presidential Advice

Ok, while Butler’s president hasn’t admitted it publicly, I have to believe that he’s regretted bringing up the tragic massacre at Virginia Tech as part of his explanation for why he filed the world’s first-ever lawsuit in which a university sued over on-line speech. After all, how could he not be terribly embarrassed to have his ill-considered remarks repeated so widely?

A Virginia resident with ties to Virginia Tech made the case as well as it could be made when he wrote to the chair of Butler’s Board of Trustees “You may think it a stretch to link Jess Zimmerman’s blog posts to the impassioned essays of our Founding Fathers, but Dr. Fong’s linking of Jess’s remarks to the shootings at Virginia Tech is far greater hyperbole. As a resident of the Virginia Tech shooter’s home town and one with two nephews who recently graduated from that excellent institution, I must protest that those ill-considered remarks trivialize the tragedy of that mass murder in a way that is deeply offensive.”

But what I just realized is that Butler’s president has a tie to Virginia Tech that makes his comments even more reprehensible than I first thought. Soon after the shootings, The Chronicle of Higher Education invited a number of people to address the following question: “If you were giving the commencement address at Virginia Tech this year, what is the core of the message you would like to leave with the graduates?”

Very likely because Butler had suffered through a campus shooting of its own, Butler’s president was one of those The Chronicle approached. His message was a simple but important one: both as individual students and collectively as an institution, Virginia Tech was not alone. He wrote, quite movingly, “In the depths of misery, there will be cords of compassion to draw you back to others.”

He also offered some advice about fear to those who had just experienced the unimaginable. After noting that “Life can be dangerous, full of risk,” he went on and urged them to attempt to move beyond the fear that has to be inherent in such situations: “to respond to life with fear is to diminish yourself.”

When it became clear that he was going to have to explain why he authorized the university’s attorneys to file the lawsuit against “John Doe,” he immediately retreated to fear – and he immediately diminished himself. He told the faculty on October 13^th that the provost “was afraid, for her own safety, for her husband, for her house and property.”

Of course, no one who read what I had written believed a word of what he had to say. And even those who wanted to believe him couldn’t help but repeatedly question why the university didn’t call the police to deal with the threat they perceived rather than file a secret lawsuit.

But by invoking fear as a rationalization, as so many others have said, he trivialized the truly frightful experiences of others and he failed to take the good advice he offered to students at Virginia Tech.

It seems peculiar that the president doesn’t pay any attention when he makes very good sense, but he expects the rest of us to listen when he makes no sense at all.

"What We Must, At All Costs, Preserve In The Academy"

Consider, if you will, the following statement, spoken years ago by a Butler administrator:

“I believe teaching our students to negotiate issues of ethics and citizenship must be part and parcel of a Butler education. In part it is a matter of doing what the academy has always done: entertaining diverse viewpoints and perspectives, and modeling how a community can engage in civil dialogue. The ideal of the academy is to be able to represent fairly the viewpoint of those with whom one most disagrees. But dialogue, however necessary, is not sufficient. The unending conversation is what we must, at all costs, preserve in the academy….”

I particularly like the final part, “The unending conversation is what we must, at all costs, preserve in the academy…”

Imagine, if you can, how different the past year would have been for me, for Butler, for the present administration, if those words had been heeded. The True BU was raising what I and what frightened faculty members thought were very real concerns. Those concerns were being aired in an anonymous blog because faculty felt that their voices had not been heard – they met privately with the dean, they met privately with the provost, they met privately with the president to no avail. They were repeatedly told one thing but contrary actions ensued. They were frustrated and, as they’ve said, they refused to speak publicly because they were afraid of retaliation. So they let The True BU speak for them. The same dean, provost and president who said one thing but did another did not like reading about those inconsistencies. Those same administrators did not like emails and memos pointing out those inconsistencies being shared publicly so others could draw their own conclusions about their actions.

“The ideal of the academy is to be able to represent fairly the viewpoint of those with whom one most disagrees,” the Butler administrator wrote years ago. How better to represent those views fairly than by presenting the actual words written?

“The unending conversation is what we must, at all costs, preserve in the academy…” A year ago, the Butler administration completely ignored those words and ended the conversation, they stilled the sound of dissent, they silenced my voice. And they did it because they didn’t like what I was saying. But then as now they’ve ignored the fact that those closest to the events I was describing, the faculty in the School of Music, have said that what I was writing was an accurate portrayal of events and an appropriate depiction of their thoughts. For these administrators, however, an unpleasant truth was enough to demand a halt to the conversation. Ironically, they thought that the cost of such silence would be small – but as is so often the case with censorship, the message ultimately got out and the cost was far higher than they ever imagined.

Rather than being willing to pay a high cost to preserve freedom of speech in the academy, this administration did exactly the opposite – they paid a high cost and have become infamous for attempting to silence alternative views.

Why would they go down a path so diametrically opposed to the advice given by the Butler administrator I quoted above? I can’t answer that question but perhaps Butler’s current president can. He is, after all, the one whose policy careened so recklessly off course – and he is the one who, in his inaugural speech on February 9, 2002, spoke the words reproduced above.

Thoughts on Censorship

I’ve gotten a little worried that over the last two months readers of I am “John Doe” may have gotten caught up in the details of some of the ridiculous and untrue things Butler has said about me and lost sight of the bigger issue. The real issue is that in the original True BU blog I was expressing my opinions (and those of faculty in the School of Music who were too fearful of administrative retaliation to express them themselves) and the Butler administration didn’t like what I had to say. The threatened me for writing what I wrote. They intimidated me for what I wrote. And, ultimately, for about nine months at least, they silenced me. In simple terms, their threats and intimidation were acts of censorship.

So, I did an internet search to see what others had to say about censorship. Rather than comment on each quotation, I want to leave them with you as a package. Read them and think about what the Butler administration has done. Read them and think about the world the Butler administration has attempted to create. And, perhaps most importantly, read them and think about the world you will live in if you sit by and do nothing to stop actions of this sort, in the Butler case or in other cases where people in power attempt to silence those who disagree with them.

(I do want to add a small disclaimer. Although all of the following quotations were found on the internet, I can’t vouch for their authenticity. Regardless of whether every one was actually spoken or written by the person to which it was attributed, each provides important and interesting insight.)

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. - Potter Stewart

Censorship is the height of vanity. - Martha Graham

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print. - John Mortimer

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. - Tommy Smothers

The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship. – John Paul Stevens

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. - John Stuart Mill

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. - John Stuart Mill

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. - John Stuart Mill

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. - Alfred Whitney Griswold

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. - Sigmund Freud

Every burned book enlightens the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The paper burns, but the words fly away. - Akiba ben Joseph

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. - John F. Kennedy

You can cage the singer but not the song. - Harry Belafonte

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! -of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. – Winston Churchill

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. – Noam Chomsky

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. – Benjamin Franklin

And let me end with one that should be near and dear to the heart of Butler’s president, since he is an expert on Oscar Wilde: “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

When in Doubt, Sue

Inside Higher Ed recently ran an interview with Professor Amy Gajda, the author of The Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation published in October by Harvard University Press. The book and the interview have much to teach us about Butler’s reaction to The True BU.

Take a look at how the interview opens and see if it sounds familiar: “When in doubt, sue. That philosophy has become an expected part of American society and (to the frustration of many in higher education) academe as well.”

Professor Gajda was asked to comment on the notion that “Many college administrators these days complain that lawyers for their institutions have too much power.” In response, she said, “University counsel have never been busier or more important, but there is a danger in letting lawyers call all the shots. The ‘safest’ course from a litigation standpoint may not be the best for innovation, research, or teaching….College administrators and faculty generally need to be alert to the legal risks, while remaining true to their academic judgment.”

Remember that Butler’s president is on record saying that the university lawyers were operating without his knowledge and not under his control. Actually, though, I don’t think that is what Professor Gajda meant when she said that “lawyers for their institution have too much power.” Frankly, I doubt that she would have ever imagined a situation of the kind Butler’s president wants you to believe. But I have no doubt that the lawyers were complicit in creating Butler’s strategy with respect to intimidating me into shutting down The True BU. And I have no doubt that they play too large a role in the Butler administrative ethos.

Professor Gajda was asked about ways to reduce litigation: “Can you summarize the steps you recommend to colleges to discourage litigation as a means of solving disputes?” Her advice makes good sense. “The most important thing is for colleges to find a way of defusing academic disputes before they harden into a legal complaint. If colleges and universities took greater care to promote communication and a sense of community on campus, there would be fewer lawsuits.”

It seems to me that Butler has a great deal of work to do on this front. What sort of a “sense of community” exists on Butler’s campus when faculty member after faculty member expresses great fear of the administration? How can the administration ignore the problem when music faculty feel they can only come forward anonymously under the protection of a priest to document that what I wrote in The True BU was what they shared with me and that it was accurate? There is one thing that is helping faculty come together and build a shared community: their sense of fear of the Butler administration. Similarly, the Butler administration is all about secrecy. They “classify” more documents than you can imagine. Their two-pronged strategy when dealing with conflict, as has been so well demonstrated throughout my experience, is to demand that the content of all meetings remain secret and to have meetings with as few people at a time as they can get away with so they can tell each group a different “secret.” Amid a climate of fear, this strategy ensures that no one knows what anyone else knows – and thus that administrators are never asked tough questions.

One of the main points of Professor Gajda’s book is that recourse to the court system, while being overused now, came about to correct abuses present on college campuses that occurred when colleges acted as if they were outside of the law. She paints an unsettling picture of how things were: “At one time, colleges were basically unaccountable in the courts. They ignored contracts, trampled speech rights, and dismissed students and faculty on whim or prejudice with basic impunity.” She concludes that thought with the only statements she’s made with which I disagree and which is demonstrably false, at least on one campus in central Indiana: “No one should want to go back to those days.” It is all too obvious that Butler administrators yearn for the good old days when they could act with impunity, when freedom of speech stopped when someone in power didn’t like what was being said.

Professor Gajda does a great service by documenting a very real threat to higher education and the actions of Butler University serve to prove her case definitively.

Lessons to be Learned

With so much of my attention focused on the actions the Butler administration keeps directing toward me, at times I almost forget the fact that I’m a student. Then I read something for a class that really helped me to remember what college is supposed to be about. I want to make it clear from the beginning that I'm not comparing myself to Dr. King nor am I comparing my situation to the struggle that characterized much of the 20th century: I simply aim to point out that many of his teachings are still very applicable, in a variety of places and situations, today.

Recently, I had the opportunity to read some of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s writings and they really moved me. Like so many great writers and impressive leaders, Dr. King was able to craft arguments that went far beyond the specific instance he was writing about. One of those pieces was his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written on April 16, 1963. He wrote this open letter after being arrested for participating in a protest against racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

He said, in part, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

He went on to say, “You may well ask: ‘Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?’ You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

And he said, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

The racial justice he was fighting for, and for which so many are still fighting, is absolutely essential if we are to live in a fair and equitable society. His words are so incredibly powerful because they teach us about all sorts of injustice – and how to fight those injustices. Even more importantly, his words explain why we must fight against injustice when we see it.

President Bill Clinton quoted Dr. King on March 5, 2000 when he was in Selma, Alabama commemorating the 35th anniversary of the 1965 voting rights march. President Clinton chose to quote words Dr. King wrote in 1962, “It is history's wry paradox that when Negroes win their struggle to be free, those who have held them down will themselves be free for the first time."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been gone for over 40 years but his words still have much to teach us about injustice and the remarkable benefits that occur for all when injustice is finally overcome.

I wish that many in our community, and beyond, could learn the lessons that Dr. King was preaching.

Run the Numbers

I want to do something a bit different than my usual posts tonight.


Let’s look at the numbers:


33,470 – The number of distinct page loads I am “John Doe” has had in the 29 days it’s been in existence

31,200 – The difference between the number of distinct page loads of "I am John Doe" over a 3 week time period and The True BU had over its entire existence

859 – The number of signatures on the petition to the Butler administration asking for apologies for their actions

140 – The number of days it took for Butler to dismiss the lawsuit against “John Doe” after they used the court system to determine that “John Doe” was me, despite the president’s repeated claim that the university never had any intention of suing a student

58 – The number of comments on the original story about this case in Inside Higher Ed, making it the third most commented upon story for the last month, the ninth most commented upon story for the past six months and the thirteenth most comment upon story for the past year

11 – The number (at the very least) of School of Music faculty members who have endorsed a statement indicating that they provided me with the documents published in The True BU, that they shared their opinions and impressions of what was happening in the fall concerning the removal of the chair, and that they believe that what I wrote was accurate and consistent with their impressions.

10 – The number of university newspapers around the country that have written stories and editorials expressing their concerns about Butler's handling of this situation and the implications for freedom of speech issues across the country

8 – The number of times people signing the petition to the Butler Administration used the word “abuse”

6 – The number of months from when my father was first threatened with the specter of a lawsuit over The True BU to the time the administration informed me that a suit was actually filed, and that was in response to a concern raised by my father about defamatory statements made about him by the provost

4 – The number of months in which the Butler administration threatened to replace “John Doe’s” name with my name in the lawsuit accusing me of libel, defamation, harassment and threats; and the number of days after The True BU was removed from the web but before the Butler administration filed that lawsuit

3 – The number of memos Butler’s president wrote to the entire university faculty in a 15 day period about me

2 – The number of my family members removed from their administrative posts at Butler after The True BU began publishing

1 – The number of times a university has filed a lawsuit over online speech, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)

0 - The number occurrences of threatening, harassing, libelous, racist or sexist comments appearing in any of my writing, despite what the Butler administration has repeatedly claimed in communications intended for audiences both on and off campus

Tomorrow...

I apologize for the lack of a substantive post tonight. While I, and many others, certainly have a lot to say, I’ve spent a good deal of time today preparing for the first step in Butler’s internal disciplinary process, which is happening tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll have something more fulfilling tomorrow. Until then, I encourage you to take a look at the new comments on the petition (www.ipetitions.com/petition/butler) and sign it if you have yet to do so. Additionally, I’ve added a number of new media links, including a piece in the US News and World Report. As I said, this coming weekend I will be on an NPR station discussing this situation and I’ll give you more information about that show as it nears. Thanks so much for your support: This issue may be about me right now, but I firmly believe that if Butler's administration is allowed continue unchecked and unquestioned, the precedent it will set has the potential to impact students’ relationships with their schools in a very big, and negative, way.