The Volokh Conspiracy

I can't help but wonder if this will turn out to be one of the all-to-common stories about people vandalizing their own posters, property, etc. in an attempt to make those on the other side of the controversy look ridiculous.

Back when I had my own blog, I saw something like this and called it as an inside job, too. It was.

I'm not so sure about this one... the syntax of the Liberalism-Socialism-Communism thing doesn't sound like it was written even by a lefty trying to sound like a righty. The rest does, particularly the thing about "You should be ashamed of yourself." That's the sort of thing that liberals *think* conservatives write. And the "Be a good American think Republican" riff absolutely SCREAMS of someone who thinks that Republicans believe themselves to be the only true Americans -- and most (though admittedly not all) people who think that are Democrats.

Stil, on the balance I'd put about $25 on its being an inside job.

-Michael

Oh, I'm sure the feminists and liberals have neeeever tried to silence conservative voices by tearing down or defacing their flyers, disrupting their meetings, stealing their publications, etc.

When socialists actually disrupt a conservative meeting, that's called "free speech" (see students arrested). But when conservatives may have done something disruptive, oh my, that's called a THREAT TO FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY, and we can't have that!

1) Why does a DEPARTMENT espouse purely ideological viewpoints? I'm not justifying the vandalism, but there was to be no debate here in the first place.

2) The vandals should be expelled.

With respect to your technical legal point, you are, of course, correct. It isn't hate speech. But the term frequently get misused and these are college students, not attorneys.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about the painful syntax.

Also, why exactly should it matter whether the department stands for equal rights, free speech, and ending discrimination, or -- as other departments do -- for sound mathematical knowledge or for more reading of Shakespeare?

It's just a rhetorical device. The writer's trying to point out the absurdity of attempting to stifle democracy and free speech in America in order to support it in Iraq. The person defacing the posters was engaging in a version of the "Why do you hate America?" argument.

I pretty much agree with the person writing the letter to the editor, syntax aside. I'm becoming a radical moderate. Extremism on the right is just as obnoxious as extremism on the left

This is crazy. I thought the post was about whether the vandalism was hate speech as well as whether it is somehow worse to damage politically sensitive stuff versus say mathmatics related stuff.

For a bunch of conservatives, I thought you would be up in arms about property damage -NOT LIVE SPEECH DISRUPTION, BUT PROPERTY DAMAGE - there is indeed a difference.

Lastly, liberals and conservatives have both at times made stuff up (see e.g. Bellsailles and John Lott). Just as people have made false accusations of assualt, robbery, and fingers in food. (see e.g. Morton Downey, Jr., the Guardian angel guy, and the finger in the chili lady).

The attitude presented here is the assumption that liberals are all bullshit artists when it comes to property damage. What evidence do you have to support even a notion that these incidents were perpetrated by liberals? In your answers please use real evidence that pertains to the situation - not other instances by liberal groups that would of course be irrelevant.

I can't even find the response...what's the link?

Not that I advocate it of course.

Talk about blown out of proportion, when I was in college any flier posted within reach of a pen was subject to editorial reply, regardless of its political content. The comments would inevitably be snarky, and usually made for more interesting reading than the poster itself.

In your answers please use real evidence that pertains to the situation - not other instances by liberal groups that would of course be irrelevant.

Ah, but doing so would require work, and it is much more fun to casually dismiss entire classes viewpoints one doesn't like by vaguely waving at a half-remembered example of a fruitcake. Because, of course, making up (Maryland) victim (oreo) stories (Michael Steele) never happens among grownups.

See? Fun for everyone!

1) Why does a DEPARTMENT espouse purely ideological viewpoints? I'm not justifying the vandalism, but there was to be no debate here in the first place.

2) The vandals should be expelled.

I'm going to be very cynical and point out that what started universities down the purely ideological viewpoint departments road was that at a few schools, it was the only way to get the administration building back in one piece.

Thomas Sowell makes the argument that universities, like many other non-profits, were terribly slow in getting past the old boy network, and bringing blacks into the academy. One side effect of this was that blacks were greatly underrepresented--and I wonder if the development of Black Studies programs was a quick way to hire a bunch of professors who might not have been able to work their way through the liberal, but still terribly white academic departments.

There might have been an argument for some of these ideological departments at a time when minority and feminist perspectives were seriously lacking in the social sciences. Does anyone seriously think that this is still the case today? I would argue that the ideological departments need to be folded back into the appropriate traditional department--assuming that the members of the ideological departments actually qualify for those traditional departments.

I say that because my experience suggests that the ideological departments are sorely lacking in academic rigor. A friend took a class in Native American Studies at Sonoma State University; the professor bragged about the fact that when he went off to grad school, he had the lowest GRE scores of anyone ever accepted by that school.

Another friend took an ethnic studies class at SSU where the "professor" didn't even have a bachelor's degree; his only credential was that he had been Minister of Culture at one time for the Black Panther Party. The "professor" seldom actually showed up for the classes he was supposed to teach, and eventually this turned into a lawsuit about the racism of expecting him to do his job.

My wife's experience with the chair (and only full-time professor) of the Gender Studies Department was almost as absurd. The professor handed out some articles that the students were supposed to critically evaluate. My wife did so, pointing out that the claim that women are smaller than men because they are systematically starved is absurd; hadn't this author ever heard of sexual dimorphism? From then on, my wife was invisible--in a class of twenty students. The professor would say, "Any questions?" My wife's hand would go up. "Good. Now..."

My experience with the American Multicultural Studies class was just about as ridiculous. Here's a guy who is a full professor, an elected member of the school board in a largely white city, who tells us that nothing has changed since the 1950s with respect to race relations in America. This professor even told us that he and a white gal used to respond to "for rent" signs just for the look on the landlord's face--and they stopped after one had a heart attack. Nothing has changed? He had us take a test that purported to show that IQ tests were culturally biased--but even the inner city black kids didn't know that "a stable of lace" was a pimp's employees, or any of the rest of the criminal subculture references that this professor assured us were part of being black.

Concerning fraudulent "hate crimes": I blogged here about a very large number of incidents where the hate crimes turned out to be self-inflicted. I've seen coverage of many others that were too far back to find live links.

It is interesting how often people will resort to such juvenile garbage. At least be creative about it.

I remember when someone posted a long (4 pages, typwritten, sheets connected end-to-end) accusation in a dormitory at the University of Michigan accusing a dorm advisor of being a racist. Rather than take them down, I took out a red pen and corrected the bad grammar on one copy. (Of course, that alone could easily gotten me my very own accusation of racism, given how low the threshold is for such accusations on campus.)

But I remember more incidents like small groups of students sweeping through buildings, removing all conservative campaign posters for student government with military precision. I also remember seeing neatly stacked piles of the "Michigan Review" thrown in the trash. Even the liberal "Michigan Daily" was attacked like this, with an entire press run being thrown away for some perceived racial slight.

Clayton:

If we are playing that game, I'll dig up a "few" instances of black men being arrested and even lynched for false accusations (or non crimes such as looking at white women). That people lie about instances of victimization or lie as a way to bolster their viewpoint is ages old, and hardly new. Heck, look at Bellsailes and Lott!

As others have noted, what is most suspicious about this is the wording. "Be a good American and think Republican!" just seems too good to be true. Perhaps it was written by a clever conservative in an effort to make it look like it was written by a liberal in an effort to make conservatives look ridiculous, in an effort to make liberals look ridiculous.

It's amazing to me that the initial reactions to Eugene's post are to jump to the conclusion that this was an "inside job". I wonder if they'd say the same thing about the recent incidents at the JESUIT University in my community, where, by the way, conservatives make up the vast majority of both the faculty and student body: racial slurs were written on the white boards of minority students in one of the freshman dorms; racial epithets were yelled from a second story window at a maintenece worker passing by; nazi swastika's accompanied by homophobic slurs were written on the stairwell in a different dorm. The state of intolerance is so bad that the University President felt the need to apologize for the University in his inaugural address.

Michael Lopez-- I guess you've already heard about these incidents since you write, "the fact is that *every* incident of "right-on-left" graffiti gets reported in at least the regional media, and in three and a half years of dedicated edu-blogging, I saw about seven stories about such vandalism. Every single one of them turned out to be self-inflicted."

Should I pen the University President and tell him not to worry, these incidents were probably staged by the "victims" because you say so...

I love how good, old-fashioned racism is "right on left" vandalism. Did the minority students in question have a particularly negative view of capitalism?

It's been my experience that homophobic slurs (alone) rarely have any political message behind them... they end up in bathroom stalls across the country, and you'd have a tough time establishing a conservative conspiracy behind them. It's juvenile, not political.

I'm also curious to know where this vast conservative majority jesuit school is... it sure isn't Marquette :)

When I was at Boalt in 2001-2002 as a 3L, someone had posted fliers around campus to the effect that feminist ought to support the war in Afghanistan. I was astounded, but should not have been, to watch two female law students walk by one such flier and one of them, casually, without breaking stride or turning her attention from the conversation, tore down the flier and threw it in the garbage.

dk35, a clue: just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean that person's engaging in "hate speech."

JohnAnnArbor: A clue: How do you know that this is a case of someone just disagreeing? Do you know the people who scribbled on the fliers personally?

So the default rule is that disagreement is "hate speech" until proven otherwise?

Clayton Cramer wrote: I've read plenty of other similiar news accounts over the last few years, where the initial coverage (because the news media are overwhelming liberal or leftist) is, "Oh, poor victim of an oppressive society!"

The incidents I described were *not* covered by the media and that's exactly my point. How many times do these types of things occur at small, relatively unknown universities and we don't hear about it? It seems that the frame of reference for the majority of people who comment here is mid-size or large universities. My point os that there are many more small schools out there that do not get "covered" in the same way.

That Michael Lopez claims, "*every* incident of "right-on-left" graffiti gets reported in at least the regional media" is naive at best and absurdly arrogant at worst.

Daniel Chapman: "I love how good, old-fashioned racism is "right on left" vandalism"
Point well taken...

At my dear, dear alma mater, about four years before I matriculated, a student beat himself up and claimed he was jumped, for, if I recall correctly, a (left of center) political op-ed. He made it to a campus safety phone and the police showed up rather quickly. True enough, at the site of the incident, there were signs of a struggle including blood laying in the snow. This was consistant with the fact that the kid was or had recently bled.

The university police, however, did the school a grave disservice -- they failed to publish the report for about two weeks. During this time, the school -- left and right -- moblized against such acts. How could this happen here, at an idyllic Northeastern liberal arts college? If here, anywhere! That kind of stuff.

When the report finally came out, the student admitted to faking the incident. How'd the police find out?

The snowy "crime" scene had only one set of footprints.

corngrower:

Please read David Berke's post.

DK - I didn't mean it to be a tit-for-tat. I really was astounded. I went to a tiny (400 total students) college that was very insulated from politics, pop culutre, etc, and it just surprised me - the casual rudeness of it, more than anything else. It wasn't an anecdote about liberals or conservatives.

Anything that doesn't perfectly align with the liberal worldview is hate speech. C'mon, haven't you realized that yet?

The most interesting part of the response is: destroying the property of a liberal department...

I had always assumed that the WQomen's Studies Department was an academic entity dedicated to the pursuit of truth not a dedicated group of left-wing ideolouges.

The original slonganeering does strike me as a bit fake. Even in the 60's we right wingers wouldn't have written stuff like that.

As someone who went after the far left as an undergrad, I can state that I, as well as others working with me, never stole or vandalized others property...though we were always accused of it. It was the left that stole our property, defaced our flyers/signs, and otherwise interupted and tried to shut down our meetings.

An example of this was during the '96 election. We has put up a large banner that read "The Bruin Republicans thank UCLA for affirming fairness -- YES on 209" (Prop. 209 was the anti-Affirmative Action initiative) the night before the election. Some of us stayed up all night to prevent various attempts to steal the sign. A few days after the election, someone succeeded in stealing it.

I give no credence to the left on campuses, and they deserve every iota of skepticism people have about them.

<i>"destroying the property of a liberal department to fill it with messages of freedom and democracy"</i>

A remarkable response to say the least. There is refreshing honesty in admitting that the department is liberal, but perhaps more candor than was intended in noting that "freedom and democracy" is antithetical to the department view.

The reason for the anecdotes is not to prove anything, but to support the idea that skepticism is, if not warranted, not exactly foolish.
It's not made up, in other words.

Off topic, but this is an opportunity to ask a question I've wondered about for some time. The small blue and yellow "equals sign" sticker on the door just below the nameplate. What the heck does that mean? I've seen it in a few places on our campus (office doors, automobile bumpers) and I'm always trying to figure out what the message is.

DavidL--it's a gay rights thing. Human Rights Campaign, maybe?

This thread--the comments even more than the post--is reminding me what I don't miss about college.

What's with all of these answers to "DK"? none related to anything I said? Please note there is someone posting here under "dk35" in lower case and someone posting here under "DK" in caps. We are not the same person, and I am not taking sides in the arguments between "dk35" and his?/her? sparring partners.

I would mostly agree with Eugene that this should be condemned, without regard to who perpetrated it or to who is theoretically most likely to perpetrate it.

Although I disagree with him that one can or should expect the average college student of any persuasion to use politically-charged language carefully; what we used to expect from high schools we now expect from colleges, and from colleges, now from professional schools.

I'm amazed anyone covets being a victim enough to even report this kind of thing. Someone wrote comments on a poster. Big deal.

OK. I confess. I once added a mustache to a Mona Lisa poster.

David Berke:

I don't see the offer to bet as meaning something dire. If I were sufficiently skeptical, and if the subject interested me, I might bet a couple of bucks or whatever I could afford to lose, just for fun.

That would not prove I thought the thing was made up. It would, however, demonstrate I thought there was a pretty good reason to think so, since I would not offer to bet a couple of bucks when I knew I would lose.

In addition, the discussion brings up something which is a continuing irritation and is not the same thing as a firm accusation that this is another one. Just that, given the kind of people these folks are, it might well be. And I'd bet a couple of bucks on it, especially if the department in question knew I was doing so and why.

Dustin R. Ridgeway wrote:

"College Republicans at Santa Rosa Junior College in Northern California posted fliers on the doors of ten professors' offices bearing a red star and a warning quoting a 1950s-era state education code forbidding "the advocacy and teaching of communism." One professor's crime was displaying a poster for the film Fahrenheit 9/11 in his office window. Soon after, a press release appeared on the California College Republicans' website identifying the stunt as "Operation Red Scare." "

There's a big difference between posting your own posters and tearing down the posters of others. Quite often, the flyers put up by the far left were worse then the posters mentioned above. Heck, as far as I know, those posters were dead on accurate! Frankly, one can compare some of the far left with the likes of Stalin and other evil persons