I caught this story at the tail end, which was (thankfully) a sane and appropriate conclusion to a sad tale.
Warren County Community College adjunct English professor, John Daly resigned last night before the school’s board of trustees began an emergency meeting to discuss the professor’s fate. On November 13, Daly sent an email to student Rebecca Beach vowing “to expose [her] right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like [Rebecca’s] won’t dare show their face on a college campus.” In addition, Daly said that “Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors.”
Beach's "anti-people politics" include being a member of the Young America's Foundation, the purpose of which is to provide American college students with a balanced education. Beach's apparent violation of the campus PC code was to send an email to professors announcing the upcoming speech of decorated war hero Lt. Col. Scott Rutter and his topic, American accomplishments in Iraq.
This was too much for Professor's Daly's sanity, as evidenced by the reply he sent to Ms. Beach:
...I am asking my students to boycott your event. I am also going to ask others to boycott it. Your literature and signs in the entrance lobby look like fascist propaganda and is extremely offensive...If you want to count the number of deaths based on political systems, you can begin with the more than a million children who have died in Iraq from U.S.-imposed sanctions and war. Or the million African American people who died from lack of access to healthcare in the US over the last 10 years.I will continue to expose your right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like your won't dare show their face on a college campus. Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors...
The college tried to defend Daly's nasty email as "free speech," but it was apparently pointed out to them that it might be a tad hypocritical to censure students who violate campus speech codes, while defending professors who threaten students that "groups like your [sic]" would be removed from campus entirely. Good for Warren County Community College for finally taking the steps to defend students from this kind of professorial misbehavior.
(Via Michelle, and others like SingleMind.Net, who notes that "...Daly is hardly a lone voice in academia.")
Posted by kswygert at November 29, 2005 12:33 PM