University of Massachusetts at Amherst: Suppression of ‘Racist’ Speech

Case Materials

• "Repression and Double Standards at UMass Amherst," FIRE Press Release, October 15, 2004: Last spring, the University of Massachusetts Amherst defended the free speech rights of a columnist who celebrated the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman. Now the university is persecuting nine students who were seen in photographs containing a caricature of one of them as the "Grand Wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan. The mere existence of the drawing, which mocked spurious accusations of "racism" in a student government election campaign, led UMass to charge the nine students with "harassment" and threaten them with penalties ranging from criminal charges to expulsion.
• "FIRE Letter to UMass Amherst Chancellor John V. Lombardi, October 7, 2004," October 7, 2004

Media Coverage

• "Freedom Watch: UMass Amherst parodies itself," Harvey Silverglate, The Boston Phoenix, March 11, 2005: The administrative Pooh-Bahs at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have demonstrated once again that they are too cynical, too cowardly, or a combination of both to recognize the difference between "hate speech" and parody.
• "Send Out the Clowns," Harvey Silverglate, The Boston Phoenix, October 28, 2004: LIKE PATRONS of the Grand Hotel in the classic movie of the same name, administrators at the University of Massachusetts Amherst come and go, but nothing ever happens — at least as far as the school’s longstanding devotion to unconstitutional censorship is concerned. Always advanced in the name of some alleged higher principle, UMass’s history of censorship is actually rooted in a mundane bureaucratic need for order. And that makes it all the more screwball.
• "Double standard on free speech?," Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, October 25, 2004: LAST APRIL, the student paper at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, The Daily Collegian, ran a column by graduate student Rene Gonzalez attacking Pat Tillman, the football player who had volunteered for the US Army and was killed in Afghanistan. Gonzalez called Tillman an "idiot" who was "acting out his macho, patriotic crap" and got what he deserved. An outcry ensued, on and off campus. The Collegian printed a statement defending Gonzalez's free speech rights while distancing itself from his views; university president Jack M. Wilson publicly deplored the column but affirmed the writer's right to free speech.
• "Satirical UMass Students Victims of 'Double Standards,' Says FIRE," Jim Brown, Agape Press, October 21, 2004: (AgapePress) - A civil liberties group says at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, it's more acceptable to mock American soldiers than it is to make fun of racism allegations. That's why the group is accusing the school of "repression and double standards."
• "UMass failing constitutional test," David French, Boston Herald, October 16, 2004: For years, debates have raged about the state of higher education. To critics, campuses have been captured by oppressive political correctness - an ideology that permits only one point of view about the critical issues of the day. Defenders of the contemporary university establishment argue that the problem is exaggerated or that the criticism is itself repressive, designed to silence the ``progressive'' voice.
• "Under the Radar: Political Correctness Never Died," Cathy Young, Reason, July 1, 2004: These days, talking about political correctness in academia makes you sound like a quaint throwback to the 1990s. It seems utterly irrelevant to the post-9/11 era, a threat dwarfed by (depending on whom you listen to) either terrorism or losing our liberties to the war on terrorism. Eric Wasserman, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), says many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the very phrase political correctness, seeing it as an old story.