This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Penn State Avoids State Pen...

...but does have to pay a complainant's legal fees, and ditch its restrictive speech policies.

Petulantly, Penn insists it was about to do that anyway all on its own ("University spokesman Bill Mahon said Penn State had been considering the policy changes even before [a student] brought the litigation."), but I guess sometimes people just need a little push -- in the form of legal cases costing thousands of dollars.

One professor is eloquent on the subject:

In effect, the whole campus is now a "free-speech zone." Demonstrators just need to comply with university rules and regulations -- and not interfere with university business, according to the revised policy.

Laurie Mulvey, a sociology lecturer, applauded the change. She had written in opposition to the free-speech-zone concept.

"I, and other folks, have a gut, instinctive reaction against making free speech something that happens in zones defined by institutions," Mulvey said. "I think it flies in the face of what we believe to be our constitutional rights.

"That is, fundamentally, we believe we can stand outside and say what we think -- as quaint and provincial as it sounds," Mulvey said.
Posted at: 8/16/2006 10:50:00 AM