A Chorus, Part One

The number of editorials and columns appearing in college and university newspapers around the country supporting the rights of students to speak their minds, even if when doing so displeases administrators, continues to grow. I’m gratified that all of those who have written agree with what I’ve said from the outset: the issue Butler has made of my writing has implications that extend far beyond the Butler campus and far beyond what they are doing to me as an individual, as unsettling as the latter might be.

Because the list of such pieces, on the right, has gotten so large, to help people get a full sense of what is being said, I’m going to print excerpts from some of them as my main posts today and tomorrow. I hope you’ll feel as I do: the outcry is both large and growing – and the Butler administration is being increasingly isolated as acting in an extreme manner, out of the norm for colleges and universities around the country. The position that Butler has staked out for itself is certainly a unique one, and I don’t understand why its administrators want to continue in this fashion.

Here, then, is a sampling of opinions from around the country:

From The Daily Iowan at the University of Iowa (11/13/09): In an editorial entitled “Administrators’ stifling of student free speech rights troubling,” the paper wrote, part:

A blatantly censorial lawsuit filed against a Butler University junior is a threat to students’ freedom of speech everywhere.

As students-journalists who relish freedom of speech, we have an obligation to stand up for Zimmerman and push back against unconstitutional restrictions on college students.

Since 1964’s New York Times v. Sullivan Supreme Court case, libel charges from public officials require journalists’ knowledge that the information they reported was false and that the reporter had a “reckless disregard” for the truth. Zimmerman’s claims were simply statements of his opinion and, while damning, were completely legal.

Whether they like it, public administrators are subject to intense — and sometimes unsavory — scrutiny. That was certainly true in the Butler University case. But Zimmerman’s critiques did not cross the line from strident evisceration to libelous material. And attempting to limit his speech because of dissenting comments is unconstitutional.

The efforts of the Butler administration set a frightening precedent for college students. In an errant, unconstitutional effort to uphold their own reputations, the administrators concomitantly stymied Zimmerman’s First Amendment rights.

But it’s cases such as these which show just how fragile students’ freedom of expression rights can be — and underscore the need to tirelessly defend them.

The editorial in the Daily Iowan was run with the following cartoon:

From the News-Letter at Johns Hopkins University (11/12/09): The newspaper’s editor-in-chief called Butler’s actions into question in an opinion piece entitled “What’s in a Pseudonym?”:

The counts of "libel" and "defamation" that Butler University cites in its suit against "John Doe" are nothing more than harmless student opinion. Higher education, built for the expansion of young people's mind and boundaries, was meant for young adults to question and consider counts of authority.

Mark Twain, a.k.a. Samuel Clemens, made his satires of society under his world-famous pseudonym, the Bronte sisters published under male pseudonyms and the American constitutional debates used pseudonyms (Alexander Hamilton, John Madison and John Jay wrote under the famous "Publius"). Heck, numerous authors wrote under pseudonyms when calling colonial British operations into question before the Revolutionary War. Pen names have enabled some of the most important American events to transpire, and the hindrance of such a voice by Butler University threatens the freedom of speech in the future of college journalism.

What is in a pseudonym? What dictates the freedom of speech? Obviously, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s decision to shout fire in a crowded theater (Schenck v. United States) does not fall under the freedom of speech. However, Zimmerman's decision to criticize what he viewed as unjust University action is completely within his rights. Apparently he hurt administrative members' feelings and protests against their actions occurred. His singular voice of dissent could not single-handedly cause all the opinions and protests that occurred against the University administration. Butler University's decision to sue John Doe only propagates the statements made by Soodo Nym in his True BU blog. Zimmerman called the actions of Peter Alexander, dean of Butler University's College of Fine Arts, "abuses of power." Although Butler administrators claim these statements "libelous" the actions the University has taken to stifle student voice and silence public question is nothing less than that.

The future of free speech is unclear in today's day and age. Although America's past is rooted in free speech dictated under pseudonyms, clearly as opinions, they have not been libelous. Defamation could be viewed as causing ill opinion. However, Zimmerman's statements were only representative of his views as he called Butler policies into question.

Butler should invest more time into making a difference in its students' lives instead of covering up self-created messes that call its own integrity into question. This reputation band-aid and lawsuit only screams Nixonian ethics - after all, think of all the money that was spent on preserving the reputation of the President of the United States.

Butler University's course of action against Jess Zimmerman is misguided, unnecessary and poses a very terrifying problem for students and journalists everywhere: Will universities nationwide attempt to dictate free speech and muddy the growth of free thinking, following Butler University's course of action? It is up to us, as students and emerging individuals, to defend our right to write, protest and call into question what we view as wrong.

No court or university should keep us from doing just that.

From The Blue Banner at the University of North Carolina Ashville (11/11/09): An editorial entitled “Butler University foolishly stifles freedom of speech” comes out strongly in favor of freedom of speech and equally strongly opposed to the actions of the Butler administration. The editorial said, in part:

Blackballing or cracking down on critics creates a tension that never goes away and exacerbates an already bad situation.

Take UNC Asheville for instance. Here at The Blue Banner, we are sometimes critical of administrators, not because we have a personal vendetta to fulfill, but because we think they are not living up the expectations of this unique, diverse campus.

UNCA’s administration, to their credit, has not interfered in any way and continues to support an unfettered student press, unlike Butler.

Some administrators undoubtedly would say criticism of university leadership, whether at Butler or UNCA, harms the university. It is similar to the argument the Bush administration used to silence critics following 9/11. What those who raise such complaints fail to see is that it is possible to love an institution but disagree with its leadership.

If students like Zimmerman cannot challenge authority when they see something wrong on campus, then how can anything improve?

Butler administrators attempted to kill the messenger rather than solve the problems he pointed out, and it backfired on them.

Even though Butler dropped the lawsuit, the university is still pursuing other disciplinary action, according to an e-mail from Zimmerman.

The Blue Banner stands with Zimmerman and is proud he is actively taking on Butler.

Wishing for things to work out instead of working them out is irresponsible, and Zimmerman demonstrated courage by speaking out on what, undoubtedly, countless other Butler students and employees already knew.

Zimmerman’s case highlights the sad fact that, at universities across the country, the student press is often alone in publicly highlighting failures of school leadership.

As we have shown this semester, too many cases exist on this campus of faculty anonymously complaining about serious problems rather than publicly airing them so that creative and productive solutions can be found.

Sadly, some of the same faculty who encourage student expression and political involvement are themselves silent. But for those who truly cannot speak out for fear of losing their jobs, we will be your voice.

I’ll present some additional material tomorrow. In the meantime, let all of us know what you think of the support being offered around the country.

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

Reaching Out

It’s been striking how many of the comments on my blog, and on the news stories, have mentioned the fear that people in the Butler community have about speaking out about our administration. I’ve had many people, both faculty and students, talk about it with me in person. That fear of retaliation was mentioned repeatedly at the teach-in, an event that many faculty members were frightened to attend. This isn’t a call out: In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s a reach-out. It’s an invitation. I can’t promise you that you will no longer be afraid, but I promise that sharing that fear with others makes it far more manageable. If we are to make change, we will need many, many people to be willing to face their fear of the administration and take a principled stand. Then, and only then, Butler will be able to move in the positive direction that its students and faculty so rightly deserve.

Dr. Marshall Gregory, the Ice Professor of English at Butler, is nationally renowned for promoting the liberal arts. In an open letter to the Butler community, he offers an impassioned plea for the University administration to do what’s right, and to help us all move on and move forward.

Because his message is so powerful and because I feel that it is important for students and faculty to see such a distinguished member of our community speaking so forcefully, I am printing (with permission) Dr. Gregory’s letter here. Please share your thoughts about what he has to say.

An Open Letter to the Butler Community

I have been deeply disappointed, frustrated, and angered by the way in which the higher administration at Butler University has handled—or, in my view, mishandled—the affair of the Soodo Nym blogger who said some things that the administrators did not like. I have read the evidence the administration proffers as alleged proof of the student’s terrible assaults on human decency and personal safety, and, in my opinion, what he said seems innocuous, neither dangerous nor threatening, and certainly not hostile enough to justify legal retaliation.

I cannot believe that Butler University’s institutional identity is so vulnerable that the administration thinks it desirable and defensible to react to a bit of undergraduate twitting with heavy legal muscle, bullying intimidation, and self-righteous claims about “civil discourse.” It is hard to imagine any sort of discourse more uncivil than hanging the threat of a lawsuit over the head of an undergraduate for months on end.

What one student writes on a blog, even if it is intemperate, will not damage Butler’s national reputation, but that reputation has been damaged by administrative actions that have focused a national spotlight on the university as a place where students will be threatened with a lawsuit for speaking their minds or for trying to speak truth to power. In one crude display of temper and temperament, Butler’s administration has given the university the appearance of being intellectually obtuse, more invested in power than in discourse, and more committed to its own version of truth (what Bakhtin calls “authoritative discourse”) than to the genial and collegial exchange of opinions. If Butler University has become the kind of place where a student’s attempt to speak his mind is met with displays of naked power and threats of coercion, then Butler University has become a vastly different, and vastly diminished, institution than I have thought it to be.

But in fact the university’s ethos has not changed; it is being misrepresented by the administration’s actions over the past several months. I have been talking about teaching in concentrated and intense ways with faculty members across the Butler University community for more than a decade, and I find it overwhelmingly true that most faculty members are committed viscerally and intellectually to developing the talents, abilities, and capacities of their students. Butler is the kind of place where students are nurtured, treasured, and developed by teachers who possess personal kindness and professional expertise, and who react in measured, nuanced ways to their students’ uncertain management of rhetoric and tone. If I were a parent helping my child choose a college, however, and if every Google search about Butler referred me to a shocking story about how the university’s administration sued a student over a blog, I would drop Butler from consideration in a heartbeat.

When students on this campus break the law by engaging in illegal actions such as, say, underage drinking, or when they cause social disruption by engaging in immature and dysfunctional conduct, these infractions are generally dealt with in nuanced and delicate ways by a student affairs staff that knows how to exercise influence rather than threaten power. In a striking contrast to this practice, it seems very mysterious to me that when a single student blogger expresses frustrations over particular administrative decisions, the university abandons restraint, and, in a huge and over-reactive spasm of authority, suddenly mobilizes its resources of money, lawyers on retainer, and its ability to penetrate the mechanisms of communication (email accounts). It’s the last thing one would expect to see at Butler. It’s like watching Socrates who devoted his life to making arguments suddenly turning into a back alley mugger. Why? What does the administration think is really at stake here? President Fong’s explanations leave me unenlightened and unconvinced.

It seems to me that the university administration should apologize to the entire community for the damage it has done to Butler University’s reputation, and, potentially, to its recruiting ambitions. The administration should especially apologize to the young man whom they have callously placed at the center of a controversy that they themselves seem mostly responsible for having generated.

Marshall Gregory
Ice Professor of English, Liberal Education, and Pedagogy