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campus ethics
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campus police
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open letter
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race
by Unit for Criticism
[The below post is an open letter to University of Illinois Chief of Police Barbara O’Connor which we publish at the request of several signatories. The letter responds to the use of the "Illini Alert" system by campus police.]
November 15, 2010
An Open Letter to Chief of Police Barbara O’Connor:
We write with grave concern about your recent use of the "Illini Alert" text‐messaging system on Monday, November 8, 2010 to report the assault in Forbes Hall and to search for the suspect in that incident.
The use of the system in this case was, at best, an overreaction to the incident, and, at worst, a misuse of police power that smacks of racial profiling. To tell every member of the campus community to call 911 if they see a “black male, salt/pepper hair, 40‐50 year old, 5’11, 170, med build” does not increase safety on our campus. On the contrary, through such a sweeping announcement, you have in fact put a considerable part of the campus community at risk, placing under suspicion valued colleagues, coworkers, students, and visitors solely on the basis of their race and gender. Given the local history of racial tensions, which seem to have increased dramatically over the past year, this kind of alert only exacerbates the very distrust that has been so corrosive on campus and in local communities. We believe that the use of electronic media such as text‐messaging and email to issue crime alerts has been profoundly counterproductive, with the accumulated effect of generating widespread fear and suspicion that all too often gets expressed through racial divisiveness.
The sexual assault of a student is a deeply serious matter and deserves a swift and thorough response by police and campus authorities. We are as concerned as anyone else on this campus for the safety of our students in the dorms and elsewhere. We also believe that it is important that such incidents be handled in ways that do not inspire panic or rely on racial stereotypes, but rather that educate students, faculty, and staff about the most likely scenarios for sexual assault and other crimes on our campus.
We condemn the use of the mass‐alert (text message) system to respond to such incidents. While it may be appropriate to use this technology to respond to rare cases of imminent widespread threat, such as a tornado or a bomb scare, the text‐alert system was completely inappropriate—and, indeed, reckless—in this case. We are extremely troubled that you could issue such an alert, given the appalling history of racial profiling in this country. We understand that the Clery Act requires the University to give timely warnings of crimes on our campus, but we believe that it is possible to meet that requirement via other available media. We expect you, as the police chief of a leading university, to take considerable care and responsibility when making a decision about when or if race should be mentioned in any communication. At a minimum, we urge you to use every opportunity to inform the public of the dangers of stereotyping and to remind us all of the tremendous contributions made by all racial and ethnic groups in our diverse campus community.
While you may have intended to protect students, faculty, and staff, instead you have done serious damage to the racial climate of our campus and local community. We want you to realize that electronic crime alerts, especially last Monday’s text message, undermine the ongoing and often difficult work that we do in our programs and organizations regarding race, gender, and sexual orientation, along with our daily efforts to make this campus a diverse, safe, and open‐minded place to learn and work.
We urge you to immediately revise your policy for issuing such alerts; to apologize to the campus community for this irresponsible use of police power; and to confer in meaningful and sustained ways with those of us who are committed to the pursuit of racial and gender justice and equity on our campus.
Sincerely,
Executive Committee of the Campus Faculty Association
Senate Committee on Equal Opportunity and Inclusion
Professor James Barrett, Chair, Department of History
Professor Merle L. Bowen, Director, Center for African Studies
Professor Jorge Chapa, Director, Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society
David W. Chih, Director, Asian American Cultural Center
Jennifer DeLuna, Assistant Director, La Casa Cultural Latina
Professor Jennifer Hamer, Faculty Co‐Chair, Black Faculty and Academic Professionals Alliance
Whitney Hamilton, President, Women of Color
Professor Dianne Harris, Director, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
Professor Ronald L. Jackson, II, Head, Department of African American Studies
Rory G. James, Director, Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center
Veronica M. Kann, Assistant Director, La Casa Cultural Latina
Tony Laing, President, Black Graduate Student Association
Professor Isabel Molina, Director, Latina/Latino Studies Program
Pat Morey, Director, Women’s Resources Center
Leslie Morrow, Director, LGBT Resource Center
Professor Chantal Nadeau, Director, Gender and Women’s Studies Program
Professor Lisa Nakamura, Director, Asian American Studies Program
Ben Rothschild, Undergraduate‐Graduate Alliance
Stephanie Seawell, Co‐President, Gradate Employees Organization
Professor Siobhan Somerville, Co‐Chair, LGBT Advisory Committee
Regina Mosley Stevenson, Academic Professional Co‐Chair, Black Faculty and Academic Professionals Alliance
Katie Walkiewicz, Co‐President, Graduate Employees Organization
Professor Robert Warrior, Director, American Indian Studies Program
Amaziah Zuri, Chair, Students for a United Illinois
cc:
Robert Easter, Chancellor and Provost, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign
Michael J. Hogan, President, University of Illinois
Joyce Tolliver, Chair, Senate Executive Committee, Academic Senate, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign
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campus ethics
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Dan Colson
by Unit for Criticism
Written by Dan Colson (English)
In my literature classes, I teach authors like John Dos Passos, Michael Gold, Jack London, and Jack Conroy. We talk about socialism, communism, fascism, and democracy and invariably someone in the class (myself or one of the students) draws a comparison between the events and ethos of the pre-WWII United States and our present situation. The idea of teaching the literature I study without discussing politics is comic: “Students, please skip the last section of Native Son, do not ask me to define words like ‘proletarian,’ ‘fellow-traveler,’ or (to be safe) ‘fascism,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘war,’ and also ignore the time period in which all of these texts were written...in fact, let’s just pretend they were written during the Jurassic Period so we don’t have to touch on the complications of industrial capitalism and American democracy.” Recently, however, this humorous exercise in avoidance has become a looming reality.
Those of you at the U of I recently received an email outlining “prohibited political activity,” and you may be aware of the various responses by faculty and graduate students.* The university’s clarification of state law (it remains to be seen if their interpretation is tenable or not) raises serious concerns about free speech and academic freedom. But perhaps more importantly, these events reveal a floating definition of “political” speech/activity that can restrict what we teach and how we teach it. As a graduate student, I’ve been struck by the harsh truth of working for a public institution and I’m scared. The state seems to want to redefine the nature of the university and there are those locally and nationally who would go even farther.
Over the last week, I have repeatedly expressed my concern that extending the “prohibited political activity” restrictions to all university property places a special burden on graduate students: we move in and out of our roles as employees and students throughout the day. The Ethics Office’s guidelines, however, draw no distinction. So long as we are on campus, we are employees. Thus, when we take classes, meet with other students, or write portions of our dissertations in the library, we must censor our political expression. Clearly few of us will be writing “vote Obama” in our dissertations, but what counts as “political?” I posed this very question to ACLU attorneys and was disturbed by the answer.
We used the graduate seminar as our test case and the attorney claimed that any “electioneering”–that is, any support of a candidate, a party, or a referendum–should be suppressed by the instructor. In other words, it is the faculty’s responsibility to police the classroom and be sure that no inappropriate “political” content is aired. Presumably the same would be true for teaching assistants in their classes. Most of us carefully monitor our class discussions, being vigilant so no one is attacked or discriminated against, but now we must be even more controlling.
This restriction is frightening enough in itself, but the ACLU attorney was evasive when I pressed him on issues that I consider “political,” but that may not lend themselves to electioneering. Are there issues so intimately tied to party platforms that expressing a view on them would imply support of that platform? No real answer. Do issues of equality, human rights, social justice count as political? Maybe. I received no definitive answer, but I will cite one chilling example: if there comes a day when Illinois or the nation must vote for or against the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, we will not be able to express an opinion in our classrooms. LGBT studies? Good luck. And, if these laws are taken to their extreme logical conclusion, graduate students should be wary of using university resources (property, computers, etc.) to write papers that support or oppose any overtly “political” issues. Don’t expect the line to ever be overt, either. The ethics laws (like many academic freedom issues) function on a complaint basis: you’re free to express yourself, until someone takes offense.
I would rest easier if our vocal detractors were our only opposition. While they may be a larger part of American culture than I care to admit, I can dismiss critics like those who respond on the Daily Illini’s comment board. “Dough Boy” says, “...as an Illinois taxpayer I pay your salary and God knows what other untold benefits, I do not want you using your time and MY MONEY to spread your own political thought. Were it up to me, all of those who participated in yesterday's protest [the Barack Obama rally / free-speech protest held on Thursday, October 2] would be fired, period. They knew what they were getting into before they gathered and they should suffer the consequences of their stupid actions....SHUT UP and TEACH!”
I suppose we will always face this argument: “you are paid to teach, and politics have nothing to do with your subject matter [regardless of the subject matter].” But it is not only the proprietary taxpayers who should concern us.
Perhaps everything is politics, but few beyond the academy believe so. Who gets to define politics? The university says that support for John McCain is political, yet support for anarchism is not. The Office of the Executive Inspector General [the state agency responsible for executing the Ethics Act] claims that everyone, even students, are prohibited from political expression on campus, but they do not define politics. Even the ACLU–which has been supportive in our recent battle–has trouble drawing the line between political and apolitical subjects. Reproductive rights? Gay rights? Human rights?
I will soon write a dissertation that I find unquestionably political; I continue to teach classes in which politics are unavoidable; and I believe in social justice that is politically at odds with large swaths of American culture. I don’t know if any of these “activities” are prohibited, because I don’t know who in my uncertain future will define the “political.”
*On Thursday, October 2, graduate students organized an on-campus Barack Obama to protest the free-speech restrictions. On their own time, grad students and faculty wore Obama buttons, attended a political rally, and distributed campaign materials, all of which are prohibited to employees on university property. [Chicago Tribune]
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campus ethics
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Margaret C. Flinn
by Unit for Criticism
Written by Margaret C. Flinn, Dept. of French and Unit for Cinema Studies
Like many University of Illinois faculty members, I was perplexed by what I found in my email one day this September. “The Fourth Issue of Ethics Matters!” says that The law isn’t always as clear as we’d like, so here are a few specific examples to better define what is and what is not considered prohibited political activity (can’t be performed on University time without appropriate benefit usage1; and never on University property or using University resources).
Under a column entitled “Prohibited Political Activity,” one can read “Wearing a pin or t-shirt in support of the Democratic Party or Republican Party, or Democratic/Republican candidate.” And further along, “Specific examples of things that are expressly prohibited include ‘Attending a rally on University property specific to a political candidate or party—regardless of whether or not you are on University time.’”
I rapidly went from perplexed to angry and then wondered if I should be afraid. I don’t have tenure. Could this issue be parlayed by a student who perceived (rightly or wrongly) a difference in our political opinions (electoral or otherwise) into grounds for challenging a grade, or worse? At what point would the obviously heavy handed Ethics Office or some other administrative body decide that I had not adequately hidden my self away from the same students who expect that I be present, real and available? How exactly does the University Ethics Officer who drafted this newsletter imagine that classrooms work? What does this branch of the University think the purpose of a university is? Is it 1. a place where students learn to think critically about a variety of topics, engaging in the discourse of multiple disciplines? Or 2. a place where a for-fee state service generates diplomas in order to raise the earning potential of that state’s residents? Even if one embraces the cynical business model that increasingly dominates higher education in the United States, shouldn’t those buying the service have the best content possible, being formed as critical thinkers with a flexible intellectual skill set (see definition #1)?
So, what goes into making that best learning environment? Without attempting to enter into the distinctions between free speech and academic expression, I’m led to wonder…does the Ethics Office really mean to say my body is a “University resource”? When, because of my research area, my job most certainly includes challenging students to think critically about the politics of film, literature and popular culture, how can it be that I could not attend on-campus political rallies? Am I really supposed to be able responsibly to educate my students and push their own critical thinking if I am cut off from the processes that they are experiencing?
I teach some quite politically charged material. I try to maintain critical distance and a classroom atmosphere where everyone feels able to participate, where varying viewpoints are respected, but where it is still possible to engage in vigorous debate. Put any 20-30 individuals in a room and this is going to be a challenge! My hesitation and concern and wonder at how exactly I do my job is a good example of what Professor Cary Nelson means when talks about the potentially chilling effects of the Ethics Office interpretation of state policy.
This semester, for instance, I am teaching a class on film and new media art, primarily French, but with a good deal of comparative material. This class has already seen films that deal with: post-apocalyptic visions of nuclear war (Chris Marker, La Jetée), civil war in the former Yugoslavia (Jean-Luc Godard’s The Old Place), the social status of people whose main source of food is other people’s garbage (Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I), the French presidential election of 2001—where extreme-right candidate Jean-Marie LePen won a place in the final round, run-off election against center-right candidate Jacques Chirac (Marker’s The Case of the Grinning Cat, & Varda’s Two years later), the ban on Muslim headscarves and other prominent religious signs in French classrooms (again Grinning Cat), pornography and medical marijuana in California (24 Hours on Craigslist). Because Chris Marker also posted for a year on a political graphic arts information blog, unregardmoderne.com, and Marker’s Grinning Cat ends up being about the way a particular street art figure crosses from street, to film, to gallery, to newspaper, to the Internet and back, we looked for comparison at the L.A. Freewayblogger and locally at the BurmaShave style signs of Guns Save Life. Most of this is material I have taught before. In class discussions we talk about what makes any of this art. What strategies of mixing art and politics are “effective,” in what ways, and how—if at all—can this “success” be measured?
These classes run as seminars. True seminars, in the sense that while I have a set of questions I feel need to be explored and I have in many cases already researched and published on these films, the course does not have a single “thesis” of which students are supposed to be convinced. For those of us in humanities and social sciences, a presidential election year can provide the ultimate in “teachable moments”—students are independently, actively engaged in thinking outside of the classroom about the same questions we are posing inside the classroom. If they are not doing so, they can be encouraged to do so—examples from distant places and times become more meaningful when compared with the students’ lived realities, while in turn, the lived reality becomes the subject of more nuanced examination. I give such a lengthy description of my classes, because they provide a context that would have given me a perfect opportunity to perform my point and wear various articles of campaign clothing to class expressly for the purposes of discussion and comparison. Unethical if they are on my body, but OK if they are carried in and then displayed on a lectern? OK in the classroom because of the critical context that assures people I am not promoting a certain candidate, but not OK when I leave the classroom and walk home (at least until I leave university property)?
The current U.S. presidential election provides an example of a striking contrast in approaches to the mix of art and politics. The Obama campaign’s store features a series of prints (“Artists for Obama”), a CD of pop singers (“Yes We Can”), and a line of apparel and accessories by well-known designers (“Runway to Change”) that are significantly more expensive than the “standard” campaign gear. Meanwhile, clicking on the “store” link from the McCain campaign homepage opens a new window with a message that reads: “JohnMcCain08Store.com and ShopMcCain.com are operated by independent, for-profit companies. Proceeds from sales of merchandise do not benefit McCain-Palin 2008 and should not be considered campaign contributions.” Did Obama’s decision to forgo public money allow/necessitate the partnerships with these artists? How do “grassroots” ideals compare to the fact that most of the participating artists work in the highly commercial artistic industries of fashion and popular music? What comparisons or contrasts can be made between the Obama campaign store and a museum gift store? When does art or politics cease to benefit from these commercial strategies? These are all compelling issues that would be right at home in my class discussion…but what kind of minefield do I traverse to get there?
While it is easy to point to humanists or social scientists to show the limitations of the Ethics Office statements, I would argue that scientists have the same context, and perhaps an even more compelling reason to bring up electoral politics in their classes (by whatever means they deem appropriate—I trust them to be ethical). University students who are considering scientific careers and those who have chosen to study a particular science in order to fill a requirement alike can benefit from understanding how the science they are studying has come into the current body of knowledge—an extremely political process, as the case of Galileo Galilei dramatically illustrates. Should the ethics and politics of science be banished from the science classroom (studied only in classes dedicated to history of science or scientific ethics, that might not ever be taken by a broad range of students)? Where better than in core science classes to take advantage of an election year to discuss things like: How does independent research get funded? What happens when government funding is unavailable? How do conflicts of interest arise in corporately funded research? Who is chosen to sit on advisory panels for the benefit of lawmakers or government agencies? What are the consequences in terms of public health and safety? Maybe it won’t be on the final exam, but it will give some students a better understanding of the whys and hows of material that is on the exam.
So, these are the things that the Ethics Office’s un-nuanced statements could prevent from being discussed. Just as I as a faculty member have a responsibility to establish a propitious learning environment in the microcosms of my office and classroom, is it not the responsibility of the University administration to foster a macrocosm of that propitious learning environment for the campus? I take the Illinois State Employees’ ethics training every year. Some years there has been a quiz, some years one just has to be sure to “read” slowly enough. Every year I am deemed “compliant” and I print my certificate. And every year, while I read the scenarios described, I mentally multitask by composing a letter to….someone!?...detailing how irrelevant this is to my work as a State Employee. “My workplace” does not look, feel, smell or sound like any of the “state offices” in the scenarios. It cannot be protected from politics, electoral or otherwise, without doing harm to the purpose and function of that workplace.
Shortly after the Ethics Office newsletter, but before coverage in the Daily Illini turned the campus spotlight onto the issue, I decided to deal with my perplexity by discussing it with the students in the same class where I teach so much politically charged material. I thought this could be risky—previous weeks’ discussion had given me a sense that there were a number of sharply opposed political “profiles” present. I could be challenged with a direct question that I might not answer tactfully or carefully enough and the fairly positive atmosphere of the course so far could be shut down for the rest of the semester. But isn’t this my job? I also want to make sure that students understand the broader context in which I am teaching them and that if, along with other materials, I use an example from a current political campaign posted on youtube, it is not for the purpose of “electioneering,” but rather so that they see the connections between the way what they are learning in my class—usually about a different place or time—can be brought to bear on their own experience.
The ensuing class period was lively, intelligent, and nuanced. A wide variety of viewpoints were expressed, and the conversation segued neatly into that week’s assigned film and readings. It was the kind of “breakthrough” class where—in spite of a lecture hall fixed-seating arrangement—students began to talk to each other and not just through me. It was one of the best demonstrations of engaged critical thinking and mutual respect that I have seen in eleven years of teaching. I am confident that this particular conversation has set the stage for the remainder of this course to unfold at a much higher level than it might have without it—explicitly and implicitly those students told me and each other that they do want to be challenged and pushed to think harder and articulate their positions better. So, ironically, I owe thanks to the Ethics Office. The very lack of subtlety in their articulation of ethical behavior for faculty members at this university gave me the opportunity to see in action the kind of university that their interpretation of state policy threatens to diminish.
1From elsewhere in the memo, I take “appropriate benefit usage” to mean that one can take a vacation day in order to engage in such activities.
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[The below post is an open letter to University of Illinois Chief of Police Barbara O’Connor which we publish at the request of several signatories. The letter responds to the use of the "Illini Alert" system by campus police.]