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Journalism professor says he hopes for murder of NRA members’ children


Katherine Timpf 

A journalism professor at the University of Kansas (KU) turned to Twitter on Monday to suggest he would like to see the murder of children of National Rifle Association (NRA) members at the hands of a deranged gunman.

A journalism professor has defended tweets he sent out which called for the death of NRA employees children.

“#NavyYardShooting The blood is on the hands of the #NRA,” tweeted David Guth, who is an associate professor of Journalism at the university’s William Allen White School of Journalism.

“Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters, he continued. “Shame on you. May God damn you.”

Speaking with Campus Reform on Wednesday, Guth confirmed it was he who sent the controversial tweet.

“Hell no, hell no, I do not regret that Tweet,” he said. “I don’t take it back one bit.”

Guth also doubled down on the statement when other Twitter users pressed him, suggesting it was was shameful to call for the death of children.

“God’s justice takes many forms,” he tweeted in response.

And on Monday the associate journalism professor echoed those sentiments on his personal blog, called Snapping Turtle.

“I don’t wish what happened today on anyone,” he wrote. “But if it does happen again — and it likely will — may it happen to those misguided miscreants who suggest that today’s death toll at the Navy Yard would have been lower if the employees there were allowed to pack heat.”

Also in his interview with Campus Reform, he said that he wished “a pox on our Congress and a pox on the NRA” for not instituting gun control policies to prevent mass shootings.

“It absolutely appalls me that after Newtown, we could not have come to some kind of sane agreement on something as simple as the number of bullets in a magazine or the availability of assault weapons,” he said.

Despite early rumors, the weapon used in the Navy Yard shooting was not an assault weapon, but a shotgun typically used for hunting small birds and wild game.

KU on Wednesday told Campus Reform that they stand by the professor’s right to make such statements.

“Faculty have their own social media accounts and use those to express personal opinions, but those opinions do not represent the university,” spokesman Jack Martin wrote in an email statement to Campus Reform on Wednesday.

While Guth’s Twitter account is personal, his biography includes a link that directs to the school’s website.

“An Eastern Shoreman turned professor and historian,” reads his description. “A devoted husband, father and dog owner. Most important: an independent thinker.”

Official school policy demands all in the community adhere to a standard of “inclusive learning and working environment at the University of Kansas.”

Guth made his comments the same day as the massacre at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC which left 13 people dead including the shooter.

Guth also served as the associate dean of the journalism school from July 2004 to July 2009.

The NRA did not make a spokesperson available to Campus Reform at the time of publication.

UPDATE

‘Disgraceful:’ University suspends prof who hoped for murder of NRA children

Administrators at the University of Kansas have suspended the journalism professor who suggested on Monday he would like to see the murder of the children of National Rifle Association (NRA) members.

KU’s chancellor, Bernadette Gray-Little, announced the suspension Friday morning, according to a local radio station, KMBZ.

Professor Guth has been placed on administrative leave.

“In order to prevent disruptions to the learning environment for students, the School of Journalism and the university, I have directed Provost Jeffrey Vitter to place Associate Professor Guth on indefinite administrative leave pending a review of the entire situation,” he said.

“Professor Guth’s classes will be taught by other faculty members,” he added.

And on Thursday the school released a statement condemning Guth’s tweet.

“The contents of Professor Guth’s tweet were repugnant and in no way represent the views or opinions of the University of Kansas. “[I]t is truly disgraceful that these views were expressed in such a callous and uncaring way. We expect all members of the university community to engage in civil discourse and not make inflammatory and offensive comment

There is no word whether or not Guth will be paid throughout the suspension.

Guth turned to Twitter on Monday in response the a crazed gunman’s rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C., in which 12 perished.

“#NavyYardShooting The blood is on the hands of the #NRA,” tweeted David Guth, who is an associate professor of Journalism at the university’s William Allen White School of Journalism.

“Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters, he continued. “Shame on you. May God damn you.”

 

Speaking with Campus Reform on Wednesday, Guth confirmed it was he who sent the controversial tweet.

“Hell no, hell no, I do not regret that Tweet,” he said. “I don’t take it back one bit.”

Campus Reform has learned that Guth was also publicly censured by the university on October 8, 2010 for “unprofessional, threatening, and abusive behavior towards another faculty.”

“His conduct violated acceptable standards for professional ethics, University policies and Article V.2 and Article V.5 of the Faculty Code of Conduct,” read’s the public notice on the school’s website. “This announcement represents public censure of Professor Guth for his actions.”

SPECIAL NOTE

The following is professor Guth’s e-mail: dguth@ku.edu. If you’re going to e-mail him I ask you to be tactful, although he wasn’t.

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Education, Political

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California Students Forced to Kneel Before Principal


by John Nolte // http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/08/23/California-students-forced-to-kneel-before-principal?utm_content=buffer58884&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer

Claiming it was a “safety policy,” California elementary public school principal Dana Carter instituted a policy that required his students to “kneel down on one knee and wait for the principal or another administrator to dismiss them.” One parent claimed that her daughter was forced to kneel before the principal “like a king“ with her hands at her side until Carter came out, lifted his arms, and told students to go to class.

Apparently, this happened at various times throughout the school day.

Complaints from parents, including flyers placed on cars, resulted in the revocation of the policy. Calls went out to parents to inform them of the change of policy, and Carter has already scheduled a meeting with parents to discuss “different safety options” with parents.

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Education

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Schools push ‘Trayvon dialogues’ to vent ‘anger’


WND EXCLUSIVE // http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/schools-push-trayvon-dialogues-to-vent-anger/

Board member: He ‘could have been any one of my 3 sons’

 

author-image Chelsea Schilling About | Email | Archive

Chelsea Schilling is a commentary editor and staff writer for WND, an editor of Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert and a proud U.S. Army veteran. She has also worked as a news producer at USA Radio Network and as a news reporter for the Sacramento Union.
A public school district in San Diego, Calif., has voted unanimously to initiate “Trayvon Martin dialogues” among middle and high-school students so they can “speak honestly about their identification with Trayvon Martin’s story, including feelings of fear, anger and skepticism that they will live in a just society as they prepare for their future.”

On July 30, the San Diego Unified School District board voted 4-0 to “allow students to speak honestly about the worldview that prompted George Zimmerman to confront Trayvon Martin, and help students develop perspectives and strategies to channel their feelings about Trayvon Martin into positive work for themselves and the larger community.”

 School-board member Richard Barrera, who the district describes as having “a background as a community organizer, working to revitalize low-income neighborhoods,” presented the resolution by explaining, “The Trayvon Martin case is something that is having a huge impact across the country and here in the San Diego community. And I know that it’s also an issue that’s particularly having an impact on young people.

“The feelings of young people that I’ve spoken to that have made their voice heard throughout our community are feelings of anger, of frustration, of a sense that is the society that young people grow up in and enter into, is it gonna be fair? And if people kinda play by the rules, do what they’re supposed to do, work hard, study hard with the intention of creating a decent future for themselves, is that future going to be realized in this society?”

In his statement, Barrera didn’t clarify whether he believed Trayvon Martin, too, had chosen to “play by the rules … work hard, study hard.”

As WND has reported, Twitter, Facebook, and toxicology tests established Trayvon’s long and enthusiastic acquaintance with marijuana and codeine. Also, the London Daily Mail ran a story about Trayvon’s suspensions from school three times for fighting, drug abuse and vandalism. The Miami Herald reported that Trayvon was found with women’s jewelry, including silver wedding bands and earrings with diamonds. Trayvon was shot while on suspension from high school.

Barrera added, “[P]articularly young men of color [are] trying to get their heads around what happened in this situation. I think it’s important for us to open up the opportunity for young people to have dialogue with each other, but under the facilitation of professional educators.”

Another school board member, Marne Foster, declared, “Trayvon Martin could have been any one of my three sons as an unarmed, young African-American male traveling home.”

Foster said the resolution presents an “opportunity to have a real and a candid and an honest conversation about the state of America and what the world looks like for our young people and then having a vehicle to drive change.”

She said, “This … gives them a voice and the tools to constructively and safely engage the world around them, and more importantly to become that change agent that we so desperately need them to be,” adding “especially given in 2013, they are still living in a time reminiscent of Emmett Till.”

Till was a 14-year-old boy who was brutally beaten and killed in Mississippi in 1955 after he reportedly whistled at a white woman. Foster’s statement was reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey’s public comparison of Martin and Till. The TV talk host claimed the two cases are “the same thing.”

But TV host Glenn Beck called the comparison “unbelievably wrong.”

“These are two cases that … have nothing in common,” Beck said, explaining that George Zimmerman’s killing of Martin was ruled as self-defense, and Till was viciously murdered by racists.

Concerned individuals may contact the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education.

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Education, Political

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Here We Go: Alabama to Implement “Race-Based Standards” in Public Schools


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to post-racial America. Via the Wall Street Journal:

The Alabama Federation of Republican Women (AFRW) strongly opposes “race-based standards for student achievement” pushed by the Alabama Department of Education, as reported in The Tuscaloosa News on Sunday, June 30. Minority students will be held to a lower standard, and would be tracked at a lower standard throughout their academic career from K-12.

According to this article by Jamon Smith, “Beginning this fall, Alabama public schools will be under a new state-created academic accountability system that sets different goals for students in math and reading based on their race, economic status, ability to speak English and disabilities.” Alabama’s Plan 2020 “sets a different standard for students in each of several subgroups — American Indian, Asian/Pacific islander, black, English language learners, Hispanic, multirace, poverty, special education and white.”

The “race-based” standards are part of Common Core, adopted by the state board of education in November 2010.

Walter Russell Mead points out that race-based standards are hardly new. Indeed, he writes, 27 out of the 33 states that received waivers from No Child Left Behind’s strict academic requirements in 2012 “now have different achievement goals for different groups of students.” This in turn works out well for public schools who can keep receiving federal funds even though many of their students are falling by the wayside. But just because this practice is exceedingly common and popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s morally defensible. One of the more powerful arguments against Plessy vs. Ferguson — the infamous “separate but equal” Supreme Court ruling in 1896 — was that sending white and black students to separate but unequal school systems seriously harmed children. Why? Because it made young blacks feel inferior. Question: How on earth would lowering academic standards for non-whites in Alabama’s public schools be any less discriminatory?

The implicit assumption here is that minority students can’t compete with white students. And while it’s certainly true that perhaps some students lag significantly behind their white counterparts in the classroom, what kind of message does it send to persons of color when the achievement bar is purposefully lowered for non-academic reasons? Uniform academic benchmarks might be impossible in Alabama, but I find it reprehensible that minority students would be consigned to dumbed down standards solely because of the color of their skin and/or their parents’ level of income.

It’s self-evidently true that any child — regardless of race, class or gender — has the ability to attain the highest levels of academic achievement. Lowering standards and racial profiling in public schools is a terrible idea, not least because it seems to suggest otherwise.

H/T Via Meadia

UPDATE: Note also how the organization in Alabama that opposes race-based standards is not comprised of progressives but of conservative women. Remember that the next time someone on MSNBC shrieks that Republicans down in Dixie are “racists.”

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Education

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