Monday, April 11, 2005

Post no bills 

Douglas Bass reports that a faculty member, who is on the steering committee of a "Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community," has been Belief removing flyers for a campus talk by a researcher for the Palestinian Media Watch, a group that reports on anti-Israeli articles in the Palestinian press. Douglas quotes another article thus:
They hung up posters and flyers on Monday night, March 7. By 10:00 AM on Tuesday, March 8, the posters had been removed or defaced - with Nazi swastikas and anti-Israel slogans.

A UCSC student who helped in organizing the Marcus event on campus saw a woman removing one of the flyers. The student told me that the woman was UCSC Professor Nancy Stoller, listed in the campus directory as a community studies professor and a steering committee member of the UCSC Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community. The student said Stoller admitted to that she removed at least two flyers (the student eyewitness also said she saw other flyers with torn edges in Stoller's hands). The student said Stoller told her she found the flyer offensive but that she had, "left enough around."
Douglas links to a history of censorship at UC Santa Cruz, and says this is one reason for an item in the Academic Bill of Rights which prohibits "obstruction of invited campus speakers, [and] destruction of campus literature." Indeed.

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