, should not be in a classroom.
It’s a break from reality.
You don’t fire him for having that view. You fire him for teaching that as fact when it is not.
If a teacher or professor can’t distinguish between fact and fiction, and is teaching fiction as if it were real, then they are doing the opposite of teaching.
No one is even remotely suggesting he can’t say these things. But there ARE consequences to free speech. People too often forget that.
If you want to stand in the middle of Grand Central and shout racial epithets, we can’t stop you. But there will likely be consequences. Your employer has the right to fire you for your appalling behavior when he sees it in the 11 o’clock news. Your spouse may leave you. A passerby may deck you. (And, yes, there is a consequence for that as well.)
But when faced with the consequences of being allowed to say “whatever you want”, don’t expect the first amendment to help you. It can only keep the government off your back. Not everyone else.
If you want your rights, fight for them and accept the consequences. Otherwise, feel free to zip it.
PS: how do you prove anyone exists or existed? Maybe I am a fake!
Oh no @HRSMom, don’t invoke the existential crisis debate! 
I am almost speechless about this - did anyone click thru to the Facebook Page about the “hoax”? Sickening.
What I am too naive to understand is WHY? Why would someone come up with this? On that day there was media coverage on every channel, from every angle? What would possess someone to think this was made up?
And the people who are commenting on the Facebook page are all taking it seriously. It makes me terrified for our future if so many people are unable to think critically for themselves.
The media refuses (rightly) to show the carnage of the victims, which would probably incite more crazies as well as obviously disrespecting the families. However, this gives the wackos fodder for their “lack of evidence” because they don’t see the graphic “evidence”.
It’s been a few years now since that and still nothing has happened to him. Knowing college kids they’d take his class as a goof or to debate him. I though ahmadinejad was a nut for speaking at Columbia and saying there were no gay people in Iran. You could hear the audience roar with laughter. The question is whether he teaches this belief as a viable option to consider. At the very outer limits of my mind I perhaps could see how you could pose the question could it be possible to pull of a hoax of this magnitude. …though it would certainly be beyond good judgment to use a real world example.
Hunt, do you say the college shouldn’t fire the history teacher who teaches that the Civil War never happened? Nont a disagreement about the causes and justifications of the war, but a professor who says the battles never happened, the soldiers never died, there was no blockade, nothing. Should that person be allowed to keep teaching?
It seems really odd that he would choose this ax to grind… I feel sorry for his children.
Consequences for speech can’t include punishment by the government if it doesn’t like the content of your speech, and being fired by a state university is punishment.
Look, I think this guy is a nut, and he may well have engaged in behavior that would justify his firing. But I’m not very comfortable with the idea that the administration of a state university has the discretion to decide what the line is between fact and opinion. It seems to me that this would be pretty easy to abuse. I think the reaction against this guy is not really about the idea that he’s teaching falsehoods, but rather that what he’s saying is horribly offensive. That always makes me want to apply the strictest possible scrutiny to the pretext–I mean, the justification–for the punishment.
Hunt, are you saying that a state university then has no right to determine fact from fiction at all, because the line is at their discretion? I once talked to a man who was fired from teaching science in middle school. He told me the administrators were upset when he taught the kids that weather was caused by little men sitting in the clouds. Would you say the school had no right to fire him because they violated his right to free speech?
I get what Hunt is saying.
Does the university have the right to deny the subject of the classes he teaches?