Remember Keri Dunn, the Claremont McKenna professor who faked a hate crime against herself last spring? She's been sentenced to a year in prison.

Dunn was a Jim Crowe wannabe victim. Her misfortune was not being born into the Jim Crowe south of the 1950s. Oh, what a great heroine whe might have been, admired by the masses, subject of documentaries and TV miniseries. But alas, it was not to be.

Faking hate crimes is an old and honorable tradition. If we throw everyone in jail who has faked a hate crime, we will run out of jail space very fast!

I'm stunned that she is still convinced - despite two eyewitnesses, a preponderance of evidence, and no alibi - that she did not commit this crime. And people say Geo. Bush doesn't live in a "reality-based" world! This woman has a PhD in Psychology. I guess those who believe in hegemonic discourse and its power to develop alternative tropes of existence will still find a way to champion her cause. The larger truth is always more important to these people then pesky and misleading facts.

What is the truth of something like this anyway? An oppressed, exploited and underpaid faculty member called attention to a serious problem on her campus - and for this, she's going to jail?

Can't you just see this defense?

'"Something is going on with her such that she hasn't been able to get a grip on herself,' [the judge] said."

Precisely. Except that it's not just *her*; it's the entire race-class-gender professoriate....

She damaged her own property -- which it was her right to do, given that it was hers -- and then lied about it. I'm sorry, but I don't see this as criminal behavior.

If she had accused someone specifically, it would be different. But she didn't. Treating this as a crime doesn't remedy anything; it is, rather, simply one more instance of the underlying problem which generates that mechanism of speech control known as "hate speech" in the first place -- namely, treating utterances as "deeds" which have a "psychological" hurtful effect as bad as any physical harm, thereby warranting punishment (said punishment thus becoming the mechanism by which speech is controlled). The presumption seems to be that we, the population as a whole, have morphed into a population of hothouse flowers unable to stand the psychic stress caused by disagreeable speech.

We've come a long way from "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." The journey has not constituted progress.

To clarify: She isn't going to jail for "hate speech" or anything having to do with the content of her utterance. She is going to jail for filing a false police report and for committing insurance fraud.

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