When Universities Don’t Step Up, Good Professors Are Forced to Step Down

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | June 18, 2021 | Giovanni Gravano

[karpov]

With “cancel culture” running rampant on social media, in politics, and in the classroom, professors who put forth the effort to help students think critically and challenge their beliefs are needed more than ever. Over the last 15 years at Central Michigan University, journalism professor Timothy Boudreau championed those practices in his classroom, to the benefit of both his students and the culture of free inquiry on campus.

It’s ironic, then, that after years of focusing on free speech by inviting controversial speakers with whom his students could debate and interact as a way of teaching the importance of the First Amendment to future journalists, it was Boudreau’s own quoting of another person’s speech that ended his successful teaching career.

Boudreau was fired after teaching a class on the case of a former basketball coach at his own university who was fired for his use of a racial slur in his locker room pep talks to explain how even the most disagreeable speech may be constitutionally protected. (That 1993 case, Dambrot v. Central Michigan University, is an important First Amendment case and an early defeat for public university speech codes.)

Following class that day on June 22, 2020, a nine-minute video was posted by one of his students, labeling Boudreau “racist” and criticizing his choice to quote the slur in the classroom. As is often the case on social media, a single post criticizing a professor’s speech or course content quickly became an amplified movement to have him punished or fired.

[Noumenon]

Welcome to the struggle sessions.

[goodnesswins]

I remember Rush encouraging everyone to watch “Lives of Others”...it is starting to seem we are living it