A California college professor reportedly will shell out $17,000 after he was caught on video erasing students’ pro-life chalk messages on campus last spring — and undergo First Amendment training. (Image source: Alliance Defending Freedom video screenshot)
But that’s not all.
Greg Thatcher, a public health professor at California State University, Fresno, also must undergo First Amendment training — and it will come courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom, the paper said.
What happened?
Video showed Thatcher using his shoe to erase messages like “women need love, not abortion” and telling other students to do the same, the Bee reported.
Thatcher claimed the pro-life messages only should be in a designated campus “free speech area” and said in the clip that “college campuses are not free speech areas.”
Well, it turns out Fresno State doesn’t have a designated free speech zone, the Bee said, and two students sued Thatcher over his actions in May.
How did the suit end up?
Fresno State students Bernadette Tasy and Jesus Herrera — part of Students for Life of America — each will receive $1,000 in damages while $15,000 will go to Alliance Defending Freedom, which defended the students in court, the paper said.
A court order filed last week forbids the professor from “interfering with, disrupting, defacing, or altering” any similar student activities, the Bee added.
Thatcher’s First Amendment training from ADF will clock in at two hours, the paper noted.
What did Alliance Defending Freedom have to say?
“No public university professor has the authority to silence any student speech he happens to find objectionable or to recruit other students to participate in his censorship,” ADF attorney Travis Barham said in a statement Thursday, the Bee said.
“Like all government officials, professors have an obligation to respect the constitutionally protected free speech of students,” Barham added, according the paper.
“Of all people, professors should be the first to encourage all students to participate in the marketplace of ideas rather than erase the speech of those with whom they differ,” he also said, the Bee reported. “The professor’s actions here were wrong and flagrantly violated the First Amendment.”
How did the professor respond?
Thatcher did not return messages Thursday, the paper said.
This writer’s perspective
It takes a certain level of chutzpah to deface free expression while being recorded on video.
One wonders if the professor felt certain in that moment he was “playing for the home team” — with plenty of left-wing fans, teammates and a powerful front office backing him up — and believed he’d get furious backing from his allies in the end if need be.
Not so much.
Equally galling are the other students caught on camera actually telling the victims that the professor told them to erase their pro-life chalk messages — and they simply obeyed. Presumably with similar speech-suppressing glee or propelled by the ignorance of forward-marching lemmings.
And how does the professor — a university employee — manage to claim there’s a free-speech zone designated for the students’ pro-life chalk messages when there actually is none? Secondly, how does an apparently learned individual claim that “college campuses are not free speech areas”?
It would seem the professor truly needs Alliance Defending Freedom’s help to gain a greater understanding of the First Amendment.
They may want to refrain from using blackboards, though.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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