As long as times remain good too many people don't have enough to do and this sort of crap gets funded. Takes a good economic "flushing" from time to time to cleanse the landscape.
Chumps.
I am very concerned that you are engaging in unprofessional conduct through intimidation of a student.
You responded to a student email as follows: He said: "DON'T E-MAIL YOUR TERRORIST LOVING CRAP TO ME" ... As chair of the department and a university professor, I want to point out to you that your response is inappropriate and harassing. No, Dr Barlow, your response is inappropriate and harassing, not his. He simply made a demand to stop getting "spammed" email whose point he disagreed with vehemently and emotionally. You on other hand, after lecturing about free speech, contradicted yourself by indicating his viewpoint was not only not welcome, but his expression was action for University discipline. Apparently some 'free speech' is better than other 'free speech'.
It is your right as a citizen of this country to hold whatever beliefs you want; however, it is not your right to impose those beliefs on anyone else. ... It is not necessary for me to respond to your rude and harassing email, but I have chosen to do so in the hope that you can learn that hate-speech is never appropriate and that there are policies and procedures in place at UT, which you have violated.
Your email - not his - constitutes harrassment. You are the one who sees his viewpoint as not legitimiate and you desire to impose your viewpoint on him.
I assume that you will respect both my effort to respond to you and the fact that it would be a very bad idea for you to email me in return or ever again email anyone in this department. You can be assured that your email will be addressed according to those policies and procedures, which, by the way, follow federal guidelines. I have copied my email to Ms. Sharp, to the asscociate dean of the Humanities, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and to the President of the University of Toledo.
Your email - not his - constitutes harrassment.
Hate speech is speech intended to defame others and intimidate them from exercising their own freedoms. By engaging the above threats, Dr Barlow, you have engaged in harrassment and, indeed, Hate Speech by your own definition. Will the University Deans have to convene in order to make it PERFECTLY CLEAR that that the occasional emotional email taht simply expresses a viewpoint one disagrees with should be ignored and that the unwarranted threats and intimidation that you engaged in constitute unprofessional behavior, as rude and far more damaging than the email you responded to?
Dr. Daniel M. Johnson, President of University of Toledo
Thanls for posting this up, with an e-mail address included. Just sent the following e-mail to the Professor in charge of this program:
Dear Dr. Barlow,
I have just read on the Internet your letter to Charles Hall of the University of Toledo.
Some comments are in order. I am a veteran of more than a few "teach-ins" going back to the Vietnam War. By an large, they tend to be self-indulgent propaganda for an anti-government viewpoint, usually (but not always) unjustified on the facts.
I am assuming, based on such events elsewhere in the country, that your teach=in has the themes that "the US brought this on itself by its policies," and "the sensibilities of Islamic believers should not be harmed by such tactics as bombing on Ramadan." Both point are, of course, historical nonsense.
The first argument could have been made about the attack on Pearl Harbor, caused by American opposition to Japanese hemogeny on the Pacific Rim. The latter argument is destroyed by the fact that Arab and Islamic countries launched the 1967 Yom Kippur War during Ramadan that year, (In the East it is even called "The Ramadan War.")
Those who disagree, especially on the facts, with the pioused pronouncement of tenured professors who ignore history, will, I trust, be unwelcome at your teach-in.
If I am wrong about your politics, I am sure you will correct me. But if I am right, it is you and your colleagues, not Mr. Hall, who demean your institution by talking of history with a base of gross ignorance in that area.
Do not classify my letter as "hate speech," for I do not hate you and your kind. I pity you, for abandoning the discipline of factual academic inquiry. And I pity your students, who come to college seeking education in both facts and the methods of inquiry, but apparently receive propaganda instead, which is neither.
My comments have nothing to do with your gender. My late son's name was also Jamie, so I only assume that you are more likely to be female than male. But that is not relevant to my comments.
As a former Professor myself, who never sought and never would have accepted tenure, I condemn those who accept tenure as an excuse to cease both inquiry and learning.
Your teach-in would be far more valuable if it contained opposing viewpoints. But it won't, will it? That would undercut the whole point, wouldn't it?
You ought to be ashamed of yourself as a Professor. But you're not, are you? >p>Very Truly Yours,
John Armor, Esq.
(Congressman Billybob on the Net)