Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “blackfaced professor”

Stupid and offensive Halloween costume & response from Law & Schill

10/31/2019: A Halloween reminder: 11/3/2016 update: 23 Angry Law Professors: 11/2/2016 update: Law Dean writes alumni condeming professor and racism and bigotry, then suspends her from teaching. KEZI posts professor’s explanation and apology. It seems she is not a racist or a bigot – quite the contrary: The KEZI report is here: “I…

President to revisit professor’s free-speech discipline case

No, of course I’m not talking about President Schill’s decision to discipline Law Profressor Nancy Shurtz. Johnson Hall doesn’t make mistakes. I’m talking about Rutgers President Robert Barchi and a professor who tweeted something stupid and offensive about New York City real estate, near as I can figure. InsidehigherEd has the…

Law Prof Nancy Shurtz explains why she is coming back to teach

Update: For an interesting contrast in institutional responses, see this story from tonight about how Cal State Fresno President Joseph Castro reacted to public anger about a professor who made disparaging comments about the recently deceased Barbara Bush: Professor Jarrar’s conduct was insensitive, inappropriate and an embarrassment to the university.…

Law prof Nancy Shurtz in the Oregonian on Halloween, free speech, diversity

UO Law Professor Nancy Shurtz has some hard-won and interesting thoughts on the intersection of Halloween, free speech, and diversity in her op-ed here. …Halloween costumes have also been a hot-button issue on college campuses in recent times, brought into the fore by the case of Yale University lecturer Erika Christakis…

Law dean who attacked Schill’s response to blackface incident gives nuanced view of best response to disruption of Schill’s State of Univ speech

Back in January, Erwin Chemerinsky, a well known legal scholar and at the time the UC-Irvine law school dean, published this opinion piece castigating UO President Mike Schill’s response to the Halloween blackface incident: Worries about offensiveness threaten free speech on campuses All too often campuses are forgetting one of the…

Supreme Court reaffirms our First Amendment right to be offensive idiots

The decision was unanimous. The Washington Post’s Eugene Volokh has the analysis here. Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Elena Kagan’s concurring opinion reads as if written specifically in response to the UO administration’s discipline of law school professor Nancy Shurtz: The Government may not insulate a law from charges of viewpoint…

UO hires Barran & Liebman’s Shayda Le, pleas for more time on Freyd lawsuit

From the docket here: ORDER: Granting Defendant’s Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to Answer 6 . Answer is due by 5/18/2017. Ordered by Judge Michael J. McShane. (cp) (Entered: 04/17/2017) Attorney Shayda Le of Portland’s Barran Liebman law firm is the same lawyer our administration hired, along with partner Edwin Harden, to defend…

Youtube: Chicago Prof Geoffrey Stone lectures UO Law School on free speech

Is free speech on campus dying?

If so, it’s still kicking. Friday’s engaging talk by Geoffrey Stone from Chicago Law laid out and put to rest the arguments against free speech and academic freedom one by one, then finished them off with his responses to audience questions about the increasing use of hate speech by conservatives, and safe spaces for our increasingly diverse students.

Free Speech on Campus: A Challenge for Our Times

Friday, February 17 at 4:00pm

Can the administration fire Shurtz? Will they?

Not without a formal judgement by her peers following established procedures. In fact the administration can’t even punish her without that. Academic freedom is still pretty strong at UO. See the “final investigative report” from UO’s employment law specialists Edwin A. Harnden & Shayda Z. Le of Barran Liebman, LLP, and the letter from…

Another law school Dean castigates UO over First Amendment fail

In November Vikram Amar,  Dean of the University of Illinois law school reviewed the legal issues with UO law dean Michael Mofffitt’s decision to suspend Professor Shurtz from teaching on the well-read law blog Above the Law: “On Academic Freedom, Administrative Fairness, And Blackface“. On November 14th UO law professor Ofer…

Orthodoxy & threat of institutional punishment is what the UO is now about

UO President Michael Schill is a former UCLA law school dean. UO General Counsel Kevin Reed is a former UCLA general counsel. Eugene Volokh is a rather well known UCLA law professor, whom Reed has asked for advice on the proposed TPM free speech restrictions. Quoting from Volokh’s UCLA webpage: Eugene…