This B!+c# is still teaching in the UT system???????
Posted on 04/15/2005 7:07:23 AM PDT by Flightdeck
A speech about academic freedom turned into a "violation of First Amendment rights," according to Dana Cloud, a member of the International Socialist Organization.
Six people, including one juvenile, were arrested Wednesday night after protesting David Horowitz's speech at Townes Hall at the UT School of Law. The Texas Federalist Society hosted the meeting and invited Horowitz, a right-wing advocate and author of the Academic Bill of Rights, to speak.
Opposition groups were holding signs and speaking out during Horowitz's speech on Wednesday, but when they were told to stop speaking, some took out noisemakers to mark their disapproval of the speaker. Three females and three males were arrested and then jailed under charges of disrupting a meeting or procession - a Class B misdemeanor. The subjects were not UT students.
Cloud, an associate professor in communication studies, attended the speech and witnessed the arrests. She said the situation was ironic.
"Horowitz claims to be for free speech, but he is actually on a campaign to discredit and ruin progressive intellectuals," Cloud said. "In the name of free speech, they are basically calling the police on protesters."
Victoria Corinne Cloud, no relation to Dana Cloud, and Dylan Wayne Vicknair were both arrested for physical action - the use of an air horn. Michael Stephen Hardin, Catharina Elizabeth Perry and Scott Crow were arrested for verbal utterances - yelling and arguing with a speaker. All six activists were released late Thursday afternoon.
Anastasia Breloff, the president of the Texas Federalist Society, and other officers from the society said they warned activists at least three times, each time reiterating the possibility of arrest.
"Protesters chose to disrupt Mr. Horowitz's lecture by moving threateningly toward the stage, shouting at the speaker and blowing foghorns and other noise-making devices," Breloff said in a statement.
Melissa Hotze, assistant vice president of events, was sitting in the last row of the auditorium and said she was frustrated that the protesters would not sit down until the question and answer period to voice their opinions.
"When he was at other campuses, people were throwing pies at his face. We just alerted the UTPD that he was coming, and there might be potential of things happening," Hotze said.
According to Hotze, Horowitz's point was that "universities have a very liberal faculty, and if you are a conservative, you are going to be penalized from your academic freedom."
Horowitz encourages students to report their professors who openly silence the opinion of conservatives in universities.
"The irony of squelching such a protest with police on a meeting on free speech is the fact that Horowitz is part of a growing trend, the new McCarthyisms - disciplining progressive faculty," Cloud said.
LETTER FROM QUOTED PROFESSOR:
Fight Horowitz
I was one of two dozen people who protested the appearance of right-wing ideologue David Horowitz at the Law School Wednesday night. (University of Texas at Austin)
Although the subject of the meeting was freedom of expression, and Horowitz routinely accuses campus progressives of silencing different points of view, he set police on protesters who expressed their disagreement in the style and tradition of unruly civil disobedience. The ironic message: Shut up so I can talk about free speech. Indignant, Horowitz refused to begin speaking about the importance of free expression so long as protesters held signs criticizing him. Six young protesters were arrested and jailed.
Horowitz and his ilk pursue the agenda of silencing the left, all in the name of free speech. He attempts to whip up fear of tyrannical radical professors who, he says, indoctrinate what he sees as hapless, immature undergraduates. (Apparently, he hasn't met my students, whom I respect as adults capable of speaking for themselves and making their own judgments.)
In fact, his crusade for free expression is a cynical sham: Horowitz maintains a blacklist of left intellectuals and activists, arguing that critics of war and oppression should not have the right to teach or protest. His is a freedom of expression reserved for conservatives who - in spite of their side's holding inordinate economic, political, and coercive power - feel marginalized in the face of critical pedagogy.
However absurd and hypocritical, his efforts should be taken seriously as aligned with a series of assaults recently on academic freedom at Columbia University, University of Colorado, and City College of New York. Unfortunately, the threats to our jobs and civil rights are all too real.
As someone (among hundreds of others) whose name appears on Horowitz's Internet hit list, I wonder who the real censors are: critics of the war and feminist professors, or those who have and will use the real might of the police and the state to silence criticism and dissent? Defenders of real freedom of speech and learning must stand together against the new McCarthyism.
Dana Cloud Associate professor, Communication studies Member, International Socialist Organization
PROFESSOR'S RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Dana L. Cloud (PhD, University of Iowa, 1992) specializes in the analysis of contemporary and popular and political culture from feminist, Marxist, and critical anti-racist perspectives. She teaches undergraduate classes in persuasion, social movements, speechwriting, and rhetorical criticism, as well as graduate courses in rhetoric and the public sphere, rhetoric and ideology, rhetoric and feminist theory, and rhetoric and popular culture. Dr. Cloud's areas of current research include the critique of therapeutic discourse, feminist and Marxist theories and politics, rhetoric of "family values," and the rhetoric of the U.S. labor movement.
I'm not a violent person but the fact of life is that sometimes, some people simply beg to be slapped hard across the face.
Seriously.
When I was the chairman of the University of Delaware Young Americans for Freedom, I brought David Horowitz to my campus shortly after 9/11. He got protested then too, and there were protesters there who got disruptive too, but not to the point of airhorns. He did a good job of handling them.
Maybe they were barely intelligent enough to realize she hurts their cause. Just like Eric Rudolph hurts the pro-life cause.
Is she a thespian?
It's disrespectful and uncivil, certainly, but not a violation of First Amendment rights. The government was not involved in the attempt to stifle Horowitz' speech.
All the studies in Rhetoric. She would have a lot in common with Goebbels.
Horowitz would be very welcome at Texas A&M. Every time some t-sip tells me an Aggie joke I ask them why they support the most anti-American school in Texas and that shuts them up.
So they infringe on his right to free speech, and then say their right to free speech was infringed upon? Do I have that right?
I swear one day I won't be able to wipe this confounded look of disbelief off my face at all. It just happens too much now.
He attempts to whip up fear of tyrannical radical professors who, he says, indoctrinate what he sees as hapless, immature undergraduates. (Apparently, he hasn't met my students, whom I respect as adults capable of speaking for themselves and making their own judgments.) ..........
Seems to me that the professor "cloudy eyes" is a little upset that someone is calling her bluff.
Saying somone is on a campaign to "discredit and ruin progressive intellectuals" must have "the cloudy eyed professor" worried that someone may actually be talking some sense into the undergrads. I cannot stand the word "progressive" being applied to our youth. That is B$. She is teaching REGRESSIVE behavior.
Being a McCarthyite is a badge of honor when you enter the leftist dominated college campuses these days. While the Commintern and the Communists have been discredited worldwide, these lefty professors dominate the teaching positions in American colleges and universities.
Tenure given to these despicable people has to be eliminated and those giving such tenure to these worms should have to also answer.
Yes, a Bull thespian.
"...I ask them why they support the most anti-American school in Texas..."
B/c the football team is sweet. Rose Bowl Champs!!
Seriously, don't you appreciate the challenge UT offers to the conservative academic? You know the saying "What happens here changes the world" Well, I need to do some changing at home.
Why do you put stuff like that in your response? Obviously they did NOT go to listen.
This B!+c# is still teaching in the UT system???????
Lesbian terrorist.
Animal Farm circa 2005:
Ward Churchill good -- David Horowitz bad
Liberals can say anything they want, and it is "free speech"
Conservatives say anything, and it is "hate speech"
The mind reels
Your Tax Dollars At Work
whatta sick puppy.
her politics recalls the decade of the weimar republic.
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