Michelle Malkin reports that “an unhinged feminist professor” at Northern Kentucky University “invited” her graduate students to “express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy” an anti-abortion group’s “Cemetery of Innocents.” Long-time readers will remember a similar act of vandalism at Notre Dame in fall 2004, but in that case no one claimed responsibility. Not so at NKU. These speech-destroyers are proud of their intolerant actions. The Cincinnati Enquirer has more:
NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials.
Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Witnesses reported “a group of females of various ages” committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.
Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU’s literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.
“I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to,” Jacobsen said.
Asked whether she participated in pulling up the crosses, the professor said, “I have no comment.”
She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a “slap in the face” to women who might be making “the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion.”
Jacobsen said it originally wasn’t clear who had placed the crosses on campus.
She said that could make it appear that NKU endorsed the message.
Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said.
“Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged,” Jacobsen said.
Wow. What a disgrace to the name of “liberalism” and “feminism,” not to mention academia, “Professor” Jacobson is. I sincerely hope she doesn’t have tenure, and if she does, I sincerely hope that university officials will find some way to revoke it, unless she issues a very public apology which explains in excruciating and explicit detail why the First Amendment does not give anyone the right to vandalize other people’s expressions of free speech because they are “outraged” by them.
Michelle Malkin, of course, is using this incident as an example of the ignorance, intolerance and general contemptuousness of liberals, feminists, academics, pro-choice advocates, etc. That such an argument would be made is inevitable (liberals would do the same thing if a conservative professor and a group of conservative students did something similarly outrageous that fit in with liberal preconceptions of conservative faults), but of course, the argument is wrong — the isolated actions of a few “liberal” morons does not represent liberalism, feminism or the pro-choice movement. It may highlight certain disturbing trends, but it is an extreme example and should not be used to tar the whole Left. For that very reason, just as it’s important for moderate Muslims to condemn radical Islamism in no uncertain terms, it’s important for those of us on the social-issues Left who are not intolerant morons to condemn these un-American actions — and not just because Malkin & co. demand it, but because it’s the right thing to do, because we are genuinely outraged that anyone would commit such flagrantly intolerant acts against other people’s free expression, and especially that they would do so in the name of free speech, taking the First Amendment’s name in vain. I assume that every liberal on the blog will agree with me on this; I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t.
So, let me be the first to express my heartfelt outrage. Professor Jacobsen, what you and your students did is vile, repugnant, immoral, illegal and antithetical to everything that this country stands for. It is profoundly illiberal, it has nothing whatsoever to do with “feminism” or “choice,” and you ought to be completely and utterly ashamed of yourself. As a pro-choice feminist who is generally liberal on social issues (see for example my post yesterday about the expelled gay student), I condemn your indefensible actions, and I call on you to issue a public apology, resign your undeserved position of influence over our nation’s youth, and enroll in a remedial civics course that will allow you to learn about our great Constitution, in particular the true nature of free speech and the fact that you do not have a constitutional right to not be offended or outraged. You have an unlimited right, of course, to respond to speech that you consider outrageous through counterspeech — but the constitution does not confer upon you, should not confer upon you, and will never confer upon you, the right to silence anyone else’s speech. Period.
April 14th, 2006 at 4:38:18 pm
well said Brendan…
April 14th, 2006 at 5:00:54 pm
Brendan,
The way I see, they got their say in this and now she has hers. Just because someone is free to spout whatever he or she pleases, that does not mean that I have to listen to it. And she is not silencing their speech. Silencing it would mean that she prevented them from saying what it is that they wanted to say, i.e. forbding the group to place the signs. But they got their say, now it’s her turn to have her say. They, in turn, are free to put up the signs again.
April 14th, 2006 at 5:01:26 pm
Intolerance in the name of free speech is my FAVORITE form of hypocrisy :-)
April 14th, 2006 at 5:05:39 pm
A.J., I hope your comment is parody…
April 14th, 2006 at 5:10:30 pm
I assume that every liberal on the blog will agree with me on this; I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t. Well now that is really rather presumptuous and arrogant of you. Not to mention has the potential to stifle free speech in this forum by telling anyone that might have a dissenting opinion from your own you dismiss them out of hand so they best go someplace else. Really Brendan, condemning people for for outrageous actions at the same time you shout others who might dissent. I object to your prior restraint and demand an apology!
Be that as it may… If I recall correctly the removal of legally placed campaign signs by anyone other than the person on persons that put them up qualifies as felony elections tampering which is a federal crime. (Actually a few years back a group of College Republicans were caught in the act of taking Democratic campaign signs down in the median of some road and were arrested and charged. But then the college Republicans generally act like morons.)
As I was saying, the destruction of other peoples speech items is illegal. This is why you can’t burn someone else’s American flag, but you can burn your own. (I’m not kidding I love the ability of the Supreme Court to split hairs).
Where was I? Oh, right crosses… Umm, counter speech. Right, you may certainly be offended by someone else’s message (Certainly the USC College Republicans put up some seriously offensive flyers (historically inaccurate too, but then what do you expect, College Republicans are morons.)) And you have a right to be outraged certainly. However, you must fight speech with more speech. (it is conceivable someone could argue that the destruction of another person’s property is counter speech, but that runs against property rights, which are also Constitutionally protected). Nothing prevents a counter speech demonstration from getting up close and personal with someone else’s speech demonstration. Have you seen median strips during election season? A more creative demonstration would have made more sense.
April 14th, 2006 at 5:21:31 pm
dcl,
Brendan merely made the ASSUMPTION that every liberal on this blog would agree with him, and that he couldn’t IMAGINE why anyone wouldn’t. Yet from those rather innocuous remarks, you lept pretty far afield to Brendan “stifl[ing] free speech in this forum” and “dismiss[ing] . . . out of hand” those who disagree with him, and telling them to “best go someplace else.”
Methinks you got the cork in a little too tight. And College Republicans are morons?
April 14th, 2006 at 5:22:22 pm
Unless, of course, your remarks were parody as well, which is always a possibility . . .
April 14th, 2006 at 5:27:13 pm
The first paragraph could have been joke. But it was censored at the last minute.
College Republicans are morons, but look I repeat myself, is a totally accurate statement. Not to say that College Democrats are the sharpest knives in the drawer. But at least they tend not to be inflammatory bigots so you don’t notice them as much.
April 14th, 2006 at 5:48:28 pm
Joe Mama - it’s actually a typo problem …
dcl meant to type “Collage Republicans” (ie. sorta papier-maché men made up of out-of-context clippings from MSM dead-trees) which are, as we all know, morons … instead, in a sorta Freudian homage to those intellectually superior to dcl, he inadvertently typed “College Republicans” …
It’s a very understandable mistake … we should not be too hard on dcl because of it …
April 14th, 2006 at 5:51:39 pm
Alasdair, and that is a prime example of why the College [sic] Republicans are morons.
April 14th, 2006 at 6:31:02 pm
She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a “slap in the face� to women who might be making “the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion.�
Wouldn’t it be nice if she was infuriated about all the innocent children being killed? Or infuriated how the left has taken what should be an issue about whether or not murder is being commited and turned it into an attack against women’s freedoms?
But no, instead she has no problem with women having sex and being able to use abortion as birth control, regardless of whether or not they are killing an innocent child.
April 14th, 2006 at 6:48:07 pm
David, your silly opinion is a slap in the face to women. I’m outraged. I think I’ll go vandalize your house now. I have the right to do so, because it’s free speech.
April 14th, 2006 at 8:08:33 pm
And I have the right to break out my shotgun and shoot you, also free speech ;-)
April 14th, 2006 at 8:55:18 pm
David @ 8:08 - that’s only true if Brendans are in season …
April 14th, 2006 at 9:26:24 pm
Try to imagine the following:
1. Minutemen taking Mexican flags from a pro-immigration display and throwing them in the trash.
2. Bushies ripping the crosses from Camp Casey and throwing them in the trash.
3. Seagrams executives ripping crosses from a MADD demonstration and throwing them in the trash.
Not analogous? (”But Camp Casey crosses represent dead veterans who were already born!”) Well, you can’t point that out because YOU’VE ALREADY HAD YOUR SAY.
April 15th, 2006 at 9:32:19 am
wow, a lot of posts here are confusing the heck out of me… brendan makes sense, and joe mama makes sense… but what the hell is everyone else posting about? even the yank has me scratching my head…
April 15th, 2006 at 9:40:50 am
or more directly, while i’m APPALLED at her actions against this contrived piece of installation art, dave did you suggest that it would be nice if she 180′d her opinion on abortion?
Wouldn’t it be nice if she was infuriated about all the innocent children being killed?
or is that the lingering nyquil in my system talking? i think it would be nice if she found a healthier way to express her outrage and kept her opinion. ehh, back to be with me…
April 15th, 2006 at 2:10:37 pm
Jar Jar: I have you scratching your head? If I could, I would exercise my free speech and delete your comment.
April 15th, 2006 at 3:40:02 pm
I just never get the logic. How can abortion be an ‘agonizing and very private decision’ and at the same time, not the destruction of a human life. I mean, if it’s just cells, then why the agony - why isn’t it anything more than having an unsightly mole or (I shudder to compare) cancer removed ? Believing that the embryo is something special does not of course foreclose reasonable arguments for abortion, but I don’t think most arguments for abortion are cast on that premise; the “agonizing decision” soundbites are used as a defense to the privacy aspect, while the lack of human life-status is used to defend against arguments that the practice is barbaric. 4-7 docked 1 point for collateral topic.
April 15th, 2006 at 5:56:01 pm
Jar Jar: I have you scratching your head? If I could, I would exercise my free speech and delete your comment
all right texas yank, if i could i would erect an invisible force field around me and let loose my 10,000 large pink elephant army to trample your dreams… so take that. see? see what happens? i launched my masterdon army. happy now? and i used to think you were pretty cool. ehh, i am on one too many cold meds at once. my question texas toasted yankovic is regarding the analogy… i’m not sure what the camp casey incident is… and thus am ignorant to the analogy…
April 15th, 2006 at 7:36:11 pm
Jar Jar–some tiny crosses were erected at Camp Casey to stand for fallen American soldiers. (This was done, I believe, over the objections of some of the parents, who didn’t want their sons used–different topic.) And Cindy Sheehan’s handlers made a huge deal about nobody walking between the dirt rows, a restriction that of course did not apply to Sheehan herself, who was free to roll around in the dirt and sob whenever CNN happened by.
Now, the subtext was clear: kids died, so the war must end. I was wondering what the reaction would be if the Bush supporter who disagreed with the message decided to gather up the crosses and throw them away.
The notion that Iraq and abortion are less than comparable is my secondary point. If anyone tried to point that out, I’d do my best to silence them–as an exercise of free speech, right?
This whole incident recalls Tom Stoppard’s quote in “The Real Thing” about the British Left, that “Objectionable speech is ‘provocation,’ while throwing bricks at the speaker is ‘the exercise of free speech.’”
April 15th, 2006 at 8:56:35 pm
4-7 abortion isn’t logical to begin with, especially the support it gets from the left. You are talking often times, about people who protest the death penalty because taking a human life is wrong, who protest killing animals and in many of their cases in eating them because it is cruel, yet when you have what is quite possible a person (definitely a human being at that point, with its own unique DNA and such) and yet, without a second thought are willing to conclude, despite any definitive evidence either way, that it is not a person and therefore can be killed for convenience sake. Yes I admit that my comment is a bit inflamatory, but it seems to me that thats what it boils down to. They want to keep abortion legal for convenience, they don’t want to have to deal with the consequences of their actions and are willing to possibly murder an innocent living person because they don’t want to deal with a baby. They have gone so far as to divert from the REAL question of whether or not you are killing a person and turn it into a supposed attack on women’s freedom, ignoring of course that freedom of LIFE shoudl supersede freedom of CHOICE, and that abortion is so far the only issue that the supreme court has ruled in that direction. I’m sorry but if you don’t know whether something is a person or not, doesn’t it make sense to err on the side of cuation, given that if you choose the other direction you are basically saying murder is ok so long as you don’t think someone is a person. Seems to me that is (and has been historically proven to be) a very ver VERY dangerous position to take.
April 15th, 2006 at 11:04:29 pm
David, you confuse support for abortion being legal with wanting people to have abortions. Or even that one would decided to have one themselves while still supporting it’s being legal.
Humans, and other animals that care for young, as opposed to just letting them run of and fend for themselves, have always committed some sort of infanticide. This is one of those getting down to brass tacks sort of things. Kind of like illegal immigration, are you going to deport 12 million people? nope, can’t be done, off the table. Are you going to lock 12 million people in jail? nope, can’t be done. From there you look at what you can do. That’s the way it is.
Are you going to stop people from having abortions even if you make it illegal? Nope, won’t work. That’s the way it is. What if you made having an abortion equivalent to homicide, how about then? Nope, still won’t work. The position is simply unrealistic. You can want people not to have abortions. You can try and help them see other possibilities. But when push comes to shove you cannot stop it no matter what you do. Just for a reality check. No one wants people to have abortions. But it will happen. The wise and prudent course to take then, is to make it safe legal and rare… Which is far far better then a coat hanger on the table in someone’s kitchen.
April 16th, 2006 at 1:51:17 am
Sorry Dane but that argument falls apart complete because we are talking about legalized MURDER. You can try and pretty it up all you want, but thats what it boils down to. You are saying, essentially, that people are going to kill other people and since we can’t stop it we might as well make it as safe as possible. What next, legalized drive bys? We let people know when its going to happen so they can get out of the way if they aren’t involved.
The biggest problem with your argument is that you offer an if/else statement. Sorry but thats just not the case. If we ban abortion yes people might still do it, but guess what, if we ban murder people still do it. Not a good enough reason to say its ok. Especially when you are talking about absolute innocent victims whose only crime is having parents who aren’t willing to deal with the consequences of their actions.
If people want to have abortions they should have to face the consequences, and we should make sure those consequences are as harsh as possible because, as I said the alternative is legalized murder of innocents.
“But”, you say “who says they are people, we don’t know” EXACTLY!!! We DON’T know and I can not understand how given that we don’t know anyone ANYONE can argue that we should not only allow but ASSIST people in potential murder! Its absoultey insane and one fo the worst positions the left has taken on any issue.
April 16th, 2006 at 9:29:41 am
David, this is not the thread to have this argument on, and I’m really not the person to have it with. Obviously I think you are working from a faulty premiss, and you think likewise.
The key question is this argument is when the state should step in and make moral ethical judgments for people. (The El Salvador law is flat out insane. If you cannot operate on ectopic pregnancies thats a very good way to get the mother killed or make it so she cannot have children and the fetus simply will not survive. ) And is a point on which I simply disagree with you.
April 16th, 2006 at 12:28:40 pm
The state should step in to protect the lives of those who can’t protect themselves, which is, in this case the unborn child.
I challenge you to point out my faulty premise. What is faulty about this claim:
An unborn child may or may not be a person, given that we don’t know one way or the other it is morally wrong to assume the negative because if we assume that and we are wrong we are condoning murder, where as if we assume the positive the worst that happens is that someones life becomes inconvenient for nine-ish months, and while after that the child may have a tough life as a possible unwanted baby at least it has A LIFE.
April 16th, 2006 at 4:36:17 pm
Destroying property is a crime, not free speech.
April 17th, 2006 at 3:15:30 am
And, last time I looked into it, the developing human foetus is pretty much a parasite, with a little symbiote effect thrown in …
Didn’t stop SWMBO and I from having 4 of ‘em …
April 19th, 2006 at 8:37:43 am
Placing campaign posters on the median strip (federal commons) is permitted up to an election as part of the nessesarry campaigning leading up to the elections. it is not general free speech, or else it would also be permissible to put up advertising billboards, religious icons and any other words and symbols there.
That symbolic display placed on a campus lawn is an entirely different matter. For one thing the camus grounds are the private property of the university. You would need a permission from the administration to put up any display. Strictly speaking you need a permission to even hold a demonstration there, though this is routinely waived on the grounds that students, through their tuition, pay for the right to use campus grounds as a commons. That however do not include permanent displays, and particularly:
Free speech do not supercede responsibility.
The traditional example is yelling fire in a crowded theatre. The person so yelling would be held responsible for any ensuing material destruction and human suffering.
Likewise if those median campain signs include one formed as a speed limit sign saying fx 200MpH because that party wanted speed limits eased, any accidendents and fatalities resulting would be the responsibility of the poster of that sign.
And again those crosses. During a specific demonstration they would be covered as ‘free speech’, but once the demonstrators went home the crosses would no longer qualify as free speech. They would just be litter left behind by irresponsible demonstrators. Blocking or impeding the other students legitimate right to use the ‘commons’ for play or recreation, and particularly blocking the grounds keepers righ and duty to keep the grounds neat and to mow the lawn.
The closest equivalent is a message spraypainted on buildings or wehicles. It may have a component of free spech, but primarily it is just irreponsible vandalism.