Read on Twitter
This looks like the campus tempest du jour. And it starts with talk about microaggression, something I have expertise on (I wrote a whole book). So here is a thread. https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/1379866519572742151
First, let’s look at the student’s questions (at a campus panel on microaggression in 2018). This clip is from the court document linked in Soave’s article: https://casetext.com/case/bhattacharya-v-murray
First, the student’s point is fair. For an act to count as microaggression, it does need to be targeted at a marginalized person. I explain why in chapter 1 of my book. Also it’s the standard definition for 50 years. https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Microaggression-Regina-Rini-dp-1138713147/dp/1138713147/
Second, the student is oddly aggressive by academic Q&A standards. He cuts off presenter after only 2 or 3 words and keeps trying to talk over her. Bad enough if you are talking to a peer, but bizarre when talking to a *dean*. You can hear it at 28:45 https://soundcloud.com/user-381804527/microagressions-presented-by-amwa
Not sure if non-academics will get this. I’m a tenured prof and I wouldn’t talk that way to a dean! A student doing so is a bit like a junior employee at a company all-hands meeting being rude to the CFO. Unprofessional and weird.
His behavior gets worse. He asks a rapid-fire string of questions, hogging the mic. All of the questions are *individually* reasonable (I address them in the book, some are good objections). But it’s not collegial to blurt them all with no time for a reply.
It’s pretty clear that the student has an agenda and is shotgun-firing his talking points. He’s not interested in the reply. He’s soapboxing. Another person finally has to cut him off to make him stop. No question he’s being unprofessional.
Still, many people behave unprofessionally. If this were the *entire* story – as Soave claims – then the student’s suspension would be a clear and troubling overreaction by the university. That’s why the story is set to go viral.
But it’s shoddy journalism. Soave evidently relied solely on the student’s account of events. Even the court document must take the student’s claims at face value (due to how a motion to dismiss works). Soave seems not to have talked to anyone else.
Lawyers have pointed this out. Soave hasn’t responded. https://twitter.com/AmesCG/status/1379941141999722497
Indeed, Soave said on Twitter that he didn’t find the university’s own legal filing until the day *after* he published his story. In other words, his story is based entirely on the claims of one side of a contentious legal case. https://twitter.com/robbysoave/status/1380160655987200022
For what it’s worth, the university’s legal filing contains some really unwise claims – see clip below. Perhaps this is referring to something else the student said? If it’s about his comments at the event, it’s deeply wrong. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vawd.116573/gov.uscourts.vawd.116573.19.0.pdf
More from the school’s filing. I think these sentences accurately describe the student’s poor behavior. But they are NOT sufficient to amount to “offensive” speech for First Amendment purposes. That’s a scary overstep by the university.
So: if this were *only* about what happened at that microaggression event, the university would clearly be in the wrong. That’s what Soave wants us to think. However…
Read between the lines and you see the university believes there’s more to the story. What? It doesn’t say, not yet. There might be good student privacy reasons not to reveal whatever else troubled the disciplinary panel.
Or the university might be bluffing to cover its overreach. Honestly, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I’d like more facts – but we’re not going to get facts from this narrative-thumping advocacy piece.
Consider this clip from the court decision. The student repeatedly made a false statement (by his own later admission) to the disciplinary panel. Soave doesn’t mention that in his reporting, though it seems relevant to a neutral assessment.
That certainly doesn’t prove the university was right. But it shows that the panel had evidence – beyond the student’s behavior at the microaggression event – to be concerned. Whether it’s more than that, I don’t know – and neither does Soave.
So I suspend judgment on the case itself. UVA may have grossly overreacted here. Or there may be facts we do not know that put its decision in a painful but maybe reasonable context. I don’t know.
What I do know is that we’re not helped at all by one-sided advocacy journalism which selectively presents facts in order to trigger outrage and fuel culture war grievances. But, of course, that is what gets clicks. /endthread
