In February, bloggers and journalists had a field day with a UNC-Chapel Hill English instructor who slammed a student--publicly, unrelentingly, by name, in writing--for expressing views she found distasteful. Class discussion had roamed onto the subject of how gay and straight men relate to one another, and one student reportedly said that his Christian beliefs led him to disapprove of homosexuality. He related the story of a friend who had found another man's sexual advances "disgusting." Shortly afterward, the instructor, Elyse Crystall, sent an email to the course listserv condemning the student's comments as "violent" examples of "hate speech" and announcing that she would not tolerate more such speech in her classroom. She wrote that he was a "white, heterosexual, [C]hristian male" who thinks he is "entitled to make violent, heterosexist comments and not feel marked or threatened or vulnerable."

After the media got hold of the incident, Crystall issued an apology, declaring, not quite convincingly, that her goal had not been to censor anyone's views, but rather to promote mutual respect. The university responded in an exemplary manner, declaring its commitment to academic freedom and free speech, and announcing that Crystall's class would be monitored for the remainder of the term.

But that's not the end of it. The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights is now investigating the incident as a possible instance of--you guessed it--sexual harassment. In a letter dated March 22, the OCR wrote that it would be "investigating whether an e-mail sent by a teacher on or about Feb. 6 ... constituted harassment based on race or sex and whether the university responded appropriately" and announcing that "Our review will include whether any similar incidents had been brought to the university's attention previously, and whether the university responded consistently in those incidents." Read all about it here and here.

Amazing to see the OCR recognizing that the censorious culture of campus liberalism, which routinely enacts official and ad hoc speech codes in order to impose certain values as behavioral and intellectual norms, can itself readily give rise to the very sorts of harassment it claims to work to prevent. The OCR has asked UNC for copies of its harassment policies as well as for copies of all documents pertaining to the Crystall case. This means that the good people at the OCR will have an opportunity to study the manner in which UNC's sexual harassment policy amounts to a speech code, and to consider the ethical problems it posed for Crystall.

I don't approve of what Crystall did by any stretch of the imagination. But at the same time, I will note that her actions were consistent with the school's sexual harassment policy, which explicitly forbids, among other forms of expression, "questions or comments of a personal nature related to a person's sexual interests or experiences" and "unwelcome jokes or pejorative comments about sex or gender-specific traits that demean or denigrate another person's sex as a whole." Orientation is not mentioned here, but it is strongly implied. That implication is in turn bolstered by UNC's Resource and Action Plan for Sexual Orientation, which extends the school's harassment policies to cover issues of sexual orientation. At UNC, derogatory comments about homosexuality fall within the purview of harassment. And in this sense, the university's exemplary response to the Crystall affair was also, quite arguably, hypocritical. It was a lot easier to pillory her as an enemy of academic freedom than it was to address the real problem her actions raised: that they were quite consistent with university policy, and that in condemning the student as she did, Crystall was actively carrying out the school's stated mission.

That's certainly how at least two other UNC professors understood the matter. Scroll down here to read a letter to the editor of the News-Observer from UNC professors Altha Cravey and Trude Bennett defending Crystall's actions as a faithful execution of official school policy.

Thanks as ever to the indomitable Fred Ray for the tip.

UPDATE: The Chronicle of Higher Education is covering this story, and includes a quote from Crystall that corroborates the point I made above:

[Crystall] noted that while the government could investigate her remarks as racist or sexist, it would not investigate the student's as homophobic. "By claiming that there may have been a violation of racial discrimination, that because I called the student white, seems to be a perversion of what the civil-rights laws were meant to protect," she said.

UPDATE UPDATE: David Bernstein and John Rosenberg have more.

As far as I can tell, it looks like Crystall is being set up to be the scapegoat for UNC's official policy.

Teri O'Brien - wlsam.com Chicago's 50K watt powerhouse- talked about this earlier on her show today.

I'm not sure about Crystall being scapegoated. It looks like Erin's right, in that both parties violated the speech code, but her attack on the student was too vicious to be ignored.

If what the student is reported to have said in class truly violated the speech code as written, then they need to just not discuss controversial topics on that campus at all. Period. Why discuss them if there's only one acceptable view?

I wonder if Crystall ever fully understood the irony of her claim that in blasting this "white, heterosexual, christian male", she was fostering mutual respect. Doubt it.

This is merely the tip of the tip. Waiting yet for its time is a general assault--possibly of a class-action sort (in behalf of all male faculty, students and staff)--on all female feminists and women's studies programs which have demonstrably (published material in support is massive) been creating a sexually harassing hostile environment for males for the last quarter century in most colleges and universites throughout the country. Feminist Supreme Court Justice Sandra O'Connor's phrase in Davis vs. Monroe (1999), the most recent SH case to hit SCOTUS, is "severe and pervasive." That's the criterion, arguably over-fulfilled to the point of surfeit and regurgitation by female feminists in American higher education. Feminists won't like it, of course, though they are responsible for lobbying hostile environment sexual harassment into federal regulations in the first place. It's called karma.

One thing that interests me is that the Christian student's opinions were, at best, tactless -- and in fact would be controversial in many environments. This is one thing, I think, that an education OUGHT to be providing -- students need to come out of the other end of the educational process with the people skills to get their views across, whatever the particular view. This student was still in the learning process.

The issue I have is that the faculty and administration are micromanaging that process. When I was in college, this was the kind of thing that got worked out in all-night bull sessions. I certainly remember groups of us going at each other for the way we expressed viewpoints on, for instance, Civil Rights -- we may have had unorthodox views, but one of the issues was whether we could express them without having an opponent pick us off for a tangential error. No faculty or administration will do this as effectively as fellow students.

And isn't this one of the points of Newman's Idea of a University? He says the main learning in a university is students learning from each other. So I'm less concerned that someone criticized the Christian student's speech than who did it and how it was done. All students have a duty to learn things like how to get your views across without unnecessary hostility, etc.

Okay, the male student said that his Christian beliefs led him to disapprove of homosexuality. Nothing other than an expression of viewpoint in that, and perfectly legitimate if the opposite view, approval of homosexuality, is also permitted to be spoken.

Now, to the next part: the student related that a friend - not he, himself, but another person - had been the recipient of an unwanted sexual advance by a person of the same gender, and that the friend found the advances "disgusting". Again, a statement of an incident.

Suppose the male friend had received the unwelcome advances were from a woman who he also knew to be married. If the friend had called that disgusting, would the same level of reaction have been justified? Would the teacher have felt compelled to chastise the student for considering that it is improper for someone to be disgusted by what they consider immoral behavior - in this case, a married woman making sexual advances to a man not her husband? Suppose the woman had not been married, but that the man felt that sex outside of marriage was wrong, and considered such sexual advances to be improper, immoral, and disgusting? Would the teacher have still reacted as she did?

I see the professor's behavior as over the top and militant in tone.

Should the student have been chastised for his words? Well, in the context of the course, it would seem logical to expect students to express views that were not in line with the PC position. And if you grant that the purpose was to really discuss cultural diversity (and I suspect it was more to indoctrinate the students into a particular point of view than a discussion of various viewpoints), then why would a professor want to punish a student for that very discussion? The logical (and MATURE) thing for the professor to do would have been to ask the student to explain the basis for their beliefs, and then to ask someone with counter beliefs to discuss their alternate views. Both sides learn about each other, and perhaps true learning and tolerance can begin.

*Sigh* Yes, I am occasionally still an idealistic dreamer.

Just wanted to chip in to say that in my 5 1/2 years at UNC, I never saw anything like this happen. Mind you, I was getting a PhD in materials science, so my exposure was somewhat limited. It's not that I think UNC is being unfairly attacked, or attacked at all for that matter (which is likely due to the admin's response in this case). I guess I just need to say a good word about my alma mater, especially after their performance in the tournament...

One of the scary things is that UNC is not, by any streach of the imagination, at the forefront of academia's PC delusional state. This shows how deeply pervasive ths problem is.

My daughter says that in her 11th grade government class, they've been discussing gay marriage. She says it's been a heated discussion back and forth, both sides being backed with vigor. I asked what her teacher thinks. She says she doesn't know. That's as it should be. Why is this possible in high school and unthinkable in college?