FIRE – Victory at IUPUI: Student-Employee Found Guilty of Racial Harassment for Reading a Book Now Cleared of All Charges Incredible story. What is wrong with these people? You can’t even read histories anymore?
Administrators at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) have revoked their finding that a student-employee was guilty of racial harassment merely for publicly reading the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. Following pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), IUPUI has declared that Keith John Sampson’s record is clear and said it will reexamine its affirmative action procedures relating to internal complaints.
“Just when you’d thought you’d seen every crazy act of censorship a college administrator can dream up, along comes a case where a student is found guilty of racial harassment simply for reading a book,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Thankfully, with time and public outrage, IUPUI’s administration recognized Keith John Sampson had done nothing wrong and acknowledged that the First Amendment protects not only what you say, but also what you read.”
In November 2007, Sampson—who works in the school’s janitorial department and is ten credits away from a degree in communications—was notified by Lillian Charleston of IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office (AAO) that two co-workers had filed a racial harassment complaint against him. The AAO alleged that by reading a book on the KKK in the break room, Sampson had engaged in racial harassment. Sampson attempted to explain that the book, written by Todd Tucker, was a historical account of the events on two days in May 1924, when a group of Notre Dame students fought with members of the Ku Klux Klan. His explanation was dismissed, and he later received a letter from Charleston that determined he was guilty of racial harassment. Charleston wrote that his failures included “openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject.”
 |
| Lillian Charleston. She even looks self-righteous. |
Found by jrc.
Indiana University had better get ready for the “pain and suffering” lawsuit he has against them!
Wonder if this extends to books like “Slave Trading For Fun & Profit?”
RBG
I remember reading the book “Hitler Explained” on a flight and this guy looked at me in disgust and said, “How can you read that?” It was an analysis of what history had written about Hitler…peeps are CRAZEE EVERYWHERE!!
Great post, BTW.
Its always amazing all of this political correctness. It can be said that the road to hell is paved with political correctness
Take the Mark Twain book “Huck Finn”
Every year or so ( in the distant past) some parent would pick up the book – spot some words and have a heart attack. Major campaigns were coordinated by these well meaning people / idiots to have the book taken out of schools as it created stereotypes and stereotyping – welcome to life
The interesting thing is that the vast amount of people / students who read the book came away with an appreciation of those time and a historical backdrop
Most came away with an understanding that the only decent person in the book ( other than Huck Finn ) was the runaway slave Jim
It is true that one could gather wrong ideas and prejudice out of the book – yet if a person did i guess they would be easily influenced by anything else as well
Its sort of like never talking to your daughter about the facts of life , and the birds and the bees . Behold she comes back to home somehow pregnant
At least “Hitler Explained” is ambiguous. FBI vs KKK is PRO TOLERANCE for christ’s sake. I wonder if the initial decision makers even read the book or were they afraid to even be in the same room with it?
We have incompetent professors on campus that cannot be fired in order to champion academic freedom. And so it goes in so many ways, people thinking their freedom rests on oppressing other people.
Who do these “administrators” think they are? The police? Surely reading a book is a tasering offense.
#3 “Hitler for Dummys”…. hee hee.
JCD….
If you are looking for an environment that promotes open discussion and freedom of thought and speech, don’t waste your time at American Universities. There you will find that you are free to think and act independently as long as your thoughts and actions follow the correct line of independence.
As a professor, I have seen a lot. The few Republicans among us must hide our politics from the rest who are so intolerant of differing view points. Strange thing is, if you get a professor alone at a party and start talking, there’s a good (10-20%) chance that they are a closet Republican. In some fields, like engineering it may be almost 50%.
Regardless, most students know it is a game. My advisees are always telling me about how they must parrot back ideology in classes to maintain a grade. So, there is hope…
Another idiot do-nothing everything politically correct administrator in a role far beyond her capacity. I wonder who she blew to get the job. Women like this deserve to be in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. But what do you expect from people whose ancestors were slaves 143+/- years ago.
There I think I covered all the bases, I wonder what opinion she would form of me. I’m guessing I would be banned from the campus, denied an education and free speech. Affirmative action my ass. What a charade. Hypocrisy at its best.
This politically in-correct message brought to you by The Pirate.
I don’t approve of this message but I reserve the right to speak it. – The Pirate.
#9
Hope for what? Bogus education? Learning how to play a game that is so unnecessary? Administrators/Professors/Teachers need term limits. Me thinks they become full of themselves over time.
Here’s hoping I guess …..
#1 IUPUI is a separate school from IU.
#9 What department are you in? I’m a phd student and I’ve never felt I had to hold my tongue to parrot things to any professor I’ve ever been in class with.
I am thinking she could not hold a real job.
#9 Because only the military machine could possibly hope to fund science..
Real issue in the article, the school has an Affirmative Action Office. I thought corporations being crippled by the now all powerful HR departments was bad enough.
dumb story – but you closet racists can do me a favor and go kill yourselves
oooh, was that politically incorrect?
What do you do with an astronomy student who whines, “Why do all the bright stars have old Arabic names? Why don’t we have new names?”
Tread lightly. This PC garbage is just too much.
Isn’t this perilously close to the school acting like “Thought Police”?
I mean, if someone saw me reading something about the KKK, was offended, and found me guilty of discrimination solely by my having read the book, then doesn’t that mean that they could read my mind and ascertain that I was agreeing with the KKK?
If the school had that much power, then why take tests? Why not simply read my mind to ascertain my level of understanding?
It may be coming time to rethink political correctness.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard a Caucasian use the “N” word.
And I hear an African American use the “N” word just about every day.
That’s the problem with political correctness, it was never thought though in the first place. It’s just a knee jerk reaction to any perceived racism, by simply using REVERSE racism to confront it. It’s retarded logic.
This sounds “niggardly” to me….
School is not real life. This academic land is a bizzaro world, where half the people do it to escape the real world.
I remember things like this being brandied about around the college campus in Iowa. War Protesters were allowed, Pro-Gay demonstrations (i.e. National Coming Out Day ) were allowed, but just try and have a Christmas Carol Sing along with the Christian Students gathering around the ‘Winter Tree’ and we were denounced in the School newspaper, and denied permission by the campus administration .
Not real life at all. (and this was in the late 80’s)
Not surprised. Academic types live in some alternate reality, where common sense does not exist. I bet if he was reading some book about the over through of the government, then it would have been fine. I hope this guy sues the ass off these douches.
Cripes!
I always love the way the right wing nuts take one incident and turn it into a whole standard response.
This isn’t normal and the situation was corrected. The original letter was sent out by the department designated to respond to such complaints. The top administration ended up responding correctly when notified of the problem.
Yes, it took seven months, but as anyone who has ever been caught in “the system”, the wheels of justice are usually slow. If a quicker final decision had of been made then many people would be up in arms that the problem wasn’t duly considered and a rush judgment made.
Can the guy sue? Sure, but he won’t get far. It didn’t cost him any money and he wasn’t disciplined. The original letter was the result of an investigation that was successfully appealed and withdrawn. In other words, he wasn’t damaged to the extent that he could be rewarded damages.
FIRE has been winning case after case against these colleges with speech codes.
Deconstructing America at work.
Nothing new here, what is surprising is that some readers *here* are surprised by it.
Stick 50 bucks in a paypal account. Every time you see one of these abortions of justice, send a one dollar contribution to a white supremacist group. Tell everyone you know.
Yeah, I hate those ignorant crackers as much as you do, but at least they’re not filing a huge lawsuit every time somebody says “fried chicken”
at a KFC.
And, sooner or later, this country will either go bankrupt from this vampirism, or the “Get A Friggin’ Life Law” will be passed.
#10/11/12 – Engineering at a mostly liberal arts school.
Remember that most of these kids are fresh from home and are getting out from under their parent’s control. It’s a perfect time to indoctrinate them into the cult.
#12 – Unless you learn how to temper your words, and speak the right speak, you’ll find getting a job, much less tenure, a difficult task. It’s tenure that makes this so complicated. Academic Freedom is a slippery slope.
Not even the light of day can rid the campuses of this PC blight. Ward Churchill could be brought down only when it was shown that he falsified research. Even then, it was a split vote.
On some campuses, it’s illegal to audio tape a lecture and release it to the media…
The only thought I’ve found to be verboten at the science departments I’ve been around is the idea that one should research ways to solve actual problems, instead of engaging in endless intellectual masturbation of various sorts.
And that attitude comes from the top. Applied science gets no grants, while continuing to catalog and pick apart things when our level of maturity is too low to use this knowledge appropriately is given all the money you would care for.
You get what you subsidize, and that’s why the third world is cooking over a bare fire instead of an efficient and cheap stove, and why you have Terminator genes in corn instead of genes that would make for a more nutritious food.