I just knew it..........

[Born2BFree]

The objective of the schools are to help one with their education and find successful careers. The objective of the teachers in those schools is to spread their filth to as many people that will hear it!

t.

OH MY!!! You SOUND as if you attended such a school and know about "filth" from personal experience! Such vicious vehemence appears in your words! I will agree that today there is much confusion about the role and goal of public education. It is a sad challenge to astute observers in forums such as this.

[apothanein kerdos]

If this were a private university, this would be a case-closed issue. The teacher could forbid whatever speech she or he pleased and be on their way (and even this can be debated).

Fortunately, this is a publicly funded university, and the precidence and evidence against what this proffessor did is stacked so high there's absolutely no way she could win this case in court.

For one, even the ACLU disagrees with a "hate speech" policy on public campuses. Their policy is to educate those in the class and to move them away from bigotry but to not discourage them from speaking their mind. Anything short of a threat should be allowed, even if it is viewed as repugnant to those in the class room. The fact remains that historically there is a precidence set by the courts for free speech on college campuses regardless of campus policy. I mean, goodness, the cases just go on and on:

West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York (1967)

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)

Healy v. James (1972)

Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri (1973)

State of New Jersey v. Schmid (1980)

John Doe v. University of Michigan (1989)

UWM Post v. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin (1991)

Dambrot v. Central Michigan University (1993)

Iota Xi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity v. George Mason University (1993)

Robert J. Corry v. The Leland Stanford Junior University (1995)

Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth (2000)

Saxe v. State College Area School District (2001)

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The article that speaks about the case in 1942 and "fighting words" is taking it drastically out of context of the case and the reason for the ruling. In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire the context was set when a Jehovah's witness got in the face of a New Hampshire police officer and called him a "G-D rackateer" (edited for civility) and a "D**n facist". The court majority upheld the arrest and stated:

There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words" those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.

Further more, in the case of Street vs. New York (1969), the court overturned a flag burning precedent. The court upheld that the mere offensiveness of fighting words/actions was not enough and that the threat of actual violence must be present. Similarily, in Cohen vs. California (1971), Cohen's arrest was overturned because simply wearing a jacket with the words, "**** the Draft" did not constitute "personally abusive epithets".

Finally, in R.A.V. vs. the City of St. Paul the court overturned a statute that stated crosses couldn't be burned on privately held ground if the owner of the land was willing to have such an action taken. The court's opinion in this case stated:

It is not true that "fighting words" have at most a "de minimis" expressive content, or that their content is in all respects worthless and undeserving of constitutional protection"; sometimes they are quite expressive indeed. We have not said that they constitute "no part of the expression of ideas," but only that they constitute "no essential part of any expression of ideas."

The court also went on to state that while the government can limit the modes of ideas, it cannot limit the ideas themselves.

I use all of this to state this point: the teacher was out of line and obviously has no idea what hate speech is.

And it's moments like these when this former car dealer wants to be a lawyer some day