Wednesday, March 05, 2008
When is a state government allowed to order you not to read a book?
A state government is, apparently, allowed to order you not to read a book if the fact of you reading the book annoys one of your co-workers. Seriously*.
The problem began when our courts declared a subjective rather than an objective standard for determining "harassment" on the job. Once it became possible for any employee, no matter how ignorant or excessively sensitive, to complain that he or she has been offended by the actions or speech of others without any practical regard for whether it was reasonable to be offended, employers had no choice but to suppress anything akin to free speech in their offices. There are, quite simply, fewer and fewer subjects that are "safe" to discuss at work. Indeed, I hereby predict that if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee we will see employers ban even benign speech about this year's presidential campaign for fear that somebody will declare themselves unlawfully harassed on account of it.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
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*Indiana University Purdue University - Indianapolis is, presumably, a state agency.
10 Comments:
By 
Christopher Chambers, at
Wed Mar 05, 04:25:00 PM:
Instead of these bizarre suppositions, why don't ask Obama what he thinks? Or better yet, Michelle, at Reunions this summer?
By 
, at
Wed Mar 05, 04:31:00 PM:
Interesting intersection of the rights of the individual vs. the employer. On the one hand he *should* be allowed to read whatever he wants, on the other his employer *should* be able to tell him not to read whatever they want. The issue of being a state employee obviously clouds the issue, although it's possible they may sub-contract their janitorial work.
On a completely unrelated note, I looked through your blog and noticed you haven't picked up the Harvard gym story yet. Call me crazy, but it seems like the most brazen, offensive example of P.C. Police-enforced Islamofascism I've seen in this country in quite some time.
By , at
Wed Mar 05, 06:04:00 PM:
Because the server for the article is VERY slow, I am copying/pasting it:
Keith John Sampson never thought he could get in trouble for reading a book, especially not on a college campus. But that’s what happened. Sampson is a man in his early 50s. He does janitorial work for the campus facility services at IUPUI, where he’s been gradually accumulating credits for a degree in communications studies. He has 10 credit hours to go.
“Being on that campus has really been an experience for me,” Sampson told me not long ago. It’s an experience that got a lot more complicated last year.
Sampson is an avid reader. It’s been his habit to bring books to work with him, so that he can read in the break room when he’s not on the clock. Last year, Sampson was working in IUPUI’s Medical Science building. It turns out the break room there is across from the morgue, which, as Sampson pointed out, is kind of ironic when you stop to think about it.
At the time, Sampson was reading a book he had checked out from the public library. Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan, published in 2004, features a photograph of the University of Notre Dame’s famous golden dome on the cover. Its author is Todd Tucker, the publisher is Loyola Press of Loyola University in Chicago.
The book is about how for two days in May 1924, a group of Notre Dame students got into a street fight with members of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was meeting in South Bend for the express purpose of sticking a collective thumb in the eye of the country’s most famous Catholic university. Notre Dame vs. the Klan was a Notre Dame Magazine “Pick of the Week” and garnered an average customer review of 4.5 stars on Amazon.com. In its review, The Indiana Magazine of History noted that Tucker “succeeds in placing the event in a broad framework that includes the origins and development of both the Klan and Notre Dame.”
Sampson recalls that his AFSCME shop steward told him that reading a book about the Klan was like bringing pornography to work. The shop steward wasn’t interested in hearing what the book was actually about. Another time, a coworker who was sitting across the table from Sampson in the break room commented that she found the Klan offensive. Sampson says he tried to tell her about the book, but she wasn’t interested in talking about it.
A few weeks passed. Then Sampson got a message ordering him to report to Marguerite Watkins at the IUPUI Affirmative Action Office. He was told a coworker had filed a racial harassment complaint against him for reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan in the break room. Sampson says he tried to explain to Watkins what the book was about. He says he tried to show her the book, but that Watkins showed no interest in seeing it.
Then Sampson received a letter, dated Nov. 25, 2007, from Lillian Charleston, also of IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office. The letter begins by saying that the AAO has completed its investigation of a coworker’s allegation that Sampson “racially harassed her by repeatedly reading the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan by Todd Tucker in the presence of Black employees.” It goes on to say, “You demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your coworkers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence … you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black coworkers.” Charleston went on to say that according to “the legal ‘reasonable person standard,’ a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African-Americans …”
Sampson was ordered to stop reading the book in the immediate presence of his coworkers and, when reading the book, to sit apart from them.
“I feel like I’ve been caught up in a 21st century version of catch-22,” says Sampson, who has never been given the opportunity to officially face any of his accusers. When I tried calling the Affirmative Action Office, I was told their policy is to never speak to the media.
But, Sampson says, this episode could be an opportunity. He would welcome the chance to participate in a moderated forum that might use his experience for a larger discussion dealing with intellectual freedom on the IUPUI campus.
That’s a good idea. For Sampson’s sake, I hope ideas still count at IUPUI.
By dww, at
Wed Mar 05, 08:17:00 PM:
What a bunch of pussies. Email Lillian Charleston at IUPUI (I'm embarrassed to be a Hoosier right now) and let her know how pathetic this is: lcharles@iupui.edu
-david
By , at
Wed Mar 05, 08:39:00 PM:
"When is a state government allowed to order you not to read a book?"
Gee, and I thought this blog asked tough questions.
Easy one, Tige.
When your name is Ann Coulter and the New Jersey state Democrats decide that calling people "harpies" and "witches" is a federal hate crime and therefore legislation should be passed to ban your book.
As they tried to do.
How easy does it get?
Well, perhaps it was the wine that caused the momentary lapse. Tomorrow's another day, right? Move on from your past mistakes, that's my motto.
Oh, as far as the article goes, look on the bright side:
If this had been 20 years ago, and we were forced to talk about nothing but the weather, imagine how boring that would have been.
But that's certainly not true today, what with global warming and all, is it?
So we've got that going for us.
By , at
Wed Mar 05, 09:00:00 PM:
Shame on the employer and the other employee who filed suit! As long as it isn't pornography, the gentleman should be free to read whatever he pleases at work.
Would he have gotten fired for reading the Communist Manifesto? I'd guess not.
By , at
Wed Mar 05, 10:22:00 PM:
TH:
So, there I was a minute ago, writing a page for my site. I was discussing the fascinating world of streaming media players when I noted that Windows Media Player, because it doesn't pre-load the file, displays nothing but an ugly black box on the page.
But then I thought of your article and the election and changed it to ugly "empty" box.
I thought to myself,
And thus it begins.
By , at
Wed Mar 05, 10:59:00 PM:
TH--I don't this is will be as acute with Obama as the nominee. Rather, I see Hillary Disciples enforcing these edicts, with Susan Estrich and Maureen Dowd as the Thought Police.
Yet another reason, my son, you should shake this Hillary jones!
My sons and daughter voted for Obama in the Virginia Primary and I applaud them for it. If they had gone out for Hillary, I would have changed the locks and cancelled their tuition checks.
By , at
Wed Mar 05, 11:30:00 PM:
When soon will the liberal nazis at these schools be holding book burnings of conservative books?
By , at
Thu Mar 13, 01:39:00 PM:
It gets even more retarded, folks. And no, I don't give a tinker's damn who that offended.
On the Affirmative Action Office of IUPUI's website, you'll find this little article, all about the KKK!!! ON THEIR WEBSITE!!!
So, I think they are racially harrassing black students, and religiously harrassing Catholics and Jews, by putting this material on their site. Obviously, they are intending to create an atmosphere of intolerence and are promoting the views of the KKK by even MENTIONING this group on their website.
I think everyone should file a complaint against Ms. Lillian, and give her a taste of her own medicine.
http://www.iupui.edu/~aao/kkk.html
