behappp said:
Everyone seems to be ignoring one of the fundamental questions. How much money needs to be given to demand who gets to be a sponsored speaker?
Is$1M the number? 50 grand enough? 5 grand?
Reminds me of the old joke where you ask someone if you could sleep with their wife for $50. How about$500? How about$50,000,etc. Until you reach a point where they say yes. Then you say that we now know what she is, we're just haggling over price.
Perhaps, but the question here is a bit different. After the 10th year of speakers sponsored by what I assume is the Journalism school's no. 1 donor, $1.5 million and growing, why would the dean reject the donor's speaker, someone who has been recognized as his school's faculty person of the year twice and someone who has recently won a very big US Sup. Ct. case important to college professors, to speak at the Journalism school? Why wouldn't the dean first consult the President of UM? It's not like the donor wanted this speaker to get hired by UM, or for a building to be named after the speaker. It was a one-time speech.
Sure, the guy is controversial. He is apparently prolific on blogging/social media. He makes fun of PC things. What's wrong with allowing the guy one speech at UM. I will try to attend, just to see what the guy has to say. My guess is that after his speech, UM will become the subject of some of his blogging.
Now the speaker will come, and has already gotten more attention than he would have otherwise gotten. Instead of UM journalism people being honored and recognized at a big 10th anniversary event, the event will honor non-Journalism people outside UM. And now, while the donor will continue her scholarship and something else, she will decided what other donations will continue to come.
Seems to be about as dumb of a decision as the Journalism dean could have made. I just don't think it's a good idea for UM to chase away long-time donors. UM needs funding. It doesn't need to sell it's sole, but with profs and people being terminated, the band not being given enough money to go to MSU for the day, and probably other athletic budget cuts here or coming, I believe UM needs to be extra careful not to chase away or turn down money.
This is from the UNC-Charlotte publication. Looks like they let him speak there earlier this year.
"Adams spoke about his perception that campus speech codes — rules that prohibit hate speech — across the country are unconstitutional and dangerous. He said he thinks sometimes speech codes backfire and can reinforce negative stereotypes against the minorities they are trying to protect.
“If there is a negative stereotype that blacks have a chip on their shoulder, a negative stereotype that women are emotional; if there is an awful negative stereotype that someone who is gay has an emotional disturbance, guess what? Coming along and saying that (speech codes) are going to defend only them, because they’re too weak to make arguments on their own, reinforces the stereotype,” Adams said. “I think it is an ugly source of bigotry, these speech codes.”
Adams cited several cases in which these codes were found to violate the First Amendment, including one case at Georgia Tech where two conservative students objected to the subject matter and coarse language in a performance of the Vagina Monologues at their school. These students created a poster that expressed their opinions, and were found to be in violation of the school’s speech code. With the encouragement of Adams, the students sued the university and were in court for two years before a court ruled in their favor."