Posted on 05/07/2007 3:05:33 PM PDT by yoe
A tenured college professor is set to be fired for simply sending out an e-mail to colleagues containing George Washington’s "Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1798.”
Already professor Walter Kehowski at Glendale Community College in Arizona has been placed on forced administrative leave and the school’s chief has recommended his termination.
"It simply boggles the mind that a professor could find himself facing termination simply for e-mailing the Thanksgiving address of our first president,” said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
On Nov. 22, 2006, the day before Thanksgiving, Kehowski, a professor in mathematics in the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) sent the e-mail containing Washington’s message to all MCCCD employees, using a district-wide service designated for "announcements.”
Within weeks, five MCCCD employees filed harassment charges against Kehowski, claiming his message was "hostile” and "derogatory.” They complaining employees also cited the fact that the e-mail contained a link to Pat Buchanan’s Web site, where Kehowski had found Washington’s proclamation. Buchanan, a conservative commentator, had also posted to his Web site criticisms of immigration policies.
On Jan. 3, 2007, MCCCD found that Kehowski was guilty of violating policies limiting e-mail usage to messages that "support education, research, scholarly communication, administration, and other MCCCD business.”
These policies also prohibit "mailings to large numbers of people that contain unwanted solicitations or information.”
However, MCCCD employees commonly use the "announcements” service to send out unsolicited information, according to a statement from FIRE.
Recent e-mails sent out using this service include an advertisement for purchasing goats for orphans in Uganda, quotes about Women’s History Month, and a reminder about the health benefits of eating bananas.
"To FIRE’s knowledge, not one of the senders of these e-mails has been forced to cease teaching or threatened with dismissal,” according to the organization’s statement.
On March 9, MCCCD Chancellor Rufus Glasper placed Kehowski on administrative leave and recommended to the MCCCD governing board that he be dismissed. Kehowski has since appealed that decision and will defend himself at a hearing before a panel of three faculty members on June 5.
Kehowski contacted FIRE for help, and FIRE wrote to Glasper on April 25 to protest the actions against Kehowski, asserting that e-mailing a proclamation from George Washington or including a link to Pat Buchanan’s Web site does not constitute punishable harassment.
FIRE reminded Glasper that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that for workplace expression to be considered "harassment,” it must be "severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile or abusive work environment.”
Sending a link to a Web site, which readers can either visit or simply ignore, does not fit this standard, FIRE maintains.
Glasper responded with a letter on April 30, but failed to address any of FIRE’s concerns, according to the group’s statement.
"It is dark day for free speech and common sense in Arizona,” Lukianoff said.
"If the MCCCD believes at all in the importance of the right to free expression, or even just in basic fairness, it will undo its illiberal actions and exonerate professor Kehowski immediately.
"This situation is an embarrassment to MCCCD and would be laughable if a professor’s most basic rights and very livelihood weren’t on the line.”
It seems you did learn something from this message, so the board was in fact used to “support education, research, scholarly communication” per the stated school policies...
Within weeks, five MCCCD employees filed harassment charges against Kehowski, claiming his message was "hostile” and "derogatory.”
Conjectures about the five whiners complainers aggrieved parties:
I have to stop reading this kind of stuff, it make my blood boil. My cardiologist says I can't let my blood pressure get this high if I want to avoid having to take a stronger medication, so I'm moving on to a less aggravating thread.
I think that perhaps Rufus is a dufus.
I can understand why Godless people are so offended by a history lesson.
“On Jan. 3, 2007, MCCCD found that Kehowski was guilty of violating policies limiting e-mail usage to messages that “support education, research, scholarly communication, administration, and other MCCCD business.””
“Recent e-mails sent out using this service include an advertisement for purchasing goats for orphans in Uganda, quotes about Women’s History Month, and a reminder about the health benefits of eating bananas.”
Hm... Somehow I think that a quote from Washington is more qualified as “education” or “scholarly communication” than solicitations of goat purchases or promoting the consumption of bananas.
Were I the professor, I would offer the college the following options: Either reinstate me, or fire everyone else that has ever abused the email system. Failure to do either will involve a huge media stink and lots of lawsuits.
newsmax. better do some background.
The article says that the fired professor is tenured, and according to common practice in academia he can't be fired without a very good cause. Or at least he was tenured until his anti-American moonbat colleagues accused him of the crime of being both a patriotic American and a college professor at the same time.
It's incredible that something this outrageous could happen in America, but I suppose something at least equally as outrageous happens somewhere in America every day now that the anti-American radical left is being allowed to have it's perverted way in every aspect of American life.
OK, now I'm definitely leaving this thread.
Che Guevara was Castro's executioner of Cuban homosexuals.
One problem (of many) that liberalism suffers is that it's own self-censorship prevents liberals from knowing about their past. Thus, they glorify Che Guevara because Fidel Castro glorifies him...not knowing that they are glorifying a monster who shot people in the back of the head based upon their sexual preferences.
This same problem (censorship of History) manifests itself in the above article because liberals don't know the History of our Founding Fathers.
...and you can see the same liberal problem with self-censorship bite them again when you ask them what was President Lincoln's political Party, as well as which political Party freed the slaves.
In fact, I was in a debate with a radical Ph.d leftist who claimed as recently as last month that the South was racist in the 1960's...and was *stunned* when I pointed out that the South was solidly Democratic back then.
...and this trend extends even further back. The whole reason that leftists call themselves (and their agenda) "progressive" is because at the turn of the *last* century (circa 1910) socialism was being ridiculed as archaic compared to vibrant capitalism...so the one change that the socialists made to their agenda was to label it as "progressive" to help fight the global charges that Marxism was archaic back then.
100 years later leftists are still pretending that Marx's old ideas are "progressive."
You’ve got that right! Add Peace Studies to that list as well.
Bad idea to have an announcement list that lets anyone send messages to everyone. Set up a message board or voluntary mailing lists for non-official announcements.
It’s also a bad idea to send a political message to everyone in the school — and while Washington’s Thanksgiving address arguably isn’t political, a link to Buchanan’s Web site definitely is.
The “hostile environment” charge is crap and termination is way over the top, but the school ought to rethink its policies for the announcement list, possibly giving the prof a stern slap on the wrist.
I'm not at all saying they were right to fire him, but let's hear more details.
Or he could call on John McCain for help!
“What has happened to once conservative AZ? “
I think it just might have something to do with its border to the south ???
That's what I thought.
Why does anyone have to conjecture?
Or is it so bad at a university that anonymous “complaints” get someone fired? Sheesh, all hail the new Soviet!
Why does this firing “boggle the mind”?
The left is intent on re-writing history and will do so by any means deemed necessary.
Still, this is an outrage.
Regarding Washington, this is amazing. Washington, virtually speaking from the grave, has his speech squelched. The very man brave enough to give all of us the right to free speech. When will libs demand he be removed from the dollar?
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