FIRE – Victory at IUPUI: Student-Employee Found Guilty of Racial Harassment for Reading a Book Now Cleared of All Charges Incredible story. What is wrong with these people? You can’t even read histories anymore?
Administrators at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) have revoked their finding that a student-employee was guilty of racial harassment merely for publicly reading the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. Following pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), IUPUI has declared that Keith John Sampson’s record is clear and said it will reexamine its affirmative action procedures relating to internal complaints.
“Just when you’d thought you’d seen every crazy act of censorship a college administrator can dream up, along comes a case where a student is found guilty of racial harassment simply for reading a book,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Thankfully, with time and public outrage, IUPUI’s administration recognized Keith John Sampson had done nothing wrong and acknowledged that the First Amendment protects not only what you say, but also what you read.”
In November 2007, Sampson—who works in the school’s janitorial department and is ten credits away from a degree in communications—was notified by Lillian Charleston of IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office (AAO) that two co-workers had filed a racial harassment complaint against him. The AAO alleged that by reading a book on the KKK in the break room, Sampson had engaged in racial harassment. Sampson attempted to explain that the book, written by Todd Tucker, was a historical account of the events on two days in May 1924, when a group of Notre Dame students fought with members of the Ku Klux Klan. His explanation was dismissed, and he later received a letter from Charleston that determined he was guilty of racial harassment. Charleston wrote that his failures included “openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject.”
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| Lillian Charleston. She even looks self-righteous. |
Found by jrc.
This sounds “niggardly” to me….
School is not real life. This academic land is a bizzaro world, where half the people do it to escape the real world.
I remember things like this being brandied about around the college campus in Iowa. War Protesters were allowed, Pro-Gay demonstrations (i.e. National Coming Out Day ) were allowed, but just try and have a Christmas Carol Sing along with the Christian Students gathering around the ‘Winter Tree’ and we were denounced in the School newspaper, and denied permission by the campus administration .
Not real life at all. (and this was in the late 80′s)
Not surprised. Academic types live in some alternate reality, where common sense does not exist. I bet if he was reading some book about the over through of the government, then it would have been fine. I hope this guy sues the ass off these douches.
Cripes!
I always love the way the right wing nuts take one incident and turn it into a whole standard response.
This isn’t normal and the situation was corrected. The original letter was sent out by the department designated to respond to such complaints. The top administration ended up responding correctly when notified of the problem.
Yes, it took seven months, but as anyone who has ever been caught in “the system”, the wheels of justice are usually slow. If a quicker final decision had of been made then many people would be up in arms that the problem wasn’t duly considered and a rush judgment made.
Can the guy sue? Sure, but he won’t get far. It didn’t cost him any money and he wasn’t disciplined. The original letter was the result of an investigation that was successfully appealed and withdrawn. In other words, he wasn’t damaged to the extent that he could be rewarded damages.
FIRE has been winning case after case against these colleges with speech codes.
Deconstructing America at work.
Nothing new here, what is surprising is that some readers *here* are surprised by it.
Stick 50 bucks in a paypal account. Every time you see one of these abortions of justice, send a one dollar contribution to a white supremacist group. Tell everyone you know.
Yeah, I hate those ignorant crackers as much as you do, but at least they’re not filing a huge lawsuit every time somebody says “fried chicken”
at a KFC.
And, sooner or later, this country will either go bankrupt from this vampirism, or the “Get A Friggin’ Life Law” will be passed.
#10/11/12 – Engineering at a mostly liberal arts school.
Remember that most of these kids are fresh from home and are getting out from under their parent’s control. It’s a perfect time to indoctrinate them into the cult.
#12 – Unless you learn how to temper your words, and speak the right speak, you’ll find getting a job, much less tenure, a difficult task. It’s tenure that makes this so complicated. Academic Freedom is a slippery slope.
Not even the light of day can rid the campuses of this PC blight. Ward Churchill could be brought down only when it was shown that he falsified research. Even then, it was a split vote.
On some campuses, it’s illegal to audio tape a lecture and release it to the media…
The only thought I’ve found to be verboten at the science departments I’ve been around is the idea that one should research ways to solve actual problems, instead of engaging in endless intellectual masturbation of various sorts.
And that attitude comes from the top. Applied science gets no grants, while continuing to catalog and pick apart things when our level of maturity is too low to use this knowledge appropriately is given all the money you would care for.
You get what you subsidize, and that’s why the third world is cooking over a bare fire instead of an efficient and cheap stove, and why you have Terminator genes in corn instead of genes that would make for a more nutritious food.
When I was in the army in the late 70s. in basic training, I was one of only 5 white guys in my barracks. After lights out, the “others” would call out to each other loudly, “If you’re white, you’re wrong!” And ever since then, I feel like I am always hearing it.