July 31, 2007
FIRE Fires at Iowa
The University of Iowa has been one of a very few universities to receive praise from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education for maintaining no written policies that FIRE says infringe on constitutionally protected free speech. But in a post on the organization’s blog, the Torch, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, Samantha Harris, writes that Iowa has lost that imprimatur because it now has two statements on sexual harassment.
The first, she says, conforms to Supreme Court and Department of Education definitions of sexual harassment: “persistent, repetitive, or egregious conduct directed at a specific individual or group of individuals that a reasonable person would interpret, in the full context in which the conduct occurs, as harassment of a sexual nature.” But according to another university Web site, sexual harassment is defined in far broader terms: “when somebody says or does something sexually related that you don’t want them to say or do.”
Harris warns the university that “it needs to get rid of this new definition immediately and inform students that they can only be punished for engaging in actual harassment of the sort described in the university’s original definition.”
Karen Winkler | Posted on Tuesday July 31, 2007 | PermalinkComments
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Since schools are reluctant to do anything that smacks of a lawsuit (especially one involving faculty), an administration actually enforcing all the PC policies and regulations about sex, age, etc discrimination, is highly unlikely. The vague “rules” about harassment will probably never be enforced unless the harasser is a young, wealthy, white male.
Few schools enforce their regulations unless there is a public outcry. Bureaucracies operate under the radar: turn on the light and cockroaches scatter!
FIRE should direct its efforts at assisting people embroiled in actual problems rather than worrying about what might happen. Like much of what is said and done in academe – UI’s statements are mostly just blather.
— Muap Conners Jul 31, 04:55 PM #
Are you then saying, no cause to be concerned, the wealthy white males can be thrown to the sharks…
— Robert Ledermann Jul 31, 08:13 PM #
“FIRE should direct its efforts at assisting people embroiled in actual problems rather than worrying about what might happen. Like much of what is said and done in academe—UI’s statements are mostly just blather.”
This is rather like saying that opponents of university codes aimed at statements that, so it was said, were supportive of Communism in the 1950s should not have taken any action until such time as a professor was actually dismissed.
Fortunately, such a short-sighted view did not prevail. To the contrary, critics of the 1950s speech codes maintained that, by their very existence, they had a chilling effect on academic freedom as well as constitutionally protected speech. The harm they did took place long before any specific individual was targeted by them.
These opponents further maintained that one ought not to be put to the considerable anxiety, trouble and expense of a court case merely to exercise one’s constitutional rights.
In my view, the arguments of those who resisted McCarthyism in the 1950s were correct. It is deeply regrettable that so very few professors are willing to follow in their footsteps today.
— Gustave Aug 3, 03:27 PM #