Word: jeffrieses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
The issue of what constitutes free speech has been raised with a new urgency in recent weeks, initially because City College decided to keep the infamous Leonard Jeffries as head of its African-American Studies Department, and then because of an incident of anti-semitic harassment at Yale. In both...
These same people now extend that principle (as they see it) to defend Jeffries' right to advocate racist theories in the classroom and issue death threats to members of the press, and the Yale student's First Amendment right to spray-paint a swastika on another's door.
This is quite different from the defense offered on behalf of Jeffries and the Yale student. The principle behind the respective universities' inaction is that individuals have the right to "express themselves"--the ideological equivalent of the right to "do your own thing."
In addition to being bigoted, the actions in question violate non-ideological community regulations: In the student's case, defacement of another's property; in Jeffries's case, unprofessional misuse of his position as a lecturer to present false and politicized scholarship, and death threats to a Harvard Crimson reporter...
President Harleston now professes "deep pain" that the public-at-large perceives CCNY as a hostile and anti-Semitic institution; he worries about the "impact" of Jeffries' statements on the "image of the college." It would be comforting if Harleston worries more about the reality of life at CCNY, and...