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Strange Bedfellows

Dr. Jacobsen,

Your conduct regarding the vandalism of a university-approved pro-life display on campus was nothing short of reprehensible. The students who erected the display did so following all university procedures and were exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech. You may not have agreed with them or their views on this subject, but infringing upon their free exercise was absolutely wrong, and completely indefensible.

Yet, you attempted to defend your actions, claiming that your act of vandalism was itself an act of free speech. This claim, as any first-year law student would tell you, is utterly ridiculous. Beyond that, I suspect any reasonable person would also find it ridiculous. By the twisted logic of your claim, students who disagreed, an anti-war display, for example, would be within their free speech rights if they destroyed said display. Further, applying your logic, any poster, publication, display or activity could be destroyed or interrupted by those who disagreed.

Too often we hear those on the Left call conservatives fascists. Yet we do not see conservative groups destroying displays erected by liberals. We do not see Al Franken being protected by an entourage of security people when he speaks at various universities. We do not see students throwing pies at Hillary Clinton. We don’t see the tires of cars bearing Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers being slashed. But we do see professors (supposed leaders of our youth) destroying pro-life displays. We hear professors calling the people slaughtered in the twin towers on 9/11 names like “oppressor” and “criminal” (I recently read a profile of a 72 year-old great-grandmother who died at the World Trade Center; was she an “oppressor”?). We see Ann Coulter being harangued and assaulted by college students. We see conservative speakers at universities requiring the protection of a phalanx of security personnel. We see cars bearing Bush/Cheney bumper stickers being vandalized.

So, I ask you, who are the fascists? Who is assaulting free speech? Who is teaching our young people to act like terrorists (I feel free to use that word when it applies)? Who is operating by the old communist credo of “the end justifies the means”?

Your conduct was a disgrace not only to yourself and the fine university which now has to deal with you. Your conduct was a disgrace to all teachers, and an affront to all of us who believe that the freedom of speech we enjoy in this country is vital to our nation’s continued vitality.
I urge you to first apologize to the students you attacked, and then to the students you wrongly led in this criminal act. I urge you to then resign. This would show all students, right, left and center, that above all else, at least one university professor takes the right of free speech very seriously.

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