An Error Occurred Please Try Again Later 2y Kyv6
I'yard an attorney representing a professor at the University of Central Florida who is beingness subjected by the university to what can simply be called an inquisition subsequently expressing opinions on Twitter that led to widespread calls for his firing. UCF is a public establishment—an instrument of the country—and is now bringing its full power to acquit against a man who dared to question the prevailing orthodoxy that has rapidly descended over then many of this country's institutions. I cannot behave witness to what the academy is doing to this man without speaking out against it. If nosotros exercise not claiming this egregious abuse of power, things will only go worse.
Professor Charles Negy is a wonderfully eccentric human, someone who teaches extraordinarily controversial subjects—Cross-Cultural Psychology and Sexual Behavior—with bluntness and humor. He is exactly the kind of professor yous want in college: someone who is passionate about his subject, who will challenge your securely-held assumptions, and who encourages complimentary and open discussion in the classroom. Negy'due south bluntness has occasionally ruffled feathers over the years, only throughout his 22-year career at UCF he has received consistently superior functioning reviews. For the past four years, for case, he has received an evaluation rating of "Outstanding" for his pedagogy and advising.
In June, nevertheless, things changed overnight for Negy after he posted a characteristically blunt tweet to his personal Twitter account:
Immediately, #UCFfirehim began trending on Twitter and people began to protestation both on UCF'southward campus and exterior Negy's habitation.
UCF president Alexander Cartwright understood, only was clearly disappointed, that the university could not fire Negy for his constitutionally protected tweets, telling the Orlando Sentinel: "The Constitution restricts our ability to fire him or any other University employee for expressing personal opinions about matters of public business organization. This is the law."
So Cartwright chose a different strategy: He publicly announced a witch hunt into Negy's classroom speech. A June quaternary bulletin posted to UCF's website from the president, provost, and principal diverseness officer addressed the content of Negy'south tweets directly and then stated: "If any student, current or former, believes they may take experienced abusive or discriminatory behavior past any faculty or staff member, we want to know nigh it. UCF takes every written report seriously. Concerns can be reported to UCF'southward IntegrityLine, which likewise takes anonymous complaints." (Emphasis added).
UCF's blaring call worked. Since June 4th, a litany (nosotros don't know the exact number, considering they won't say) of complaints has been lodged against Negy for his classroom pedagogy, for spoken communication that allegedly occurred over a 15-year period from 2005 to 2020. The university charged Negy with discriminatory harassment on the footing of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, sexual activity, gender identity/expression, and disability—it is worth noting here that Negy himself is both an ethnic and sexual minority—while providing him with simply a handful of "examples" of his alleged wrongdoing. Negy begged for more information prior to his investigative interview so that he might prepare to defend himself, but UCF refused.
Instead, last Friday the university subjected Negy to an "investigative interview" that was one of the most Kafkaesque things I have seen in my 15 years advising students and faculty about campus disciplinary matters. For four direct hours, UCF's investigator grilled Negy nigh accusations stemming direct from his classroom pedagogy, having fabricated no effort to weed out the countless accusations that were obviously just critiques of his choice of education material. UCF also made no endeavour to consolidate allegations, repeatedly asking Negy variations of the same question, advertizing infinitum. And again, virtually all of these questions related directly to Negy's pedagogy, which deals with unavoidably controversial subjects. When Negy, physically and emotionally exhausted afterward four hours of interrogation, asked if the interview was nearly over, we learned that the investigator had not fifty-fifty gotten halfway through her list of accusations. Since he could accept no more, another five-hour inquisition was scheduled for the following week.
This investigation was obviously undertaken in retaliation for Negy'due south protected tweets, and it is serving its purpose: How many professors are going to be willing to speak out if the result is a ix-hour inquisition followed by an almost inevitable penalty? How many professors will be willing to teach necessary simply controversial material if they know they might be called upon, 15 years later, to defend every argument they made in the course of pedagogy that textile?
The university has made information technology abundantly articulate that information technology does not care about Professor Negy's free oral communication and due process rights. This investigation is a means to an end—to go rid of a professor whose protected expressions of opinion have fabricated him politically inconvenient. Cases like this are canaries in the coal mine: if a public academy—a government agency—can treat someone this way for deviating from the university'south orthodoxy, and face no accountability for doing and then, then what (and who) is next?
The reply, of form, is you and me. Nosotros are next. If decent people do not take a stand against these abuses, information technology'due south not a matter of if the state-endorsed mob will come for u.s.a.—information technology'due south only a matter of when.
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Source: https://quillette.com/2020/08/13/the-floridian-inquisition/
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