After desperately trying to gin up media coverage of student protests at the University of Missouri, one of the school’s media professors is now furiously trying to “muscle” the press off campus to prevent them from covering student protests that rapidly spiraled out of control Monday.
Mizzou president Timothy Wolfe announced his resignation on Monday after members of the school’s 4-5 football team announced they would boycott team activities unless the school acceded to certain demands surrounding racial equality. Unsurprisingly, Wolfe’s resignation did little to quell the mob.
On Monday afternoon, activists who had demanded Wolfe’s resignation abruptly demanded that media stop covering their activities on the public campus of the taxpayer-funded university. At the center of those demands was Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media within Mizzou’s communications department.
Here's the video -- check out the call from public servant Click for "muscle" to get rid of those who are attempting to film the protesters, which comes in the last minute or so of the video -- scroll ahead to about the 6:00 minute mark to get the full flavor of Click's, er, performance:
What a pleasant person -- the state of Missouri is getting quite a good return on its investment in paying her salary.
A few observations:
- When the football team can get a university president to resign, we're a long way from the days of Robert Maynard Hutchins, that's for sure.
- The students you see on the video look to be comfortably middle class and are engaged in a public demonstration in a public place. I'm not sure why they would imagine they have a right to privacy in that context, unless they're afraid Mom and Dad might cut off their latte money.
- Readers of this feature understand that free speech is not free of consequence. Say what you want, but own it. It's possible that, at some point, the students shown here understood that notion, but they aren't especially keen on accountability. That's not gonna fly once they get out of the comforting embrace of ol' alma mater.
- Historically, Mizzou has been known as one of the best journalism schools in the country. Not sure how this sort of thing helps maintain that reputation.
23 comments:
Maybe it is not legally or procedurally possible, but I would have liked to see the U president announce that, "I am resigning, effective immediately, and this University will be closed until a new President is named, confirmed and in place." No point in attempting to teach people determined to prove that they are learning nothing.
It's been so long now since I received my Journalism degree from Mizzou that I'm not even sure what I learned there and what I picked up along the way. I'm pretty sure, though, that this wasn't any part of it.
I do recall the fervor (very off-putting, in fact) that my classmates had to be the next Woodward or Bernstein. Now it appears that someone wants to be the next Che.
Mizzou ain't lookin' good, but Tim Tai should be on the short list for hiring when he graduates. That young man has a set that makes the ones you see on the back of pickup trucks look tiny.
shit like this is why we have too many people going to college. higher education serves a valuable function in any society, but it doesnt mean more automatically equals better.
if you ask me, our nation would be better served if 75% of the 'students' in this video enrolled in shop classes and learned a useful trade instead of whatever the hell they are learning at mizzou.
there was a story last year in CA where the student union (or something stupid sounding like that) voted to remove the flag of the USA , so as not to offend foreign students or undocumented student migrants (wetbacks).
20 yrs olds should never be given any power, anywhere. can we just agree to that?
Actually, Mao-zu has a decent black graduation rate of 56% after six years versus 68.7% overall. The national averages are something like 42% and 55%, so both rates are better than average. So like at Yale, another offender in this regard, the obvious data do not suggest that the protesters simply don't belong there. They may be people with some seriously warped ideas and rather flexible ethics, but they've ponied up the test scores and GPAs to get into college.
and if you pony up the money and credit score you can drive a maserati... doesnt mean you know how to handle such a machine.
many kids in college, that i see, are not learning much of value. its time we stopped subsidizing college and assuming 'students' are some sort of cherished lot.
Agreed. I simply find it interesting that some of the places with the best apparent credentials are those with the wackiest ideas. Perhaps a certain portion of the highly intelligent (genuinely or in their own minds) see it as a fun challenge to see what they can get away with via cunning.
I'm just going to quote a friend of mine, who is a card carrying member of the liberal media (really, his stuff is in Mother Jones among other places):
"When I look at that video, I see two white professionals telling a young minority journalist that he doesn't belong, and then one of them calling for "muscle" to evict him from a public place. That feels like a dangerous precedent for civil liberties, whether the eviction comes from a police officer or a Ph.D. professor."
"When I look at that video, I see two white professionals telling a young minority journalist that he doesn't belong, and then one of them calling for "muscle" to evict him from a public place. That feels like a dangerous precedent for civil liberties, whether the eviction comes from a police officer or a Ph.D. professor."
Your friend is correct.
This kind of crap will not stop until somebody has the balls to call an end to this PC crap. Rather than resign, the pres there should have announced that those professors are fired, and that those not attending class will be failed for the semester. Also, that the football game will go on with anybody that wants to play, that it won't make much difference to their losing season anyway, and those that don't want to play can quit the team. In short, put a price on foolishness.
This kind of crap will not stop until somebody has the balls to call an end to this PC crap. Rather than resign, the pres there should have announced that those professors are fired, and that those not attending class will be failed for the semester. Also, that the football game will go on with anybody that wants to play, that it won't make much difference to their losing season anyway, and those that don't want to play can quit the team. In short, put a price on foolishness.
There are established procedures in place at nearly every university to handle misconduct. These procedures are often laborious. No university president could simply fire a professor on the spot, especially if the governor of the state didn't have his/her back, and based on what I know about him, I see no reason to believe that Gov. Jay Nixon would have backed the president.
Flunking the students would be equally problematic. They might deserve it, but it would lead to litigation that would drag on for years.
As for the football team, it's worth remembering why the head football coach is usually the highest-paid state employee by a significant margin. And the coach in this case was fully on board. Not gonna happen.
People will do all sorts of nasty things if they know they are insulated from consequences. And all the protagonists in this particular play are essentially bullet-proof. All you can really do is change the rules going forward, and I wouldn't bet on that happening, either.
Forget it, Jerry — it's Chinatown.
To build on our host's comment, it's worth noting that there may have actually been some doubt about whether the white professor would even lose an honorary position--that's how weak a lot of academics are on the 1st Amendment.
Lots of rebuilding to do. And since even the *(&)(&) college of journalism can't come on board with the 1st there, aspiring journalists may want to go elsewhere.
"When I look at that video, I see two white professionals telling a young minority journalist that he doesn't belong, and then one of them calling for "muscle" to evict him from a public place. That feels like a dangerous precedent for civil liberties, whether the eviction comes from a police officer or a Ph.D. professor."
would it be less dangerous if the young journalist was white instead of minority? if so, i'd like an explanation.
would it be less dangerous if the young journalist was white instead of minority?
I don't presume to speak for my friend, but I'm reasonably confident that wasn't his point. There's more than a little irony in physically intimidating someone (who happens himself to be non-white person) in the name of creating a "safe space" for aggrieved minorities.
My favorite part of the story so far concerns the family background of the hunger striker. His dad made $8.4 million last year.
I would say that white professionals pushing out an Asian-American journalist in the name of "diversity" simply points out what conservatives have been pointing out for close to three decades; at many universities, "diversity" means "the uniformity liked by a dominant faction of the university". Mr. Orwell, please call your office.
And again, I see good things in Tim Tai's future if he gets a chance. I don't know anything about him but this, but he's got the guts that make a good one.
Yeah brian... i totally missed that angle. Thanks.
As a Mizzou J-school grad, I received an email from the Dean about these events; generally blah-blah cheerleading about history being made and our program being on the front lines, doing its job. No direct mention of Prof. Click antics, but an oblique reference to a time of soul-searching. Suffice it to say that my record of ignoring the fund-raising solicitations from my alma mater will remain unblemished.
I guess I will have to forego my "apt punishments" because PC is still, apparently, the unwritten law in this case. Perhaps I should have prefaced my wishes with "In a just world where common sense prevailed" or something to that effect.
That said, I guess I will turn to having sympathy for the students who went there expecting a useful education. Quite obvious that they are learning a lot of non-useful things, and there are a few who are learning nothing, running the show. Our newest "community organizers" to becum US Presidents.
That said, I guess I will turn to having sympathy for the students who went there expecting a useful education.
That's a smart approach. More importantly, you (and me, and everyone else) can teach them the things they should have learned while they were there. I suspect we'll all have to do that. My son is in college now and I'm pretty sure that he's learned to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut.
The most important distinction any thinking person can make is to distinguish between what is taught and what is learned.
Unfortunately, we will HAVE to teach them those things, and that's not going to be pleasant. In the case of these knuckleheads, there's some satisfaction in that, but for the others, it's a waste of time because they spent big bucks to get that education and we'll spend time and money beating it back out of them. Maybe somebody should sue the University for false advertising, or fraud?
I know, when we went to school we were told we were being "sheltered from the real world," but these kids are being allowed to live completely unaware of any reality. We don't have "safety zones" out here, free from "microaggressions." Colleges should have been teaching that, at least.
My fear is that a lot of these kids--like a certain community organizer--are going to keep their safe shelter, but in doing so are going to (just like the community organizer) make a lot of other people's safety disappear. You look at the instigator's LinkedIn, and it's clear he's led something of a charmed life already despite really not having much to offer.
There needs to be one of two things happen: Either these misleaders are discredited (say by condemning capitalism while driving a Cadillac SUV) or somebody just stands up to them and refuses to kowtow to their nonsense. Call it an opportunity missed in Mizzou.
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