Monthly Archives: May 2017

I shook the alleged killer's filthy hand 28 days ago. Mine feels tainted now, as though I somehow sanctioned his reported act, though I was only trying to get some information out of him.

He had just marched through Montavilla Park chanting "nigger" and throwing fascist salutes, wearing an American Revolutionary War flag like a cape.

It was this act that sparked the first moment of chaos at the "free speech" rally on April 29 in Montavilla Park, which then proceeded down 82nd Avenue, a miserable replacement for a neighborhood parade canceled due to the threat of political violence. The man in the flag cape was quickly swarmed by scrawny young antifa kids, then by officers from the Portland Police Bureau.

After the scrum dispersed, I stood by watching while police searched his backpack. They seemed to know that, prior to the march, he had posted a Facebook message threatening to "shoot to kill POLICE if they ATTEMPT DISARM" anyone openly carrying a firearm to the rally.

Jeremy Christian at a free speech rally in Portland last month. (Joe Riedl)

"Any guns in there?" an officer asked.

"Just comic books," he said. He was a big fan.

"I think that guy is mentally ill," one of the officers confided.

Almost certainly. Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, who was arrested yesterday on suspicion of killing two men who tried to protect two dark-skinned women wearing hijabs from his racist abuse, is also a notorious racist from North Portland who networked with other racists when he wasn't doing time (and, presumably, when he was).

When he extended his hand, I noticed the Nordic rune tattoos on his forearm. On his Facebook page, amid rants against organized religion and memes poking fun at Jews sentenced to die in the Nazi concentration camps, were other posts revealing his crazed "Misanthropic Nihilist" philosophy.

Christian expressed support for "Sanders/Stein 2017which some will certainly seize upon as a distraction. And it is a distraction, because the main current of Christian's ravings, online and off, was race hatred. "I want a job in Norway cutting off the heads of people that Circumcize Babies," he wrote.

On a fake news story showing Hillary Clinton wearing a hijab: "I'll knock that Hijab off her faster than you can say Burka in Pig Latin if she steps in Rip City."

He called President Donald Trump the antichrist, but meant it as a compliment.

Jeremy Christian (left, with backpack) at a free speech rally in Portland last month. (Joe Riedl)

"If Donald Trump is the Next Hitler then I am joining his SS to put an end to Monotheist Question. All Zionist Jews, All Christians who do not follow Christ's teaching of Love, Charity, and Forgiveness And All Jihadi Muslims are going to Madagascar or the Ovens/FEMA Camps!!! Does this make me a fascist!!!"

And so on: "If you support Israel for Zionist homeland for Jews then you should also support Cascadia as a White homeland for whites only racists"

"I'm not Anti-Semitic. I'm Anti-Zionist and Anti-Monotheist."

Christian also has a disturbing track record of criminal activity, includingas The Oregonian reported this morninga North Portland robbery in 2002 that ended when police shot him in the face.

When I caught up with him at the 82nd Avenue march last month, Christian said he was there to support "free speech" and demanded to know which side I was on. "Or are you one of these guys that tries to pretend you're neutral?" he said.

I knew I was on whatever side he wasn't, but I just kept my mouth shut and let him talk. I didn't get much information out of Christian, or his friend, an older guy from the suburbs who was missing a few teeth, wearing dusty black leather biker gear, who refused to give his name because he was "too known."

The organizer of the march, Vancouver's Joey Gibson of the "Patriot Prayer" group that has invited more racist and anti-Semitic speakers to a June 4 rally in downtown Portland, disavowed any association with Christian.

But I got the distinct impression that Christian and his skittish friend had come to the rally with a larger crew.

Portland Police mug shot of Jeremy Christian.

As we spoke on the curb, I saw them signal to a fat man with the shaved head who was driving a yellow pickup truck flying a "Blue Lives Matter" flag off the back. The truck proceeded to circle the area as the right-wing marchers traded insults with antifa while marching down the city's immigrant main street.

Some reports will emphasize Christian's criminal record and his mental illness, just as early reports stressed the "random" nature of the double murder he is alleged to have committed yesterday, but it would be negligent not to investigate the possibility that Christian committed a premeditated hate crime, and that others may have known of his intention or encouraged him in the act.

The targets of his hate may have been broadMuslims, Jews, feminists, liberals, policebut there's no doubt Christian had announced his intention to kill.

Excerpt from:
The Man Accused of MAX Double Murder Is a Portland White Supremacist Who Delivered Nazi Salutes and Racial ... - Willamette Week

On todays homepage, Frederick Hess and Grant Addison have a piece arguing that while state-level legislation is necessary to confront the campus free-speech crisis, such bills are insufficient remedies by themselves and can even be abused by administrators if their application is not carefully monitored. Taking off from the recent passage of a campus free-speech bill in Tennessee, Hess and Addison point out that weak-kneed administrators may refuse to enforce discipline and may apply it unfairly when they do. Hess and Addison conclude that after Tennessee-style free speech bills are passed: the next challenge is to monitor whether campuses honor these protections, find ways to challenge the culture and blind spots of university leaders, and ask what more might be done to ensure that campuses are bastions of free inquiry and not hothouses for ideological thugs.

These are important points. It needs to be said, however, that the campus free speech bill recently passed in Tennessee is not, as Hess and Addison claim, chiefly based on the Goldwater proposal. Hess and Addison cite a report from Chronicle of Higher Education which treats the Tennessee bill as one of many broadly based on the model legislation I co-authored with Jim Manley and Jonathan Butcher of Arizonas Goldwater Institute. Yet while the Goldwater proposal may have had some influence on the Tennessee bill, that legislation is in fact quite different overall from the Goldwater model.

In particular, the Tennessee bill lacks critical provisions from the Goldwater model that press administrators to enforce sanctions on students who shout-down visiting speakers, and that set up an oversight system to ensure that such discipline is neither shirked, on the one hand, nor abused and misapplied, on the other.

Of course I agree with Hess and Addison that legislation by itself is only a first step. Even if a bill closely based on the Goldwater model should pass, administrators would have to be monitored, and the broader cultural problems that lay behind the campus free speech crisis would need to be addressed. I merely note that the Goldwater proposal was crafted with these larger concerns in mind. In fact, I pointed out yesterday on the Corner that the Tennessee bill and several others currently being considered lack the Goldwater models enforcement and oversight mechanisms, and that this is a problem.

The full Goldwater model includes a provision that mandates suspension for any student twice found responsible for interfering with the expressive rights of others. This is designed to prevent administrators from repeatedly handing out meaningless slaps on the wrist. At the same time, the Goldwater model establishes an oversight system based, not in the administration, but in state university boards of trustees. A trustee committee must submit an annual report on the administrative handling of discipline to the public, the trustees, the Governor, and the legislature.

Since the trustees have the power to replace the universitys leading administrator, and the legislature holds the power of the purse, a negative report could have serious consequences for administrators who shirk or abuse the disciplinary powers set out by the new law.

Trustees will be more inclined to criticize administrators in some states than in others. But in states where trustees whitewash bad administrative decisions, the annual oversight report can serve to focus public criticism of both administrators and trustees. In general, the Goldwater models annual report is designed to draw trustees and the public more fully into the oversight process. Of course this vindicates Hesss and Addisons point about the need for public to stay watchful lest administrators shirk or abuse their powers. My point is simply that the Goldwater model anticipates this need and includes mechanisms to encourage it. The Tennessee bill cited by Hess and Addison, however, lacks these mechanisms precisely because it is not closely based on the Goldwater proposal.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He can be reached at [emailprotected]

See the original post:
Tennessee Free Speech Bill Not Primarily Goldwater Based - National Review

In May, Tennessee enacted Senate Bill 723, the Campus Free Speech Protection Act. The law is based on model legislation drafted by the Goldwater Institute and has been hailed as the nations most comprehensive protection for campus speech by FIREs Robert Shibley. Similar legislation has been proposed in statehouses across the nation. The bill promises to end overbroad speech codes, ludicrously named free-speech zones, and other assaults on the First Amendment. The statute is an important victory, yet lawmakers and like-minded allies need to recognize that it is only a start. To see why, its useful to remember the hypocritical and selective manner in which college officials wield their existing policies.

Case in point: This month, Paul Griffiths, a professor of Catholic theology at Duke Divinity School, resigned after facing backlash and formal punishment for criticizing university-sponsored racial-sensitivity training. In response to a faculty-wide e-mail strongly urging participation in the two-day Racial Equity Institute, Griffiths decried such events as anti-intellectual and wrote to his colleagues:

I exhort you not to attend this training....Itll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: Therell be bromides, clichs, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show.

The divinity schools dean, Elaine Heath, deemed Griffithss statement inappropriate and implied that his response had been hatefully motivated, declaring, The use of mass emails to express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry is offensive and unacceptable. After Griffiths refused to meet with her unless a trusted colleague could witness their conversation, Heath barred him from faculty meetings and promised that he would face further consequences. Meanwhile, the professor who issued the initial invitation filed an official complaint of harassment against Griffiths for the use of racist and/or sexist speech in such a way as to constitute a hostile workplace. Griffiths ultimately felt compelled to resign from the university.

Griffithss tale presents a remarkably different picture from the way administrators addressed concerns about faculty bigotry and harassment a decade ago, when three white members of Dukes mens lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping an African-American stripper. In that instance, less than a week after allegations became public, Duke professor Houston Baker penned an open letter demanding the immediate expulsion of the entire lacrosse team not just the three players who were accused (and ultimately cleared). There was also the infamous Group of 88 ad, in which 88 Duke professors issued a public statement that ran in the school newspaper. Entitled What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?, the ad was paid for by the universitys African-American Studies program and claimed to be endorsed by three academic departments and 13 academic programs (although none of the departments voted on endorsement). The professors declared that the disaster represented by these (ultimately exonerated) students would not end with what the police say or the court decides. At no point, not even after the accusations were proven to be a fabrication, did Duke administrators take any action against these faculty members for violating the campuss commitment to combating intolerance and promoting a safe learning environment.

More familiar to most readers will be the contretemps that played out at Middlebury College earlier this spring, when our colleague Charles Murray was invited to speak. There, a violent crowd prevented Murray from delivering his address and then assaulted him and his hosts, ultimately hospitalizing a Middlebury professor. Forty-six days after the fact, Middlebury finally announced that its investigation had identified more than 70 individuals it believes may be subject to disciplinary procedures.

It all sounds promising enough but what did the discipline actually amount to? Middleburys student newspaper reported that most students were given an especially modest form of probation in which they have a letter placed in their file that will be removed at the end of the semester. Since Middleburys spring semester ended on May 15, all those students had to do was behave for a few weeks and the whole thing went away. Meanwhile, 19 students received an additional two semesters of probation. That was it. The college acknowledged that not a single student was suspended, kicked off campus, or otherwise visited with any meaningful consequences.

In the moments before Murray spoke, video captured Bill Burger, a Middlebury official, jovially playing the part of stern administrator. To student cheers, Burger announced, Youre going to love this next part before reading a perfunctory statement about Middleburys rules on audience conduct. Burger closes by informing the students that continued disruption may result in college discipline, up to and including suspension and is met with whoops of approval from the students. As Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, pointed out in The Federalist, Burgers lines were excerpted from Middleburys official statement on Demonstrations and Protests, but curiously omitted a few key points including this: Disruption may also result in arrest and criminal charges such as disorderly conduct or trespass. In short, Middlebury officials felt no obligation to take their own norms and policies seriously, or to mete out the appropriate consequences to those who violated them.

Some of the most glaring instances of institutional hypocrisy have played out in the University of California system, which encourages students to anonymously report any observed behavior that might include expressions of bias or hate speech, or create a hostile climate. As Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor and influential blogger, chronicled in the Washington Post, UC administrators have taught that actions that can create a hostile climate on campus include such statements as America is the land of opportunity and I believe that the most qualified person should get the job.

Despite the systems commitment to creating a welcoming environment for all, no disciplinary action has yet been taken against student protesters who shouted down Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald during her recent visit to campus. While shouting Bulls**t! Bulls**t! at a guest speaker may not be an expression of bias, it certainly violated UCLAs Principles of Community and True Bruin Respect civility policy and would seem to create a hostile climate. Stephen Bainbridge, another UCLA law professor, pointed out the hypocrisy of the whole situation on his blog (with copious links providing examples):

If the shoe had been on the other foot, and a conservative mob had shut down a progressive speaker, there would have been crying sessions, CrossCheck Live discussions, official campus statements of support, creation of a hate-speech database, and probably police intervention.

Bainbridge puts his finger on the crux of the matter, illustrating why Tennessees necessary and important Campus Free Speech Protection Act is only a start. Policies securing free speech need to be enforced, and they need to be enforced in a serious and evenhanded manner. Unfortunately, todays supine administrators have given no indication that they are up to that task yet they are the ones charged by states with breathing life into these new directives. Worse, the record gives reason to fear that campus officials may find ways to apply these new protections in troubling ways that subvert their intent. That means that the next challenge is to monitor whether campuses honor these protections, find ways to change the culture and blind spots of university leaders, and ask what more might be done to ensure that campuses are bastions of free inquiry and not hothouses for ideological thugs.

Frederick M. Hess is the director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Grant Addison is a research assistant at AEI.

Read more from the original source:
College Free-Speech Laws: Necessary but Not Sufficient | National ... - National Review