Posted on 11/21/2005 6:15:48 AM PST by aculeus
An e-mail sent to a student by an adjunct instructor at Warren County Community College has infuriated the student, conservative groups, and leaders of the college, where the board has scheduled an emergency meeting to discuss the matter on Tuesday.
The e-mail was sent to Rebecca Beach, a freshman at the New Jersey college, who had sent an e-mail announcement to faculty members about a lecture she organized Thursday featuring a veteran of the war in Iraq talking (favorably) about the U.S. role there. John Daly, an adjunct instructor in English, sent an e-mail reply in which he said that he would ask students to boycott the lecture, and that “real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors and fight for just causes and for people’s needs.”
Daly also criticized Beach’s leadership of a campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, saying: “I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like yours won’t dare show their face on a college campus.”
Beach turned the e-mail over to the national office of Young Americans for Freedom, which published it on its Web site, and conservative commentators have since been demanding that Daly be fired. In an interview last night, Daly said that he was worried he would be fired Tuesday night and that he has already been told not to show up for the three classes he is scheduled to teach on Tuesday, the next day he would normally be on campus.
Daly said he stood by the e-mail message, but that it was being taken out of context. He said that the comment about soldiers turning their guns on their superiors was meant “in the most metaphoric sense.” Also, he said that because Beach was never one of his students and had sent the e-mail message from her personal e-mail account, he thought she was a Young Americans for Freedom organizer, and replied with that in mind. Daly said that if he had known he was writing to a freshman, he would not have changed the political ideas of his note, but would have used a different tone.
The college has issued three statements since the controversy broke — with support for Daly’s right to have sent the e-mail seeming to decline with each successive one. On Thursday, the statement pledged that the incident would be investigated as a personnel matter. But the statement noted that the e-mail had been sent from Daly’s personal account, had been sent to only one student, and that the statement did not reflect the views of the college as a whole.
Thursday’s statement also specifically noted Constitutional protections on controversial statements, quoting William Austin, Warren’s president, as saying: “I firmly believe every employee and student has First Amendment rights, no matter how repugnant I personally find Mr. Daly’s statements.”
On Thursday night, Austin went to the lecture Beach organized and personally welcomed her, the speaker — Lieut. Col. Scott Rutter — and audience members. In Friday’s statement, the college noted that the speech went off without any problems and added additional criticism of Daly, quoting Austin as saying that Daly’s e-mail was “disgraceful and offensive.”
In Saturday’s statement, the college announced that its board had scheduled an emergency meeting for Tuesday — noting that Tuesday was the first day such a meeting could legally be held. “The Board of Trustees intends to consider the welfare and rights of its students, the college community, and the public in lieu [sic] of recent events. The board will also consider personnel issues,” the statement said.
In the interview last night, Daly said it was entirely appropriate for him to criticize “a pro-war rally” and said more people should be outraged that military recruiters are able to attract the college’s students to enlist because they can’t afford to pay their college bills and can’t find good jobs when they graduate. “The YAF is trying to turn back affirmative action and to promote the war, and I have a right to speak out,” Daly said.
Daly said that he has been teaching at Warren County Community College for about a year and that he also teaches at another college, which he declined to name, given the current uproar.
The possibility that he might be fired, Daly said, reflects the lack of job security facing the increasing number of professors who work off the tenure track. “As more and more professors are teaching part time, this is a direct attack on our academic freedom,” he said.
Like it will take the pajamahadeen about 5 seconds to find out which other school " he used to work at..LOL"
Tenured professors are more free to state doofus opinions...
Time was when they used to tar and feather traitors in Warren County and then run them out of town on a rail. Now they argue about whether they can fire 'em from cushy teaching jobs.
"We are the party of tolerance and diversity and we must crush all those who disagree!"
If freedom will only come when soldiers turn their guns on their superiors, then academic freedom will only come when students turn their guns on their professors. Right, professor Daly?
Have you seen and heard Rebecca? She's as adorable as Bambi. We could have found our conservative-1st Amendment poster child. I haven't seen Daly in action yet, but if he calls Rebecca a "fascist" he could be just heaps of fun. Wish I had a line in to David Horowitz and O'Reilly--
Why is it that when leftist scum open their mouths and expose themselves for the hate filled fanatics that they are (which is often) that they can easily get away with it by saying that their words were "taken out of context".
The school needs to fire this asshat immediately or the parents sending their kids there need to find another school to send their money to.
Adjunct instructors are just above graduate students on the university foodchain. They often consist of academicians who couldn't get a real job.
"Daly also criticized Beach’s leadership of a campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, saying: “I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like yours won’t dare show their face on a college campus."
This guy shows the Left's true agenda. Shutting up anyone who disagrees with them. It's been that way in this country for the last 40 years. I'm sick and tired of it. Mr. Daly's agenda is opposed to freedom of speech and basic liberty, not to mention academic freedom. He should be exposed as such, and he seems to have done a good job with his e-mail.
Hoping the matter will have blown over by this morning. They're not gonna fire him. They're already noting it was a "personnel" matter, thst it wasn't a college email account. They'll slap him on the wrist and forgt the whole matter. After all, she is a conservative.
Faculty should be held to higher standards than students. That shouldn't be hard to figure out.
Hah--adjunct faculty--how the college system exploits the oversupply of unemployable PhDs. Ah, the cruel truth of living a "life of the mind."
Utter nonsense from Daly....tenure is a dinosaur. While it has one or two advantages, the system has become an abused haven for the incompetent teachers. Tenure has to go...let the market decide!
"You're fired" is no "metaphor." Of course had some professor declared homosexuality to be a blight on mankind there would be no quibbling over rights to free speech.
Solicitation to murder is not a protected right in any case.
That's right, idiot, but it is NOT appropriate to advocate murder, which is what we are calling you on, moron.
I love the way this vermin is now backing off what he said.
FEEL THE WRATH, MR. DALY !!!!
"Adjunct instructors are just above graduate students on the university foodchain. They often consist of academicians who couldn't get a real job."
Correction- Adjunct instructors at Community Colleges are BELOW graduate students on the foodchain and just above the janitor.
DALY QUOTE
“real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors and fight for just causes and for people’s needs.”
snip
He said that the comment about soldiers turning their guns on their superiors was meant “in the most metaphoric sense.”
________________________________________________________
"Turn their guns on their superiors" is metaphoric?...I think not!
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