| Blog and Media Roundup - Thursday, August 15, 2013; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 15 2013, 04:20 AM (256 Views) | |
| abb | Aug 15 2013, 04:20 AM Post #1 |
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http://dukecheck.com/?p=15316 Getting under his skin Posted on August 14, 2013 by DukeCheck If Roy Williams thought he’d get respite on a Greensboro golf course, he was wrong. Questions about his highest scoring star, P J Hairston, followed the UNC Coach as he joined Doc Rivers and Governor Pat McCrory and other luminaries at the Pro-Am leading up to the 74th annual Wyndham Championship. Williams exploded…. something we suggest the Cameron Crazies remember when Roy brings his team — with or without Hairston — to Duke this coming season. “I’m not talking about P.J. I’ve read about it all damn summer,” Williams said ”I’m tired of reading about it. I’m tired of talking about it.” Excuse us, Mr. Coach, but you have not been talking about it. You weaseled for as long as you could, and have had precisely one statement about this mess. |
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| abb | Aug 15 2013, 04:23 AM Post #2 |
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Governor should veto bill changing review of judges Published: August 14, 2013 It is true that dissatisfied defendants and prosecutors often complain about the judges who presided over their cases. “Favors the district attorneys,” one will say. “A liberal who always gives a break to defendants,” another will say. And indeed justice is sometimes hampered by judges who aren’t gifted with the knowledge of the law and the sound judgment we require of those who sit up high in the robes with the gavel in hand. When that judgment is particularly bad, appropriate disciplinary action must be taken, or the credibility of the entire judicial system is undermined. Hence the importance of the state Judicial Standards Commission, a panel charged with pubicly reviewing compliants against judges, and a panel that has done a good job. Why, then, would a last-minute bill pass the General Assembly that would allow complaints involving judges to be secret? How is it a good idea to take away the commission’s authority to publicly reprimand judges and instead put the state Supreme Court in charge of disciplining judges? The measure had strong support in the state Senate, but cooler heads almost prevailed in the state House, where the measure passed by a narrow 53-48 vote. If Gov. Pat McCrory is watching, he knows that the margin in the House is not veto-proof, and a veto in this case is sorely needed. The measure is opposed by Chief Judge John Martin of the Court of Appeals (and the current head of the standards commission) and Supreme Court Chief Justice Sarah Parker. Martin wrote lawmakers saying the law “will create potential conflicts of interest within our judiciary and muddle the transparency and availability of public records related to judicial misconduct.” That ought to be enough for McCrory to say no to veto this bill. If it’s enacted into law, disciplinary proceedings involving judges would go behind closed doors, and judges on the highest court would be called upon to discipline, or not discipline, a close colleague. There’s no need to change the law, as its proponents say, to protect judges against frivolous complaints. The overwhelming majority of complaints filed against judges are, predictably, dismissed after investigation. McCrory campaigned on the theme that state government was “broken” and he and his fellow Republicans were going to fix it. This is a case where a part of government is not broken but might well be if the governor goes along with this wrongheaded change. Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/14/3108030/governor-should-veto-bill-changing.html#storylink=cpy |
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| abb | Aug 15 2013, 04:28 AM Post #3 |
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UNC coach Roy Williams 'tired' of reading, talking about P.J. Hairston Published: August 14, 2013 By Andrew Carter — acareter@newsobserver.com GREENSBORO — Even after making five birdie putts during a nice round of golf with Davis Love III, Roy Williams was in no mood to talk about P.J. Hairston today after Williams finished playing in the pro-am of the Wyndham Championship. “Not talking about P.J.,” Williams said when I asked him how his conversations have gone recently with Hairston, North Carolina’s leading scorer whom Williams suspended indefinitely. “I’ve read about it all damn summer, I’m tired of reading about, tired of talking about it. If you want to talk about anything else, I’ll talk about anything.” Indeed, Hairston has created plenty of reading material this summer. There was his arrest in early June in Durham, where police charged him with misdemeanor marijuana possession and driving without a license. Both charges were later dropped, but Hairston at the time of his arrest was driving a 2013 GMC Yukon that had been rented by Haydn “Fats” Thomas, a Durham resident and convicted felon. Hairston received a speeding ticket in May while driving another rental vehicle, a 2012 Camaro, that has been linked to Thomas. Then, in late July, Hairston was charged with speeding and reckless driving on his way to Charlotte. After that, Williams promptly suspended Hairston, a rising junior who considered entering the NBA draft before deciding to return to school. “It’s been a little hectic,” Williams said of his summer, “and some things that make it not as much fun. But I’ve still got one of the best jobs in the world.” He later said “it’s been a hard summer. No question about that.” During the pro-am, Williams played a foursome that included Love III and Bubba Cunningham, the UNC athletic director. Williams said he has known Love III since the days when he played golf at UNC. “I was there the day that Michael Jordan broke his driver on the practice range,” Williams said. “So we go back a long ways.” Amid all the stress of the summer, Williams appeared at ease on the course. Between shots he chatted with fans, signed autographs and posed for pictures. The drama surrounding Hairston, though, remains unsettled. Even before his suspension, Williams in a statement said Hairston would face “serious consequences.” If the rental cars Hairston drove are deemed to have been an extra benefit, Hairston would face an NCAA-mandated suspension of three to nine games, depending on the monetary value of the rental cars during the time Hairston drove them. In addition, he’d face additional punishment from Williams. Williams was in no mood to discuss Hairston on Wednesday, though he said he’s “anxious” for the start of the practice. “With the new rules, we can start as early as Sept. 27, which makes the season even longer,” Williams said. “I thought it was long enough beforehand. But I’m anxious. I think we’ve got a great group of young kids that I’m going to enjoy working with. “This is a good release right here, getting out on the golf course, and I enjoyed the heck out of it today.” Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/14/3107826/unc-coach-roy-williams-tired-of.html#storylink=cpy |
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| abb | Aug 15 2013, 11:04 AM Post #4 |
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August 14, 2013 At Vanderbilt, Rape Is a Crime Posted by KC Johnson A horrifying story out of Vanderbilt, where four former football players—Cory Batey, JaBorian McKenzie, Brandon Vandenburg, and Cory Batey—have been charged with sexually assaulting an unconscious Vanderbilt student. Authorities suggest that both video and photographic evidence exists to bolster the allegations. The alleged crime occurred in a Vanderbilt dorm. If true, the allegations will—and should—raise questions of the caliber of students Vanderbilt football coach James Franklin has been recruiting. Vandenburg, for instance, was a junior college transfer. How many non-football players does an elite school like Vanderbilt admit from junior colleges every year? I suspect the number is very small indeed. But for those concerned with campus due process, the Vanderbilt affair has the potential to be an important turning point, since the university’s behavior provides a model of how colleges should handle allegations of sexual assault, a model that squarely rejects the solutions championed by on-campus activists and their allies in the Office for Civil Rights. Underlying the anti-due process movement, which dramatically accelerated in 2011 with the “Dear Colleague” letter and the OCR investigation of Yale, is a basic assumption: that campus rape is the sort of crime that should not be investigated by the police or handled through the criminal process, since law enforcement authorities are insufficiently sensitive to accusers and the legal process provides too many protections to the accused. Far better, according to this theory, to set up a parallel system of “justice” in which conviction is almost certain, either because of absurdly low evidentiary standards or because the accused student is denied anything approaching due process. Yale’s “informal complaint” process is the perfect example of this concept, with the university having set up a process that the accuser functionally controls and in which the accused isn’t guaranteed a right to present evidence of his innocence. According to a statement from the Nashville Police, when Vanderbilt university police discovered evidence of a possible crime (by examining dorm video on an unrelated issue), they quickly reported that evidence to the Nashville Police. As a result, the Nashville Police, rather than untrained university administrators, conducted the criminal investigation. It appears from the statement that Vanderbilt itself (not the accuser) made the initial decision to turn the matter over to police. In short, the university did precisely what on-campus “activists” seem to strongly oppose—it treated rape as a serious crime, and as such something to be investigated by trained authorities, outside the confines of the university. The question now: will the anti-due process campus “activists” for whom figures such as the Times’ Richard Pérez-Peña and Inside Higher Ed’s Allie Grasgreen have served as virtual stenographers now denounce Vanderbilt, for reporting a possible crime to police rather than proceeding through rigged university procedures? - See more at: http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2013/08/at_vanderbilt_rape_is_a_crime.html#sthash.VmHP9xjB.dpuf |
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| abb | Aug 15 2013, 05:24 PM Post #5 |
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/speech-codes-alive-and-we_b_3762031.html?utm_hp_ref=tw Speech Codes: Alive and Well, 10 Years Later Posted: 08/15/2013 11:08 am Ten years ago, in the summer of 2003, Harvey Silverglate and I published a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education called "Speech Codes: Alive and Well at Colleges." The article debunked the myth that university restrictions on freedom of speech ("speech codes") had gone the way of the dodo after being roundly mocked in the court of public opinion and consistently defeated in federal courts in the 1980s and 90s. The article revealed that the overwhelming majority of campuses still maintained the very kind of speech codes that lost in court. A decade later, I ask: What has changed since our 2003 article, and what does that change--or lack thereof--mean for our nation's campuses? What Hasn't Changed: Campus Speech Codes Still Alive (and Thriving) Sadly, at the overwhelming majority of American colleges, speech codes still remain the rule, not the exception. In the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's 2013 report surveying policies maintained by 409 colleges, our attorneys found that 62% maintained codes that severely departed from First Amendment standards. (Amazingly, this number represents a 13% improvement from 2007.) From 1989 to 2003, there were a half dozen successful legal challenges to campus speech codes. Since 2003, an additional 18 institutions have seen their speech codes struck down in court or abandoned in response to a lawsuit. Speech codes fare no better in the court of public opinion; most of FIRE's victories over speech codes result from our public awareness campaigns, not litigation. One illustrative example of how oddly tenacious campus speech codes can be involves the University of Connecticut's notorious ban on "inappropriately directed laughter," which was defeated in court in 1990. Despite the legal victory--and the public mockery that resulted from the expansive ban--Drexel University in Philadelphia later adopted identical language as part of its harassment policy. Drexel only abandoned the policy in the face of public criticism, but the wholesale resuscitation of discredited codes is not unique to Drexel. Just as it was in the 1980s and 90s, combating "harassment" remains the preferred legal rationale for speech codes. Recent examples of professors charged with racial or sexual harassment for what would normally be considered protected speech include the case of Professor Jammie Price at Appalachian State University, who was found guilty of creating a "hostile environment," in part for showing a film that critically examined the adult film industry; Professor Arthur Gilbert at the University of Denver, who was found guilty of harassment for the content of his class about "purity crusades"; and Professor Maurice Eisenstein, who was subjected to numerous harassment investigations at Purdue University Calumet for Facebook posts critical of Islam. As Harvey and I wrote in 2003: "No one denies that a college can and should ban true harassment -- but a code that calls itself a 'racial-harassment code' does not thereby magically inoculate itself against free-speech and academic-freedom obligations." Nonetheless, campuses continue to go to court with codes that bear no relationship to the legal definition (nor the common sense essence) of harassment and then seem surprised when these codes are overturned. Speech codes, of course, come in many forms, including email policies, civility statements, and the rightfully mocked "free speech zones" limiting expressive activities to tiny portions of campuses. In 2012, for example, FIRE helped defeat a code at the University of Cincinnati which limited speech activities to a zone that constituted less than 0.1% of campus and required students to provide 10 days advance notice before using it. Perhaps more disturbing than the tiny zone itself was that UC went so far as to defend it in court. What's Gotten Worse: The Feds Supercharge Speech Codes Perhaps the most striking difference between 2003 and today is that the federal government has gone from trying to clarify the law and discourage speech codes to requiring them. In 2003, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights made a serious attempt to stop colleges from abusing harassment codes to punish clearly protected speech. In a letter sent to virtually every campus in the country, OCR explained that federal regulations did not and could not be used to justify codes that violated the First Amendment. In that letter, OCR made clear that federally compliant harassment policies must include a "reasonable person" standard, meaning that in order to be considered harassment, the behavior in question must be both personally experienced as offensive and conduct that a "reasonable person" would find offensive. On May 9 of this year, in a letter to the University of Montana regarding that institution's mishandling of sexual assault cases, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice joined together to dramatically expand the definition of sexual harassment to any sex-related speech that could be labeled "unwelcome"; a wildly broad and vague standard. Proclaiming their letter a "blueprint" for schools across the country, they also abandoned the requirement that harassment must be both objectively and subjectively offensive. Perhaps realizing they had just mandated a national speech code that would never stand up in court, OCR has since attempted an awkward backpedal, claiming that their original intention was simply to encourage reporting of speech that is merely "unwelcome." This characterization is impossible to square with the text of the May 9 letter, which calls for the elimination of harassment, requires mandatory reporting, creates a file of all allegations against students and faculty (no matter how frivolous), and mandates investigation of all such claims. Yet in Meese v. Keene (1987), the Supreme Court rejected a similar justification in the line of "we're not banning speech, just encouraging people to report protected speech." Supporters of the federal blueprint would likely understand the threat to the First Amendment if the federal government attempted to mandate reporting of "unpatriotic" or "impious" but protected speech. In sharp contrast to 2003, government intervention here is likely to supercharge universities' already overzealous application of harassment codes to protected speech, and potentially make the atmosphere for free speech on campus more hostile than during the supposed heyday of "political correctness." Has Anything Gotten Better? While FIRE has seen a modest yet consistent decrease in the number of speech codes on campus over the last six years, this progress threatens to be entirely undone by the federal blueprint. Perhaps the most positive sign is that the public seems far more aware that something needs to change in academia than they were in 2003. Ben Ginsberg's excellent book, The Fall of the Faculty, correctly diagnosed the problem of administrative bloat on college campuses; Andrew Hackers' and Claudia Dreifus' book, Higher Education?, covered how fear of litigation warps campus behaviors and jacks up prices; and studies such as Academically Adrift revealed students unable to make arguments from multiple points of view. These are just three notable examples in a recent flood of books about what needs to be fixed in higher ed. In my 2012 book, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, I argue that campus censorship is contributing to an atmosphere of stifled discourse. I cite a 2010 study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities that found only 16.7% of professors strongly agree with the statement that it is "safe to hold unpopular positions on campus." Students report similar beliefs, with only 30.3% of college seniors strongly agreeing. More recent data gives me even more cause for concern: This summer, the First Amendment Center unveiled its annual survey of attitudes about free speech and found that a startling 47% of young people believe that the First Amendment "goes too far." While I hope that this is an anomalous fluctuation, it seems almost inevitable that if campuses show at best impatience with, and at worst outright hostility to, free speech, it would eventually produce students who take free speech for granted and even show support for "enlightened" censors. Censorship, of any stripe, is incompatible with academic freedom and the entire teaching-and-learning enterprise. Colleges and universities continue on this trajectory at their ultimate peril. Follow Greg Lukianoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/glukianoff |
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