A lawsuit filed by a former graduate student has Temple in the midst of a legal battle over students’ First Amendment rights.
On April 10, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Temple appealed a March 2007 ruling that the university’s old sexual harassment policy was too broad and unconstitutional. Temple amended the old policy, which the District Court permanently enjoined.
Sgt. Christian DeJohn, 38, a Pennsylvania National Guard combat veteran and former Temple graduate student, filed suit against Temple in 2006, challenging the constitutionality of the university’s then-standing sexual harassment policy.
If Temple loses the appeal, it will be prevented from reverting back to its old policy, said David Hacker, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney who is representing DeJohn.
“There’s no objectivity to [the old policy],” Hacker said. “Temple did the right thing by changing [it], but the only reason they changed it was because of Mr. DeJohn’s lawsuit.”
Hacker said it could take three to six months for the court to make a decision.
University counsel George Moore said the old sexual harassment policy, which was developed through a university-wide committee including faculty, administrators and student consultations, contained language similar to the Equal Opportunity Act.
“The District Court found that Temple’s policy was overly broad based on a Third Circuit decision involving a civility code in primary education out of the State College School District,” Moore said. “Temple’s sexual harassment [code], which is not a civility code [or a speech code], is a code addressing illegal sexual harassing conduct.”
Moore said the outcome of the case is difficult to predict.
“One [option] is to seek reconsideration by the Third Circuit. Although, if the Third Circuit believes that the case was decided with regards to State College School District, the Third Circuit might feel bound to follow that,” he said.
“If the decision comes out based on that prior case, they don’t have any choice,” Moore said. “It might be a waste of time to ask them to reconsider. In that case, either side that is unhappy … can seek certiorari from the [U.S.] Supreme Court, [but] the Supreme Court only takes a small percentage of cases that way.”
In the same suit, DeJohn accused Temple of retaliation, which prevented him from graduating, and specifically sued the university itself, former President David Adamany, former history department chair Dr. Richard Immerman and history professor Dr. Gregory Urwin.
Moore said the court properly dismissed DeJohn’s claims of retaliation, as he did not meet university standards.
“With respect to his claim about the university sexual harassment policies, his claims really had nothing to do with the sexual harassment policy as it existed at the time,” Moore said. “It was not even a pertinent part of his claims of retaliation.”
DeJohn said his problems with Temple began when he took a leave of absence from working toward his military history degree to serve in Bosnia after the Spring 2002 semester.
When he returned back to the United States in March 2003, he learned that he was expelled from the university for failing to properly document his leave.
“This was my ‘welcome home’ from Temple,” DeJohn said. “‘Welcome home, you’re kicked out.’”
DeJohn was readmitted into the university and completed his class requirements. He began to research and write his graduate thesis, the last step in obtaining his degree.
“Because of Sept. 11, my whole life was disrupted,” DeJohn said. “I just wanted to finish my degree.”
When the primary reader of his thesis, history professor Dr. Jay Lockenour, was ready to sign off on it, DeJohn had one more hurdle to overcome – a secondary reader, Urwin, also had to approve it.
“DeJohn could have easily executed the revisions I recommended for his flawed [Master of Arts] thesis in two weeks and walked away from Temple with his degree years ago,” Urwin wrote in an e-mail, adding that he is currently helping four service members obtain degrees.
“One of the wildest charges DeJohn has circulated since the trial is that I have had him blackballed by various potential employers. How in the world would I know where he was applying for work?”
DeJohn said that though Urwin did not approve his thesis, Lockenour advised him to register to graduate in May 2005 anyway.
Although he never graduated, he said Temple reported to his student loan companies that he obtained a diploma, causing his loans to default, damaging his credit.
“As a veteran, I feel really strongly about civil rights, freedom of speech and First Amendment rights,” DeJohn said. “I think I have a responsibility to defend them. I like the irony here. I come home to Philadelphia, the cradle of democracy, and Temple is denying me my civil rights.”
“Before the disagreements, I had no problems as a student,” DeJohn said. “My cumulative GPA was a 3.2 or 3.3 in graduate school.”
DeJohn said he believes that his issues with the history department stemmed from his objections to receiving anti-war e-mails for weekly Dissent in America teach-ins sponsored by the department while he served overseas.
He said he is not sure what he could win in the case. He said one possibility is declaratory damages, in which Temple would be required to acknowledge that it violated the law.
“If we prevail on the First Amendment [issue], the usual award is $1. It’s a totally symbolic award,” he said.
He said he is ready to take the case as far as needed to ensure First Amendment rights for Temple students.
“If someone is hit by lightning once, it may be an accident,” he said. “If they’re hit seven times, something’s going on. I really have faith that this story will get out and that justice will be done – on the big picture level and my own personal individual level.”
Morgan A. Zalot can be reached at morgan.zalot@temple.edu.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Interesting story. I’m curious to know what the current president, Ann Weaver Hart, has to say about this case. In her own words, “Academic freedom and Freedom of Speech in higher education” [are] a key “research interest.” Did you have an opportunity to talk to her?
April 21st, 2008 at 8:46 pm
The article neglects to mention that while Temple lacks even one single organization willing to publicly support its alleged right to arbitrarily suspend students’ First Amendment freedom of speech and expression, our case has garnered the support of a remarkable bipartisan coalition including the ACLU of Pennsylvania, Feminists for Freedom of Expression, the Christian Legal Society, Collegefreedom.org, the Individual Rights Foundation, Students for Academic Freedom, and the Student Press Law Center.
See “Fire Files Amicus Brief in DeJohn vs. Temple,”
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8355.html
April 21st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Dr. Gregory Urwin of Temple’s History Department has called me “mentally imbalanced from being trained to kill by the US Army,” accused me of “suffering from Alzheimers’ Disease,” compared me to the Virginia Tech mass murderer, and referred to my MA thesis as “a monotonous agony (using) juvenile argumentation…a comic book for five-year olds.” For good measure, he has admitted under oath to contacting “about a dozen” Temple alumni, potential employers, etc. to blackball me and sabotage my job search.
See ‘Temple’s Civil Rights Violations are a Disgrace,” at:
http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19475653&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8
Dr. Richard Immerman, former Chair of Temple’s History department, wrote to fellow Temple History Department professor Urwi- in language he admitted he has never used towards any other student in 30 years of teaching- “Christian is a gnat whom I hope will self-destruct.” Another Temple witness, Jeffrey LaMonica, wrote to Urwin that DeJohn “should be dealt with in the Sicilian way,” i.e., murdered, for bringing a civil rights suit.
Here’s a senior magazine editor’s view of Immerman’s behavior:
“In the course of discovery proceedings, e-mail correspondence among Temple University History Department faculty members came to light in which Sgt. DeJohn was accused of suffering from “paranoid delusions,” being “mentally imbalanced,” “trained to kill by the U.S. Army,” and being “literally obsessed with the idea of liberal bias.”
Among the emails was one from (former Temple History Department Chair) Richard Immerman, in which he stated that “Christian is a gnat whom I hope will self-destruct without any help from us.”
This is interesting language for a professor to use about one of his students, especially a student who voluntarily chose to put himself in harm’s way to defend Richard Immerman’s right to spout nonsense.
If dissenting students were treated in this way at Temple University, how are dissenting analysts within the intelligence community treated now that Immerman is responsible for investigating their complaints of left-wing and/or any other form of bias?
I would welcome receiving reports from any “gnats” who have had experience dealing with the good professor.”
See “If Michael Moore Had A Security Clearance,” at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/793cusff.asp
and, “The Richard Immerman Watch,” at:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/category/connecting-the-dots
April 21st, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Federal Judge Strikes Down Speech
Code at Temple University
by Luke Sheahan, March 23, 2007
Yesterday, in a case near to FIRE’s headquarters in Philadelphia, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against Temple University’s former speech code. Christian DeJohn, a Temple graduate student and sergeant in the Pennsylvania National Guard, was allegedly denied his masters degree for expressing his viewpoints on the war. Represented by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), DeJohn filed suit against the university in February 2006. The court refused to dismiss the case on the grounds that there is significant evidence of ideological discrimination. The trial date is set for April 25, 2007.
Just prior to the summary judgment deadline, Temple University changed its speech code, but continued to insist that the old policy was constitutional. Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel and Director of ADF’s Center for Academic Freedom David French notes on Phi Beta Cons the arguments the university used to justify the code.
Temple University has:
-equated their (adult) students with (minor) high school students and argued the same free speech standards should apply in high school and college;
-denied any knowledge of how certain policy documents even made it to the college’s website;
-compared college students to public employees and argued they had free speech rights only when speaking on a matter of “public concern” outside the classroom;
-argued that prior allegations of sexual harassment justified extreme and sweeping sexual harassment policies; and
-argued that broad sexual harassment policies were justified by a series of highly-ideological academic papers written in the early Nineties—papers that actually had nothing to do with sexual harassment at Temple.
David French summed up the ruling thusly:
The court has reminded Temple—and all public universities in Pennsylvania—that universities must protect free expression rather than merely protecting views that are ‘politically correct.’
April 21st, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Victory at Temple University!
Federal judge permanently bars former speech code policy
ADF attorneys filed suit in 2006 on behalf of student
denied degree because of military status, political views
Thursday, March 22, 2007, 1:26 PM (MST) |
PHILADELPHIA — In a victory for free speech on campus, a federal judge on Thursday issued a permanent injunction against Temple University’s former speech code policy and also rejected Temple’s attempts to dismiss plaintiff Christian DeJohn’s claims that Temple has withheld his master’s degree because of his political and ideological viewpoint.
“This is an important victory for free speech on campus,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French, director of the Center for Academic Freedom. “Temple has argued throughout this case that student free speech rights exist essentially at the whim of administrators and professors. With this ruling, the court has reminded Temple–and all public universities in Pennsylvania–that universities must protect free expression rather than merely protecting views that are ‘politically correct.’”
In its order, the court rejected Temple’s argument that its old speech code, which was changed just before the summary judgment deadline in the case, was constitutionally justified. The court also rejected the university’s attempt to dismiss DeJohn’s claim that school officials retaliated against him for expressing displeasure at anti-war messages sent to him by professors while he served overseas in the military. The court set April 25 as the trial date for DeJohn’s retaliation claim but dismissed his equal protection claim.
A copy of the order issued Thursday by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in DeJohn v. Temple University is available at:
http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/DeJohnvTempleOrder.pdf.
In September, a federal judge denied Temple University’s motion to dismiss the case (www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3853).
“Administrators cannot use a political litmus test as a way of determining whether or not a student will earn a degree,” French said. “We are pleased that Temple is now permanently barred from imposing an unconstitutional policy, and we are pleased that Christian DeJohn will have his day in court. ADF will continue moving forward in its efforts to ensure that Christian will be allowed to earn his degree and finish his college education without suffering further discrimination on the part of Temple officials.”
April 21st, 2008 at 9:19 pm
What’s at Stake in DeJohn v. Temple:
The Distinction between High School and College
by William Creeley, September 7, 2007
As announced on Tuesday, FIRE filed an amicus brief this week in the case of DeJohn v. Temple, to be heard this fall by the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
While you can read the brief in full here, we thought it would be useful to highlight one of our motivating concerns about Temple’s argument—specifically, their attempts to blur the distinction between the First Amendment rights enjoyed by college students and those enjoyed by high school students.
We’ve talked about the dangers of such an argument on The Torch before—especially in our discussions of Morse v. Frederick and Hosty v. Carter—but our brief this week put some of the practical and legal problems with this argument in sharp relief. As we wrote in the brief:
“Temple is asking this court to place the rights of university students—the vast majority of whom are old enough to vote, run for elected office, and serve in the military—on par with the rights of schoolchildren. In arguing for the constitutionality of its policy, Temple exclusively cites cases relating to children in high school or younger, conveniently ignoring the string of cases in which similar policies have been struck down at colleges and universities for violating students’ First Amendment rights.”
So what’s wrong with conflating the rights of high school students with those of college students, as Temple seeks to do here?
Well, for starters, to do so would go directly against time-honored Supreme Court precedent, a point we make in our brief:
Courts have long emphasized and understood the importance of free and open expression on campus. As the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957):
“The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation… Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die. Sweezy, 354 U.S. at 250.”
By contrast, the Supreme Court has described the mission of public secondary schools in strikingly different terms, stating:
“The role and purpose of the American public school system were well described by two historians, who stated: “[Public] education must prepare pupils for citizenship in the Republic. It must inculcate the habits and manners of civility as values in themselves conducive to happiness and as indispensable to the practice of self-government in the community and the nation.” Bethel Sch. Dist. v. Fraser, 487 U.S. 675, 681 (1986) (citations omitted).
The Court’s substantively different conceptions of the essentiality of free speech for students at the high school and college levels is highly significant, and reflects the marked contrast in both the educational mission of each level of schooling and the maturity and ability of students at each respective stage. High school students must learn “the habits and manners of civility” to prepare for citizenship. Id.
In contrast, college students enjoy at least as much freedom of expression as their fellow adult citizens enjoy so that they may fully participate as the “intellectual leaders” the Court describes in Sweezy. 354 U.S. at 250.
It’s worth noting that this well-established jurisprudence reflects plain common sense: unlike the vast majority of college students, high school students have not yet attained their legal majority. Research included in our brief bears out this intuitive sense of difference:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 1.2 percent of undergraduate students are below the age of 18. See 2002 U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey Report, Table A-6, “Age Distribution of College Students 14 years Old and Over, by Sex: October 1947 to 2002.”
The 98.8% of college students who are legal adults should not have their rights diminished because a tiny minority of their classmates are below 18. Furthermore, attendance at college is a strong indication that the 1.2% of students who are not yet legal adults nonetheless possess the maturity to be treated as such.
Lastly, it is crucial to remember that an increasingly significant number of university students are substantially older than the traditional 18-22 undergraduate range, and include parents, war veterans, well-established professionals, retirees, and senior citizens.
We conclude by surveying the damage to be caused by granting Temple University’s assertions:
Thus far, the law has served to protect the collegiate marketplace of ideas from overreaching administrations, requiring policies and practices that affirm rather than compromise the First Amendment and underlying principles of academic freedom. Appellants are asking this court to take a disastrous step in the opposite direction by rendering the free speech rights of students at a public college equivalent to those of schoolchildren and giving appellants unfettered discretion to restrict any “student’s speech that is inconsistent with its ‘basic educational mission.’” (Appellants’ Br. at 36). Leaving aside the question of whether such a standard is even appropriate for high school students, it is most certainly not appropriate in the university context.
We’re hopeful that the Third Circuit will agree with FIRE and our fellow coalition members and issue an opinion upholding the critical legal distinction between the rights enjoyed by high school students and college students. Of course, we’ll keep you posted.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Temple Denies Degree to Decorated Vet
by Jenny DeHuff
The Philadelphia Bulletin, April 10, 2008
Sgt. Christian DeJohn and his attorneys squared off against Temple University before the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday morning in Center City.
Christian DeJohn v. Temple University questions free speech rights and whether a student’s political opinions are a legitimate basis for denying him a degree from a state university.
Before a three-judge panel, Sgt. DeJohn’s attorney, Nathan Kellum, tried to convince the judges (to uphold the initial decision) that Temple’s “speech codes” were unconstitutional.
Sgt. DeJohn, a graduate student at Temple and a sergeant in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, was repeatedly denied by school officials in his pursuit of a master’s degree in military and American history after he was called to active duty to serve in Bosnia after 9/11.
While active in Bosnia, Sgt. DeJohn objected to invitations to weekly anti-war lectures by Temple professors as part of a series on “Dissent in America.”
Although Sgt. DeJohn had applied for military leave from Temple, he returned to discover that he was no longer enrolled in the university, had not graduated, and his thesis was not on record.
In March 2007, Sgt. DeJohn filed a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging the university’s speech codes.
A federal judge issued a permanent injunction against Temple’s speech code, while also rejecting Temple’s efforts to dismiss Sgt. DeJohn’s claims that the school has withheld his degree because of his political and ideological perspective.
Sgt. DeJohn is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. He has garnered support of organizations including the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Individual Rights Foundation, Feminists for Free Expression, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Update on DeJohn vs. Temple University
by Emily Guidry, April 11, 2008
After attending yesterday’s oral arguments in DeJohn v. Temple University, I came to the conclusion that one thing was clear: Temple University is not interested in arguing this case on the merits.
Joe H. Tucker, Jr., counsel for Temple, focused a large part of the school’s case on whether or not Christian DeJohn was a Temple student and had standing to sue in the first place. He even began his time before the three-Federal-judge panel by saying that Temple University was resting on the issue of mootness- and that there was “no need to consider the constitutionality” of the policy.
Tucker also maintained that Temple’s sexual harassment policy was not a speech code, and that Temple has a long history of allowing free speech- even while keeping its former sexual harassment policy on the books.
Universities seem to think this line never gets old. Temple is a public university and is required to uphold the First Amendment. As such, any unconstitutional policy on its books is just that— unconstitutional!
Yet this “the policy isn’t unconstitutional if it’s never used” argument is a classic one that university administrators pull out of their bag of tricks from time to time to escape criticism for speech codes. “Oh, we would never punish someone under that policy!” and “Don’t worry- we never enforce that particular rule!” are comebacks FIRE has heard before as universities try to avoid public scrutiny and liability in speech codes cases.
But public universities need to understand one crucial point— maintaining the policy in and of itself, whether it is actually enforced or not, is a violation of the rights of its students and faculty. Keeping these policies opens schools up to facial challenges like the one Christian DeJohn brought against Temple.
For more information on FIRE’s involvement in this case, read our amicus curiae brief that we filed in conjunction with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Christian Legal Society, Collegefreedom.org, Feminists for Free Expression, the Individual Rights Foundation, Students for Academic Freedom, and the Student Press Law Center.
Check back on The Torch for more updates on this case as we report on developments.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:30 pm
ian Says:
Reading the decision, the most important point is that the Court, even though it found that veterans are not within a traditional protected class, found triable issues that the plaintiff was treated differently than other similarly situated individuals without any rational basis and refused to dismiss the 1983 equal protection claim, which is the heart of the issue. The other claims, conspiracy to violate civil rights, promissory estoppel, tortious interference with contractual relations, violation of the state’s Educational Leave Act, are peripheral or are in areas with very heightened pleading standards, and their dismissal says nothing at all regarding the merits of the plaintiff’s contentions as to whether he was the victim of discrimination. One thing that troubles me is just how limited a student’s legal options are in the event of the type of discrimination that plaintiff is alleging. Where racial or sexual harrassment cases are afforded protection based on the classification of these categories in a traditional protected class, the options that the victim of anti-military or ideological bias has at a university is comparatively narrow. Finally, the undisputed facts, such as evidence of retribution for disagreeing with a professor’s political views, is well established in the decision. Whatever the legal outcome, the professors and administrators at the school should be deeply embarassed. Specifically regarding Immerman, the arrogance and intolerance by which he has performed his current job in the IC is entirely consistent with the arrogance and intolerance that he previously demonstrated in dealing with others, especially those so-called “little people” that he evidently feels are of no account.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Christian,
Great to find you here telling your side of this sickening saga. I just got back from the movies, having taken my family to see “Expelled”, the new Ben Stein documentary on the failure of the academic world to maintain objectivity in light of fierce leftist views, and it seems your story is more of the same. I am both appalled to see this state of affairs laid open and visible like cockroaches under the kitchen light, and pleased to see that ground can be regained and common sense still has appeal in some circles.
Thanks for standing tall. Keep up the good work.
Dave in Texas
April 21st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
SGT DeJohn - I hope you at least have a workable resolution on your student loan(s) and credit rating. It appalls me that university professors can, in this arbitrary and unaccountable fashion, have an impact on someone that is as profound and pervasive as the one you have had to deal with. Thanks for your service and your determination, shipmate, and my best to you in this time of trial.
J.E Dyer
CDR, USN (Ret.)
April 21st, 2008 at 9:34 pm
WilliamInWien Says:
I find the major problem to be the granting of “tenure”.
As a Viet Nam Vet (Navy), I found my viewpoints not welcomed at the university after my service.
Much later, I found it necessary to speak to a faculty member of a school in Vienna, Austria who constantly placed my teenage daughter in the position of justifying the US invasion of Iraq.
Ward Churchill, the arrogance of many of the Duke faculty, etc. all have their roots in “tenure” and the abuse of the professorial interpretation of freedom of speech and academic freedom.
Teaching capability cannot be discerned from the number of degrees one may have acquired; I have found teachers at many levels but only “professors” at the university level.
Gnats are persistent and not easily squashed!
April 21st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
As to my academic situation at Temple right now…though I have completed all the required credits (26) towards a masters’ degree in military and American history at Temple University grad school, registered and paid for “MA Thesis Guidance” from the Temple History Department for four semesters, and turned the latest draft of my MA thesis to Dr. Andrew Isenberg (Richard Immerman’s successor as Chair of the Temple History department) over two years ago, in February 2006, Temple is refusing to even evaluate my work so I can complete my degree.
As of today, I remain in total academic limbo. At one point, Temple’s defense attorney in the case, Joe Tucker, Jr. stooped so low as to threaten- in front of a judge, no less- to expel me for bringing a First Amendment, civil rights lawsuit.
What has been the response of Temple’s President Ann Weaver Hart to Professors Richard Immerman and Gregory Urwin’s words and actions, and to this case?
Long before she even arrived at Temple, when she was inaugurated as President of the University of New Hampshire, Ann Weaver Hart gave a speech called “Future Gifts” (which, oddly enough, appears to have disappeared from the Web, though I accessed it on 15 April).
In her speech, President Hart mouthed wonderful platitudes about her alleged commitment to academic freedom:
“The University must be an open community free of prejudice. The fundamental principles of academic freedom, and the inquiry and scholarship they were meant to preserve, also protect people whose person and ideas differ substantially from either the mainstream or the fashionable.
We must recognize and uphold in our own time and circumstances a university that celebrates the right to inquire, to speak, and to be within very broad parameters….we must avoid the temptation to suppress the expression of controversial ideas, …(be) dedicated to the open discussion of differing views, and at the same time… nurture the ethic of civility and non-intimidation…(and) play out our commitment to civility alongside our commitment to the free expression of difficult ideas…
In ringing tones, Hart proclaimed,
“We resolve to maintain the Unviersity’s highest value- academic freedom.”
Wonderful sentiments, aren’t they? But judging by the words and actions of Temple professors like Gregory Urwin and Richard Immerman, and by Temple President Hart’s thunderous silence on the judge’s initial decision against Temple, since veterans are not a “protected class,” it seems like “Veterans need not apply.” You gotta love the delicious irony of that argument- which Temple has actually argued in court, in their initial motion to dismiss the case.
The program for President Hart’s inaugural ceremony at Temple,
http://www.temple.edu/president/documents/investiture_f.pdf
includes similar platitudes about “Academic freedom and freedom of speech in higher education” being a key “research interest of hers.” President Hart has even mentioned her alleged commitment to them on her personal University web pages.
In fact, Temple’s President Ann Weaver Hart has proclaimed, “We must have the courage to face the inevitable tests of our commitment to academic freedom.”
So, what has been her response to this case, and to the initial decision (and permanent injunction aganst Temple University) that Temple- a taxpayer-funded school- is violating students’ fundamental First Amendment rights through an unconstitutional speech code?
Accountability and taxpayers be damned; for all her hot air on freedom of speech and intellectual diversity, President Hart refuses to comment on the judge’s ruling that her school, Temple, is making a joke of academic freedom- one of her favorite “research interests,” mind you- through an unconstitutional, illegal speech code.
As to addressing the abhorrent behavior of professors like Richard Immerman and Gregory Urwin (and the novel idea of actually holding them accountable to the state and federal taxpayers that pay their salaries), again, President Hart refuses to comment, or to provide any explanation to the taxpayers footing her generous salary, along with Temple’s massive budget.
Two years into the case, while I remain in total academic limbo, President Hart refuses to hold Temple professors Richard Immerman and Gregory Urwin publicly accountable for their actions. As recently as mid-April, in a meeting with student reporters from Temple’s student newspaper, when asked specifically about this case, you guessed it: again, Temple President Ann Weaver Hart refused to comment on the record.
What happened to her passionately proclaimed “commitment to the free exploration of difficult ideas,” and to her self-professed obligation, as a university president, to “protect people whose person and ideas differ substantially from either the mainstream or the fashionable (which, in Richard Immerman’s case, would be the radical Left)?”
The program to Hart’s inauguration as Temple’s President gushes about the flashy, expensive, sterling silver medallion she wore at the ceremony, and about the elaborate chain and mace she was handed.
Ahh, the mace: a traditional symbol of power and authority, designed to intimidate and crush the opposition.
Presumably, Temple University President Ann Weaver Hart’s chain and mace are for her to wield against students who dare to actually put into practice her wonderful words about academic freedom and intellectual diversity?
President Hart’s pretty speeches and lofty platitudes about freedom of speech and expression are one thing, but God forbid a student should have the effrontery and cheek to actually exercise (while serving overseas with the Army in a hostile fire zone, no less!) his First Amendment rights to dissent with professors like Gregory Urwin and Richard Immerman.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Ian Says:
If the recent incoherent intelligence productions are an indication,
then Richard Immerman is just not very bright. An ineffectual moron using a position of authority to disparage a student who has the temerity to disagree with him deserves all the scorn he gets.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 am
Regarding the comments in this story of Dr. Gregory Urwin, who has compared me to the VA Tech mass murderer, and says veterans are “Mentally imbalanced…(from) trained to kill:”
Professor Gregory Urwin has caught himself in a priceless lie in this story, as corraborated by his own internal History Department e-mails that were subpoenaed for this case.
The good doctor says in this story, “One of the wildest charges DeJohn has circulated since the trial is that I have had him blackballed by various potential employers. How in the world would I know where he was applying for work?”
How? Because- as corroborated by Urwin’s own admission under oath when confronted with the evidence, and by his own Temple e-mails- Michael Lynch, a new Temple grad student of Urwin’s, was working at the Army War College with me, and knew I was applying for fulltime jobs there.
In an e-mail to Urwin, Lynch agreed to badmouth me with my potential employers, and to sabotage my historian job search at Carlisle- after Gregory Urwin first contacted Lynch and asked him to do so. It’s all in Urwin’s own e-mails that were subpoenaned for the trial.
As to how Professor Urwin blackballed me: when confronted with the evidence, Gregory Urwin has admitted under oath to contacting “about a dozen” Temple alumni, supporters,and possible employers to badmouth me.
The impact of Urwin’s actions? At Carlisle Barracks, I applied for many historian jobs, at the very same place where Urwin’s eager new grad student Michael Lynch, who worked there, enthusiasticly agreed to help Urwin sabotage my job search.
Though I applied for dozens of jobs- perhaps, 45- curiously, I heard almost nothing about my applications, as they’d dropped down a black hole.
Why? Was it Fate? Chance? Coincidence? As Mark Twain wrote, “facts are funny things-” even if floating ina pond of scum, they have a curious way of rising to the surface, and the truth will out:
Later, using the Freedom of Information Act, I uncovered secret, internal candidate job rating lists from Carlisle Barracks. The internal records show that, for example, for one military historian job, 62 people applied, including myself.
I was rated and scored number one out of all 62 applicants for that historian job, with the highest score and rating of any of the 62 applicants- 103 out of 100 points. Yet…the number-one-rated candidate for the job…was never even contacted or interviewed for it.
Lo and behold, the military historian job for which I was rated #1 out of all 62 applicants… was in the very same office where Urwin’s new student Michael Lynch (he so eager to curry favor with his new professor) was working.
This is the same Michael Lynch who agreed- in response to an e-mail request from Temple’s Dr. Gregory Urwin- to help Urwin blackball my job search.
We have Gregory Urwin’s sworn testimony from his deposition, his internal Temple e-mails, and all the job rating documents (some obtained through the Freedom of Information Act) that bear this out.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 am
If Christian DeJohn actually possesses any evidence that I conspired with Major Michael Lynch, U.S. Army (retired), or anyone else to deny him employment, he should produce it. Post pdf. files on the Internet showing the documents in full without creative editing, distortion, or falsification.
DeJohn has neglected to mention that he held an internship at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, which gave the good folks who run that Army agency (most of whom are veterans) ample opportunity to assess his suitability for full-time employment there. It is not my fault that they have repeatedly declined to hire him. I was never consulted on these matters — by Michael Lynch or anybody else.
All I ask of anyone interested in DeJohn’s case against me (which was decided a year ago) is that they actually review the court transcript and the evidentiary exhibits. The full official record will easily explain why the case was thrown out by a federal judge appointed by President H. W. Bush — a jurist who did not evince much sympathy for the defense at the start of the proceedings. I am pleased that there are such conservatives — men who prize integrity over partisanship — in positions of trust in this great country of ours.
The case DeJohn and his lawyers presented against me rested on nothing more than an overheated imagination. I’ve taught military history for nearly twenty-five years, and my classes have always contained a considerable number of conservatives and veterans. If I pursued a vendetta against such people — or exhibited an unwarranted bias against
their values — don’t you think other injured parties would have stepped forward to testify on DeJohn’s behalf? The only Temple students and alumni who volunteered to testify in the case were those who refuted DeJohn’s charges — including Joseph Seymour, his former squad leader in Bosnia who earned an M.A. under my tutelage, and Frank McCloskey, a
Marine veteran of the Vietnam War who retired as a lieutenant in the Philadelphia Police Department (and Frank is no liberal). Michael Lynch also volunteered to testify that I am not biased against veterans and conservatives, and I suspect that is what inspired the slanders that DeJohn is spouting against him here.
For the record, since my arrival at Temple I have guided two Army colonels and one Air Force major through their Ph.D. work. I have guided one Marine major and Joe Seymour of the PA National Guard to their M.A.s. I currently have a U.S. Army colonel, a retired Army major, a retired Navy
commander, and a former Marine sergeant studying under me for either Ph.D.s or master’s degrees. I also work closely with the Army and Marine Corps history programs, and have lectured at several of the military’s schools and bases. This is not the profile of someone who hates the military and persecutes veterans.
You should also ask yourself why none of the conservative organizations on campus allied themselves with DeJohn’s suit. The Temple chapter of David Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom refused to do so because its president at the time had taken my British Army course and we became
friends. She knew I do not attempt to impose my political views on students or punish them for theirs. (In fact, I wrote a letter of recommendation on her behalf to the Heritage Foundation when she applied for a summer internship. I’ve performed the same favor a couple of times
for a recent vice president of Temple’s College Republicans and also for a recent graduate who became an intern in the current George Bush’s White House.)
May 14th, 2008 at 3:29 am
The Richard Immerman Watch
By Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary magazine
We have already noted here and in the Weekly Standard that a fox is guarding the hen house. Richard Immerman, a far-Left professor of history on leave from Temple University who participated there in “teach-ins” against the Iraq war, is working in the heart of U.S. intelligence, serving as the ombudsman for “analytic integrity” in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
How he is able to perform this job while himself being a partisan in the intelligence wars is a mystery. As recently as this past January, Immerman published an essay lambasting the “Bushites” for manipulating intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. They made “every effort to ‘cook the books,’” Immerman wrote, ” they ‘hyped’ the need to go to war, and they lied too often to count.”
Matters are complicated by an additional wrinkle. While at Temple, Immerman became the target of a lawsuit. The student who filed it, Christian M. DeJohn, was a master’s candidate in history, He also happened to be a decorated tank commander in the Pennsylvania National Guard, who days after September 11, 2001 was called up to serve on a counterterrorism mission in Bosnia.
While at Temple, Sgt. DeJohn clashed with Immerman about some of the professor’s left-wing views. Then, while he was stationed in Bosnia, the Temple history department began sending him anti-war fliers, inviting him to take part in its teach-ins against Bush’s “imperialist” foreign policy. Sgt. DeJohn objected and asked to be taken off the list.
When Sgt DeJohn returned to the States in April 2003 and attempted to resume his education at Temple, it seems, according to the complaint, that a campaign of retribution ensued, carried out by Immerman and some of his history department colleagues. Matters became so serious that Sgt. DeJohn filed a lawsuit alleging that his First Amendment right of free speech was being infringed.
In the course of discovery proceedings, email correspondence among history department faculty members Gregory Urwin and Richard Immerman came to light in which Sgt. DeJohn was accused of suffering from “paranoid delusions,” being “mentally imbalanced,” “trained to kill by the U.S. Army,” and being “literally obsessed with the idea of liberal bias.”
Among the emails was one from Dr. Richard Immerman in which he stated that “Christian is a gnat whom I hope will self-destruct without any help from us.”
This is interesting language for a professor to use about one of his students, especially a student who voluntarily chose to put himself in harm’s way to defend Immerman’s right to spout nonsense.
If dissenting students were treated in this way at Temple, how are dissenting analysts within the intelligence community treated now that Immerman is responsible for investigating their complaints of left-wing and/or any other form of bias?
I would welcome receiving reports from any ”gnats” who have had experience dealing with the good professor.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:34 am
If Michael Moore Had a Security Clearance
How did the rabid ideologue Richard Immerman get put in charge of the ’standards and integrity’ of the intelligence community?
by Gabriel Schoenfeld, The Weekly Standard
How do we explain the bizarre recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which stated in its opening sentence that the ayatollahs had halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003, even as, tucked away in a footnote, the same document noted that the most critical component of such a weapons program–uranium enrichment–was proceeding at full tilt?
Even Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, the man who presides over the 16 agencies that comprise the U.S. “intelligence community,” was compelled to back away from the assessment issued by his own subordinates. In retrospect, he said in testimony before Congress on February 5, “I probably would have changed a thing or two” in the way the intelligence was presented to the public. The “halt” referred to in the NIE, he conceded, involved the “least significant part” of the program, which was “the only thing” in the Iranian nuclear effort that actually may have stopped.
McConnell’s repudiation of the work of his own staff raises some obvious questions about the organization of his office. One such question: Is anyone in charge of quality control in the cockpit of the most pivotal intelligence position in the United States?
There is in fact a bureaucratic unit designed for such a task. Back in September, McConnell appointed an “assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic integrity and standards.” The occupant of this position is to ensure that intelligence products–reports like the NIE–are created according to accepted norms and are vetted properly for accuracy and lack of bias. The same official also serves as the “analytic ombudsman” of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In other words, he is the individual who investigates complaints by others of shortcomings in the production of intelligence analyses.
Who holds this critical job? The present incumbent is one Richard Immerman, who up until his appointment was a professor at Temple University and the author of a number of books, including one about CIA depredations in Guatemala. Immerman has an essay in the current issue of Diplomatic History, the scholarly journal of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and it makes for interesting reading.
Titled “Intelligence and Strategy,” Immerman’s article is a survey of the various ways that intelligence has been distorted for political purposes across the history of the CIA. It ranges over a great many issues of historical importance, including Vietnam and the Soviet-American arms race, and also more recent controversies, like the Bush administration’s decision to depose Saddam Hussein.
Immerman, it emerges quite rapidly in the article, is not a dispassionate student of these matters, but a combatant in the political intelligence wars himself. He traces a fair amount of the CIA’s present troubles back to George H.W. Bush, who served as agency director under Gerald Ford. Once ensconced at Langley, writes Immerman, the future president “kowtowed to apoplectic conservatives,” who were accusing the CIA of minimizing the pace and scale of the Soviet nuclear arms build-up. This led him to establish a group of outside analysts–dubbed Team B and headed by the “rabid anti-Soviet ideologue Richard Pipes”–to examine critically CIA findings. Team B “predictably ravaged” the existing CIA estimates and “undermined the agency’s credibility” even though all of its findings, according to Immerman, were themselves just plain “wrong.”
When George W. Bush became president in 2000, he brought with him a coterie of advisers from the same pernicious school of thinkers responsible for Team B. Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and the “ersatz Straussian” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz–”abetted” by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice–were convinced that, just as in the 1970s, the United States faced grave threats that the CIA entirely failed to appreciate. The “near-theological conviction” of these high-ranking administration officials, writes Immerman, quoting James Risen of the New York Times and David Corn of the Nation, was that the CIA was in thrall to a conventional wisdom that “obscured the sinister plottings of America’s enemies.”
With “insidious” intent, these morbidly suspicious “Bushites” leaned on the CIA to find a nuclear program in Iraq when there was none. Indeed, Cheney, Immerman writes, “went so far as to camp out at Langley to watch over analysts’ shoulders” as they performed their work. Though the CIA had biases of its own that led to its erroneous prewar assessment that Iraq was acquiring WMDs, Bush and his subordinates ultimately caused the larger scandal. Indeed, they made “every effort to ‘cook the books,’ they ‘hyped’ the need to go to war, and they lied too often to count.” What drove the policies of these government officials was not intelligence but sheer “dogma.”
One especially dangerous consequence of an administration in the grip of ideological delusions, writes Immerman, is that it has rendered the benefits of intelligence reform almost completely nugatory. While the radical reorganization undertaken since September 11 might have been expected to produce “dramatic and positive” results, the fact is that “the effect on policy is likely to be slight so long as the makers of that policy remain cognitively impaired and politically possessed.”
This is but a sampling of the scholarship of Temple’s Professor Immerman. What are we to make of such Michael Moore-like thinking coming from the lips of a ranking U.S. intelligence official, the very official in charge of maintaining the “integrity and standards” of our intelligence community? And, more important, what does Mike McConnell make of it?
The problem is not merely that someone who is himself so clearly a “rabid ideologue” might have been responsible for vetting the Iran NIE and then letting a skewed declassified summary of it out the door. Given how recently Immerman took his job, his precise role in the fiasco is unclear, although it is suggestive that his direct supervisor is Thomas Fingar, one of the authors of the controversial document. The real problem is that someone like Immerman, nakedly contemptuous of the administration in which he nonetheless sought a job, was appointed to a position of such high responsibility–or any responsibility–in the first place. Who made that decision and why?
The Bush administration has been repeatedly condemned for politicizing intelligence. But the shoe is being tied on the wrong foot. The politicization of the intelligence community comes from within. Indeed, those responsible for maintaining analytic integrity are themselves generally lacking in the very quality. We can reform and reshuffle the intelligence community from now until kingdom come, but, as long as such types remain fixed in place, the politicization of intelligence will persist.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Federal judge tosses former student’s political-bias suit
By The Associated Press
04.30.07
PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge last week sided with Temple University and dismissed a former student’s lawsuit alleging that he was denied a master’s degree because of his political views.
Former graduate student Christian DeJohn, 37, of Wyncote, sued the university and two of its professors, saying he was denied his degree because of his views on the Iraq war. Attorneys for the university said DeJohn was a marginal learner who turned in an awful thesis.
Before a jury could take up the case, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell ruled April 26 in favor of the university on DeJohn’s allegations that his constitutional free-speech and equal-protection rights had been violated. The court earlier dismissed counts alleging violation of civil rights and other protections.
“In short, his academic performance just wasn’t good enough,” Temple attorney Joe H. Tucker Jr. said. “It had nothing to do with his First Amendment rights and had everything to do with Temple professors’ academic freedom to grade a student’s poorly written, poorly constructed … thesis.”
The judge earlier upheld DeJohn’s objections to former provisions of the university’s sexual harassment policy. On April 26, he barred Temple from re-implementing the policy but awarded DeJohn only one dollar in damages. University attorneys have appealed but said the policy had already been changed.
DeJohn entered the master’s program in January 2002 but took a leave of absence after the first semester to serve in Bosnia with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.
While away, he said he received anti-war e-mail from a mass list-serve at Temple that included professors. DeJohn asked to stop receiving the e-mail, but upon his return said he lost the support of the history department faculty and subjected to personal attacks, his attorney said.
Attorney David A. French of the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group based in Scottsdale, Ariz., said his client was disappointed with the April 26 decision.
“The jury had heard a lot of evidence and Christian was eager to see what the jury thought,” he said.
French said, however, that the ruling on the harassment code guaranteed greater academic freedom for all Temple students. DeJohn’s suit, citing provisions barring “generalized sexist remarks” or conduct that “implies a discriminatory hostility,” said the code was vague and overly broad.
“Harassment is not something that hurts your feelings,” French said. “What is unlawful is conduct that is so severe and pervasive that it disrupts my ability to get an education.”
DeJohn previously testified before a state legislative panel investigating whether Pennsylvania’s public colleges and universities are hospitable to divergent intellectual and political views. The panel concluded that political bias was rare at state universities, but recommended that schools review academic-freedom policies.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:43 am
CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
30 April 2007
Judge Dismisses Former Temple U. Student’s Lawsuit Alleging Bias Against Conservative Views
By JOHN GRAVOIS
After hearing a day and a half of testimony, a federal judge on Thursday abruptly dismissed a lawsuit brought against Temple University by a former student who alleged that his professors retaliated against him for his political views.
The student, Christian M. DeJohn, sued the university and two of his professors in February 2006, contending that the professors had thwarted his efforts to finish a master’s degree in history after he complained about receiving “antiwar” e-mail messages that were circulating in the history department.
The professors were Richard H. Immerman, director of the university’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, and Gregory J.W. Urwin, a professor at the military-history center and Mr. DeJohn’s former academic adviser. The professors argued in court that Mr. DeJohn’s difficulties in finishing his degree were entirely his own. In an interview, their lawyer, Joe H. Tucker Jr., described Mr. DeJohn as a “marginal learner, barely passing” his courses, who had turned in a master’s thesis that had “flabbergasted” the professors.
The judge, Stewart Dalzell of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, said that Mr. DeJohn’s lawyers had presented no evidence that Mr. Immerman retaliated against the student. And the judge said that, while the jury may have discerned some evidence that Mr. Urwin had retaliated against Mr. DeJohn, the professor deserved “qualified immunity,” which means that he behaved toward Mr. DeJohn in a way that could reasonably be seen as within his rights.
The case has sparked the interest of some of the biggest national players in the debate over allegations of liberal bias and academic freedom on American campuses. Mr. DeJohn was represented by David A. French, who is senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative, Christian legal-advocacy group based in Arizona, and is a former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. And in early 2006, Mr. DeJohn testified before Pennsylvania state legislators about his perception of bias at Temple as part of the legislature’s investigation of whether the state’s public colleges were indoctrinating students in left-wing ideology and discriminating against those with conservative points of view.
However, the halt on Mr. DeJohn’s case may not be permanent: Mr. French said on Friday that he was considering an appeal.
Shortly after beginning the master’s-degree program at Temple in 2002, Mr. DeJohn, a sergeant in the Pennsylvania National Guard, was deployed to Bosnia, along with some other Temple students in the same guard unit. At that point, lawyers from both sides agree, Mr. DeJohn had a good relationship with Mr. Urwin. While he was gone, Mr. Urwin printed a 600-word article about Mr. DeJohn’s deployment in the center’s newsletter, saying the student was making “military history” while serving overseas. (The center usually goes by the distinctly military-sounding acronym Cenfad, and many of its students and alumni are in the armed forces.)
It was while he was serving in Bosnia that Mr. DeJohn says he received the “antiwar” messages that were circulated on a history-department e-mail list. He wrote to his professors asking them to ensure that he did not receive such messages anymore.
The original legal complaint filed by Mr. DeJohn said that the e-mail messages had come from Mr. Immerman, the center’s chairman. However, lawyers from both sides in the case later agreed that the messages appeared to have come from the James A. Barnes Club, a graduate-student history association.
When Mr. DeJohn and other students in his guard unit returned to Temple, they received letters in stern, bureaucratic language telling them that they had been dropped from the student rolls. Mr. Tucker, the professors’ lawyer, said this was the result of a technical glitch. But Mr. DeJohn went to the president of the university, saying that the history department was treating veterans unfairly.
As Mr. DeJohn continued with his degree program, he began butting heads with Mr. Urwin, who had been angered by Mr. DeJohn’s message to the president, according to Mr. French. The adviser and student also disagreed over whether Mr. DeJohn should get academic credit for an internship, a conflict that was only exacerbated when Mr. DeJohn found a way to receive the credit without going through Mr. Urwin.
Hence, Mr. Urwin said in court, part of his frustration with Mr. DeJohn was that he did not feel the student took direction from him. However, Mr. Urwin also complained that Mr. DeJohn was, in class and in meetings, “obsessed” with the notion of liberal bias in academe. Mr. Urwin and other members of the center began to share their growing frustration with the student in e-mail messages to one another.
Mr. French, however, said in an interview with The Chronicle that he could get Mr. Urwin to recall only two specific instances when Mr. DeJohn had brought up his belief that academe was biased against conservatives.
Soon after their disagreement over the internship, Mr. Urwin told Mr. DeJohn that he would no longer serve as his academic adviser. That became one of the pivotal actions under scrutiny in the lawsuit. Mr. French argued that when Mr. Urwin dropped Mr. DeJohn as an advisee, that was a form of retaliation against the student for his protected political speech.
However, Judge Dalzell granted Mr. Urwin qualified immunity from the lawsuit regarding his decision to step down as Mr. DeJohn’s adviser. That means the judge decided that a reasonable person in Mr. Urwin’s situation could have believed he was within his rights in making such a decision, and that the law is not clearly established in this area.
“That’s something we disagree with,” said Mr. French, who called Thursday’s decision disappointing.
The question now is: Will the law become more clearly established in the future when it comes to professors and students like Mr. Urwin and Mr. DeJohn, and which side will it favor?
Mr. French did argue that the lawsuit generated a partial victory for him and Mr. DeJohn. Entirely separate from the claim that professors had retaliated against Mr. DeJohn, the suit also contended that the university’s sexual-harassment policy was unconstitutional because it was overly broad. (The suit did not claim that Mr. DeJohn had been uniquely affected by the policy, just that his constitutional rights had been violated for as long as the policy applied to him as a student.)
In late March, Judge Dalzell ruled that Temple could no longer enforce the sexual-harassment policy mentioned in Mr. DeJohn’s lawsuit, and he awarded Mr. DeJohn damages of one dollar.
“As a result of this case,” said Mr. French, “every student at Temple has greater free-speech rights.”
However, said Mr. Tucker, the university had already rewritten its sexual-harassment policy in January, two months before the judge’s decision. “We didn’t consult with him,” Mr. Tucker said of Mr. French. “We changed our policy on our own.”
May 15th, 2008 at 11:47 am
HISTORY NEWS NETWORK
Historians in the News
Richard H. Immerman and Gregory J.W. Urwin: Temple history profs cleared of bias claim by student who sued
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (4-30-07)
After hearing a day and a half of testimony, a federal judge on Thursday abruptly dismissed a lawsuit brought against Temple University by a former student who alleged that his professors retaliated against him for his political views.
The student, Christian M. DeJohn, sued the university and two of his professors in February 2006, contending that the professors had thwarted his efforts to finish a master’s degree in history after he complained about receiving “antiwar” e-mail messages that were circulating in the history department.
The professors were Richard H. Immerman, director of the university’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, and Gregory J.W. Urwin, a professor at the military-history center and Mr. DeJohn’s former academic adviser. The professors argued in court that Mr. DeJohn’s difficulties in finishing his degree were entirely his own. In an interview, their lawyer, Joe H. Tucker Jr., described Mr. DeJohn as a “marginal learner, barely passing” his courses, who had turned in a master’s thesis that had “flabbergasted” the professors.
The judge, Stewart Dalzell of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, said that Mr. DeJohn’s lawyers had presented no evidence that Mr. Immerman retaliated against the student. And the judge said that, while the jury may have discerned some evidence that Mr. Urwin had retaliated against Mr. DeJohn, the professor deserved “qualified immunity,” which means that he behaved toward Mr. DeJohn in a way that could reasonably be seen as within his rights….
Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 at 4:57 PM |
May 20th, 2008 at 2:40 am
April 19th, 2008 at 9:54 PM
Christian,
Great to find you here telling your side of this sickening saga. I just got back from the movies, having taken my family to see “Expelled”, the new Ben Stein documentary on the failure of the academic world to maintain objectivity in light of fierce leftist views, and it seems your story is more of the same.
I am both appalled to see this state of affairs laid open and visible like cockroaches under the kitchen light, and pleased to see that ground can be regained and common sense still has appeal in some circles.
Thanks for standing tall. Keep up the good work.
Dave in Texas
May 20th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Ian Says:
Reading the decision, the most important point is that the Court, even though it found that veterans are not within a traditional protected class, found triable issues that the plaintiff was treated differently than other similarly situated individuals without any rational basis and refused to dismiss the 1983 equal protection claim, which is the heart of the issue.
The other claims, conspiracy to violate civil rights, promissory estoppel, tortious interference with contractual relations, violation of the state’s Educational Leave Act, are peripheral or are in areas with very heightened pleading standards, and their dismissal says nothing at all regarding the merits of the plaintiff’s contentions as to whether he was the victim of discrimination.
One thing that troubles me is just how limited a student’s legal options are in the event of the type of discrimination that plaintiff is alleging. Where racial or sexual harrassment cases are afforded protection based on the classification of these categories in a traditional protected class, the options that the victim of anti-military or ideological bias has at a university is comparatively narrow.
Finally, the undisputed facts, such as evidence of retribution for disagreeing with a professor’s political views, are well established in the decision.
Whatever the legal outcome, the professors and administrators at the school should be deeply embarassed. Specifically regarding Immerman, the arrogance and intolerance by which he has performed his current job in the IC is entirely consistent with the arrogance and intolerance that he previously demonstrated in dealing with others, especially those so-called “little people” that he evidently feels are of no account.
May 20th, 2008 at 3:45 am
“If there is any fixed star in our Constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
United States Supreme Court,
West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943)
June 11th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Temple University Idealogue Bestrides Intelligence Community
[Candace de Russy]
It is scary to read here and in The Weekly Standard, that Dr. Richard Immerman, a Michael Moore-style professor of history on leave from Temple University who engaged in “teach-ins” against the Iraq War, is employed in the higher echelons of U.S. intelligence. He has been elevated as an “ombudsman” for “analytic integrity” in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Commentary Magazine senior editor Gabriel Schoenfeld correctly tags Immerman — “a partisan in the intelligence wars” — as a fox in charge of the hen house. Recently Immerman published an essay excoriating the “Bushites” for “lying,” i.e., doing all possible to “cook” the intelligence books before the invasion of Iraq.
While at Temple, writes Schoenfeld, Immerman was served with a lawsuit. The student who filed it, Christian M. DeJohn, was a master’s candidate in history. Also a decorated tank gunner who served on a counterterrorism mission in Bosnia, he clashed with Immerman about some of the professor’s left-wing opinions.
…this tangled tale, leads one to ask how Immerman received security clearance in the first place — and whether there’s any hope for even-handed political expression at Temple University.
05/19 09:46 AM