2 Michigan State trustees displeased with professor's classroom rant against Republicans

[corkhead]

EAST LANSING — Michigan State University Trustee Mitch Lyons wasn't happy Wednesday when he learned of a professor at his alma mater who was secretly recorded during a soliloquy against Republicans.

A roughly nine-minute video posted to YouTube shows MSU professor William Penn calling Republicans racist and saying they "raped this country" before nearly 400 students in his Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities class on Thursday, which was the first day the class met this semester. The video made national headlines Wednesday, even appearing on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor."

snip

Lyons, himself a Republican, said Penn's remarks were upsetting, not just because of the politics but also because of the consequences for students in the class.

snip

The 64-year-old Penn is the tenured head of MSU's creative writing department. He is of mixed Anglo and Native American heritage, including Nez Perce and Osage. He has won multiple awards for his fiction and non-fiction works, most of which focus on cultural identity.

More at link:

http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2013/09/michigan_state_trustees_displeased_with_professors_classroom_rant_against_republicans.html


Apparently these thin skinned republicon douchebag trustees can't handle the truth...

[Baitball Blogger]

1. When Republicans were in control,

my kid came home with plenty of stories of teachers pushing Republican ideas. Maybe not a 9 minute rant, but the plugged their policies whenever they could.

[d_r]

2. OK, I watched that

waiting for something that was a big deal but I must have missed it

[alp227]

3. F you "campus reform" for wrecking this guy's career.

Michigan State reassigned Penn to another class. Fuck that, if I were dean i'd have PROMOTED him for his brave stance.

And isn't free speech for everyone, even bigots? If i were as narrow minded as everyone trashing William Penn I'd be bitching about why is Kevin MacDonald the anti-semitic "Professor" behind that "Occidental Dissent" site still a professor at a Cal State University thus taking MY taxpayer dollars to teach his International Jewish Conspiracy bullshit in the classroom? But oh well it's a fact of life that academia attracts people you'll disagree with, because their minds are way more open than yours will ever be.

In the free press story i linked to one of the MSU trustees who's a REPUBLICAN supported the decision because "We need to ensure that our classrooms have a free exchange of ideas and opinions." Yet the prof got PUNISHED for his free exchange, WTF? Penn's idea: "If you go to the Republican convention in Florida, you see all of the old Republicans with the dead skin cells washing off them. They are cheap. They don’t want to pay taxes because they have already raped this country and gotten everything out of it they possibly could. This country still is full of closet racists. What do you think is going on in South Carolina and North Carolina? Voter suppression. It’s about getting black people not to vote. Why? Because black people tend to vote Democratic." He's DAMN RIGHT about that closet racists thing, so right he UPSET the right wing troglodyte student.

Furthermore, my fave atheist blogger PZ Myers has said, "If a student is never made uncomfortable, that student is not getting an education." Hey Campus Conservatives, suck it up or go to somewhere like BYU or Hillsdale or Falwell's "Liberty" University if you're such small minded cowards you'd whine and scream at the mere criticism of your outmoded ideas.

[surrealAmerican]

4. What does "Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities" mean?

What is supposed to be covered in this class? Without more context, it's hard to know what to make of this rant.

[philosslayer]

5. And now he's been suspended...

http://www.freep.com/article/20130905/NEWS06/309050139/MSU-Republican-professor

So much for free speech.

[Vashta Nerada]

6. The professor said nothing wrong.