The flava:A Fresno State professor will pay $17,000 and undergo first amendment training after he erased students’ anti-abortion chalk messages on campus, according to Alliance Defending Freedom.
Greg Thatcher, a professor of public health, was sued in May by two students after video showed him scrubbing out messages like “women need love, not abortion” with his shoe and instructing other students to do the same. A court order filed last week forbids Thatcher from “interfering with, disrupting, defacing, or altering” any similar student activities.
The article:
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/education/article183731526.html
Interesting case. I tend to agree that adding more speech, not erasing someone else's expression, is the way to go, and that a professor should know that (and certainly should not go around declaring that a campus is not a free-speech zone, even if it isn't in any official sense). Besides, a public-health professor has a number of more-effective ways of countering the arguments he was erasing available to him.
ReplyDeleteDrowning out a campus speaker with additional speech/noise (not, of course, the case here) falls in a something of a gray zone, since it is speech, but/and also effectively prevents the communication of someone else's message. I guess the same is true if one flyers or chalks directly over someone else's message.
Whenever I think of Fresno I feel sheepish...
ReplyDeleteBut speaking as a Brit, by the standards of people called Thatcher imperilling education, this guy isn't the worst.
Greg is a good friend and I think most of you would like him. He's in substantial agreement with what we've been advocating in this forum, for example, being horrified at the gross decline in standards in American academia, at the same time as the radical increase in costs. I lent him my copy of "Generation X Goes to College" by Peter Sacks, and he enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI am sad to confess, however, that I think he did step out of line when he started erasing what these students were chalking on the sidewalk, unsightly as chalk on the sidewalk is. I don’t think it matters that it was outside the free speech area: as a university, we’re supposed to support free speech. I'm surprised he didn't think twice before doing this, since I know that he knows what little support we can rely on from our admin. Besides, chalk on the sidewalk will be gone after the next rain shower—although rain continues to be a sore point here in Fresno.
Also: it’s been just over two years now since the infamous “sheep incident.” While it was reported in the Fresno Bee, and made the national news, I can’t recall it ever being mentioned even once in any Fresno State publication, electronic or otherwise. Funny how that works…
Three years, sorry!
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