He said the US deserved 9-11 and so on.
This professor was protected by the university in spite of calls to have him fired because they said the university needs diverse voices, even if they are violent and they would protect his 1A rights...
Things have changed...
But his essay was kind of ignored until 2005. Then CU Boulder investigated him for academic misconduct and fired him. The committee concluded it wasn't serious enough to fire him, and he later successfully sued the university for firing him. Media was reporting on his firing as having major free speech implications.
Academic misconduct should be punished. But to me it looks like one of the major motivations for his firing was his extremely offensive comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill#Activism_on_Nat...
Let me get this straight: someone who expressed hateful left-leaning political opinions was _not_ fired, and then later someone who expressed hateful right-leaning political opinions _was_ fired? What changed, exactly?
I think that is a significant shift (even if yes, we do see a free pass for the likes of Sarah Jeong[1] for example.
It's frightful to see that defending the 1A on principle is seen as an endorsement of objectionable views.
Most of the rest of it seems like bog-standard US political polarisation, and if she didn't write the bigoted stuff…
It's Disqus; it doesn't work like that. Anyone can use any username.
> So she wrote all of the borderline bad things
I like them as much as you do (possibly less), but a large proportion of the US population has been radicalised in this way. It's not so cut and dry as I'd like these situations to be. (I'd delete that kind of thing if I were moderating, though; that's an obvious thing to do.)
https://help.disqus.com/en/articles/1717153-registering-a-co...
Is this what they were referring to?
> Usernames must be unique and can only be registered by one commenter at a time. If you are seeing this message, it means your desired username is already taken, and you should try registering a different name.
The journalist didn't just google that username and assume everything he read was from her or something, he simply clicked on her linked account in the Disqus system and read/screenshot what else she posted. She's obviously lying when she said that the racist comments, but only the racist ones were written by someone else.
If she could bring someone who would say "Yes, I wrote that on her account" or show that the time of the comment she was teaching or something - I think that would be pretty compelling.
https://help.disqus.com/en/articles/1717211-guest-commenting
Nah, if you click through a username, you can see where else they commented if they're logged in. And the chances of her leaving comments with that login at Breitbart / Drudge Report but not Gateway Pundit are so vanishingly small to not even consider.
But yeah, most of her really off-the-rails stuff was at properties the Nieman Labs guy didn't control so he couldn't delete, it seems like she wrote dumb nonsense on his page partially identifying herself and then he just clicked through to read the rest of her garbage she was writing all over the internet about every silly right-wing conspiracy theory du jour.
• the employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern.
• their free-speech interests outweigh their employer’s efficiency interests.
The comments do seem to be on a matter of public concern, which is typically interpreted quite broadly. The criteria used to assess these efficiency interests include whether the speech:
• Impairs discipline or harmony among co-workers.
• Has a detrimental impact on close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary
• Interferes with the normal operation of the employer’s business.
Any litigation over this firing would focus on whether these are real factors that would disrupt teaching, or whether the university officials are just punishing her for her politics. The specific tweets are presumably not directed against any individuals who are at the college, and do not involve the college's normal operations. This does undermine the case somewhat.
You can't fire them for the speech - which is of course protected - but you can fire them because they can't possibly be qualified to hold their position while holding/espousing those views. Unless there's a specific state law protecting employees from off-duty conduct (Pennsylvania doesn't have one), employees can certainly be fired.
I would think that she would want to prove that statement falsely attributed first in a defamation suit before going after the university.
The test above is correctly quoted, the only dispute is factual which none of us here has the evidence to resolve. She may be lying or telling the truth, but we can't make any grand pronouncements about whether the university was right or wrong on the basis of disputed factual claims that have yet to be resolved in court.
And it's the one comment she says she didn't make.
I wonder if her lawyer has seen this story? Many of the comments here could be helpful in showing damages.
Really? There's very little hope for an environment of open and honest discourse without doxing people?
Doxxing people is condemnable, journalists discussing each others views alone is not.
It's also used in virtuous ways; for example, to determine whether what appears to be grassroots activism is astroturfing (https://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-move...).
Some of the worst I've seen was under their real names (including one I knew as a leadership role in a local Scouting group, and another prominent local businessman) on Nextdoor.
That's better described as religious intolerance, not quite the same as racism per se. Not that this makes the attitude any less problematic, far from it. OP is ironically projecting her own attitude onto Muslims by saying that they all hate us for not sharing their religion.
If we're going to call that population limited, then yeah I'd agree
Why were Muslims protesting in front of Trump Tower? Seems like Trump was like the first President in decades not to Bomb the shit out of one of their countries of origin. Trump had one the lowest Muslim body counts since last century.
Perhaps her comment was all about perceived ingratitude.
I've come across this before, were Americans think other countries should be grateful that they don't get bombed.
He also seems to have done this in retaliation towards legitimate commentary and criticism of a Nieman Lab article. If there's anything that makes his behavior especially reprehensible, surely this must be it. And this also implies that her lawsuit might actually have some merit to it.
How so? It's a defamation suit so the criteria are pretty clear and as far as I'm aware whether it was revenge or not doesn't have any bearing.
She's either telling the truth or she's gambling that he overplayed his hand, doesn't have hard evidence to link her to those comments, and (in the context of a civil suit, which is what defamation is) lacks the resources to prove his case with preponderance of evidence. In which case, he'll be liable for damages and have to pay to "make her whole" (which could be quite a bit if she can convince the court she lost her job because of the things she's alleged to have said in that one set of comments she's suing over).
Either that or maybe she can demonstrate how his actions caused her harm without her harming him, but his actions were only possible as an employee of Neiman labs.
I think what will most likely happen is he will be fired and she will get an undisclosed settlement.
However that wasn't what I was taking issue with in the parent comment.
I think it's reasonable to expect however that:
- Journalists should be able to discuss each others views
- People who work at tech platforms should not dox their users (without a warrant)
- There is an acceptable point where an employer can fire their employees for what views they express in their private life.
So in all, is what Joshua did wrong here? I'd say so, but only because he doxxed a user. Is what the University did wrong here? It sucks where the information came from, but probably not. But even if you were to argue that there was, I find what Joshua did here to be largely immaterial towards that point, it's only how her employer chooses to react that is relevant.
But I can say that an unethical decision on the part of one party spurred on an ethical response from another.
If a robber breaks into a house a pedophile and discovers illicit material, are the police unethical for following up on that lead?
Abusing one's admin position to dox someone is not really distinguishable from any principled position against publishing hacked information.
It's weird to me that this ethical consideration seems to be something that can be ignored whenever convenient.
That probably shouldn't rise to a CFAA violation, but there was a supposed ethical standard around publishing hacked information, so it's a bit weird to see that ethical consensus come and go so easily.
I won't speak to the legality of it because I'm not qualified, but it's morally reprehensible.
He could have
1. Taken offense to this comment/taken interest in what else this user comments (which you can do without any admin tools)
2. Seen the islamophobic/xenophobic comment
3. De-anonymized the user
In this version the de-anonymization is related to the more repugnant comments, not the initial critique.
Take the internet away and it's even more obviously protected. If you ran a newspaper and occasionally published letters from readers, and if a racist letter showed up with a vaguely obfuscated address that was easily traceable, it would be well within your rights to write an article about the person in a position of power who sent your newspaper racist rantings.
The journalist likely violated Disqus's terms of service but in no way does that give the professor grounds to sue him.
I've been surfing everything from Usenet to webboards and other internet comment facilities for 25 years, how come I've never seen it? Typically the routine goes: cosmetic blocking (hiding, disemvoweling), account block, email block, ip block, then whack-a-mole for the truly persistently annoying.
Have you, and can you link to it if so?
There's a reason certain forms of evidence are inadmissible in court.
(The professor's also at fault for not anonymizing herself better, of course.)
A professor naturally speaks with the authority of their corresponding institution, whether they or the institution likes it that way. A professor is also often in a position of leadership as they supervise the fate of students.
Does she though? She had every reason to believe her choice of email address would remain private.
By a similar token, I am currently working for <REDACTED> (on lunch break) and using a computer belonging to said entity. If you managed to work out what <REDACTED> is, would I retroactively be considered to be speaking for it?
Credibility and reputation aren't precisely in anyone's hands.
A) A journalist brought light to the comments made by a journalism professor.
B) Said journalism professor's employer chose to fire her for those comments.
Now, I think there is little room for taking issue with point A. If we're at the point where Journalists can't discuss the views of people in their own space, I have very little hope for a future environment of open and honest discourse.
On point B, I think there are many views people can hold which justify firing someone. The only question is where you draw the line. If an employee was actively spreading hateful messaging concerning a coworker in their own time, away from work, I think most people would agree firing that person is an acceptable course of action (I understand that wasn't the case here).
I also think there are a great number of people that believe pushing hateful discourse, even on your own time means that you are unfit for the workplace given that those views aren't conducive to a healthy work environment.
In this case they were pushing some rather racist discourse. They said in response to an article about Muslims "Scum. Deport them. They hate us. Get rid of them."
Obviously the point where you draw the line on acceptable discourse is in degrees, with active harrassment/hate of coworkers on one end, active hate towards a general group in the middle, and some kinds of conspiracism on the other. Where you draw the line is open for discussion, but lets not pretend it's not acceptable to have a line at all.
EDIT:
Other people are pointing out that Joshua doxxed Francesca using priveleged information from their Disqus platform. While I think that's condemnable, I find it largely immaterial to how Francesca's employer chooses how to react.