At the University of New Hampshire, junior journalism major Ken Gagnon has been banished from his English class for writing a blog entry describing how he'd like to thrust his penis through his English teacher's eye socket. The website has been taken off line, but the Concord Monitor offers this bowdlerized excerpt from Gagnon's post: "One of the first things you learn when you come to college is that sometimes, when an idiot is in charge of your English class, there's nothing that can be done about that besides a penis to her (expletive) brain. ... And rest assured, if I (could) impale people's brains with my (expletive) for a living, I would (expletive) drop everything right now and do it."

Gagnon's website contained multiple entries about raping women and shooting students. A few weeks ago, Gagnon was fired from his job at the student newspaper for posting a blog entry in which he detailed a fantasy about sexually assaulting fellow student and controversial campus feminist, Whitney Williams.

The university has advised Gagnon to seek counseling, and is consulting with lawyers to determine where Gagnon's rights end and where criminal activity begins. In the meantime, student columnist James Paine is defending Gagnon's First Amendment rights, arguing that Gagnon's posts were far from serious, and that they were, in fact, obviously and explicitly over the top: "In multiple journal entries, he indicated that the sole point was to be offensive and crass. ... As politically incorrect as it may sound, it was written with such obvious humor that I can't believe it was taken seriously." Paine also makes the important point that Gagnon was never approached about how the material on his website was coming across to readers; he was not given an opportunity to learn that his site was being widely read, and that some readers regarded what he wrote as threatening. "Ken Gagnon said something stupid and rather than correct him to proper social etiquette ('It is inappropriate to talk about face raping'); the University enacted their patented 'Utilize an Atomic Bomb to Demolish Target Anthill' strategy. That strategy is surely better then those tired old-fogey ways of dealing with problems, such as rational discussion and mediation."

I'm no fan of writing--or fantasizing--like Gagnon's, but Paine does have a point. As anyone with a website knows, it's far too easy to assume that no one is really reading it, that you can post your private thoughts on line without the people you'd least like to know about those thoughts uncovering them. It's the grand illusion of the internet, that what you publish on the world wide web is somehow supremely private. We mistake the means of posting--which is secure, solitary, and password-protected--with the terms of access, and assume, irrationally but absolutely, that somehow the only eyes that see our sites are those we would have see them. If this is the mistake Gagnon made, his crime was not that of making threats, but of assuming that a Live Journal site was essentially a paperless diary where he could record his thoughts freely, without fear of judgement or interference. That's the sort of mistake one only makes once, though, and Gagnon has made the same essential error of judgement more than once by now.

With Gagnon being treated like a predator and Paine declaring that the website openly announced itself as nonserious, it's hard to tell what's really going on here--and that's ultimately the point. Now that Gagnon's website has been taken down, it's not possible for us to judge for ourselves what its tone was, or to assess whether what he wrote could reasonably be considered threatening or off balance in some seriously disturbing way. My hunch, though, is that while the content of the site was offensive, it nevertheless consisted of constitutionally protected speech. And I'm hoping that if that is indeed the case, an organization such as FIRE or the ACLU will help Gagnon defend his rights.

My question - how does the U react to similar hate-speech against Right-leaning targets?

Sounds like their handling it ok. Kid could use some counceling. Probably alot of counseling yes, alot of counseling. Pehaps some schooling too, everyone else knows how the internet works, I bet his page had links to some friends as well. I'll go check the google cache for it.

You just have to look at my blog to tell that I am a big one for freedom of speech and an opponent of school censorship of student writing or speech.

But this guy sounds potentially dangerous, given the quantity, frequency, and depravity of what he was posting for public consumption.

I think that putting him off campus for the time being is a reasonable decision,

I'm not utterly convinced he would be dangerous. Even though I will admit this was my first impression (that he was, or is dangerous) when I began reading this post, if the site stated plainly it existed for comedic, satirical, un-PC purposes, it really is a matter of speech, I would think. Naturally, I add a few caveats which in the end lead to the conclusion that this student has crossed the line: and that is if he used the full names of the people he discussed and did so in a false or threatening way, it would be pretty difficult for him to defend. Private citizens have every right and expectation to not be made subject to (or the subject of) unflattering or threatening public imagery both from the perspective of personal security and the protection of their character and reputation. Maybe this professor is a little bit more of a public figure than a student would be, but I frankly think the language cited from his post could reasonably cause her to feel threatened and might also unreasonably diminish her public stature. But that’s just what my gut says. I think the administration should vote him off the island.

I can't accept the notion that he thought no-one would read it. If he'd written that in a diary he kept safe and secure at home, that would be different. But a website or blog is open to everyone - indeed, that's the driving impulse behind a blog: that others might read it.

I don't believe that freedom of speech is absolute. If someone talks openly about murdering someone, he ought to be taken aside and interviewed. And he ought also to be willing to take the responsibilty for his actions.

Gagnon is definitely a troubled soul, and while there may be a grey area between what's acceptable and not, he is way over the mark.

If he thought he was being funny and satirical, he needs to enroll in a few classes on Voltaire, Swift, and Juvenal.

I have to say, as a longtime friend of Ken Gagnon and a student at UNH who has watched the whole furor develop from small-town personality clashes into media witchhunt, I think the whole thing was poorly handled from the beginning. Ken's journal was written as comedy. Admittedly, low-brow sophomoric humor, but nothing worse than what George Carlin is paid to say. Whitney Williams, the woman who denounced Ken to the authorities, had been making rabidly anti-male statements in the school paper all semester. She had had her information removed from the UNH student directory, but then thought it appropriate to look up Ken in Facebook (since he had criticised her comments in the school paper that the only good male was one who had been castrated) and then follow the link to his livejournal. She did not (to my knowledge) send Ken any email to the effect that she found his journal offensive or offer him the chance to apologize or take it offline; rather, she immediately reported him to the UNH police, Dean's office, and FBI. He never had a chance. I've known him for over 6 years, and if I ever thought he was actually seriously planning rape and murder, I would have called the police myself. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion entirely. His only "crime" was not making the livejournal friends-only.

Being anti-male is one thing -- making threatening statements about raping girls and performing optical sex on an unwilling professor is a different matter.

I would question having a friend where one has to even think about analyzing their behavior for whether or not "he was actually seriously planning rape and murder". I would also question not confronting a friend about something before it meets such an absurd standard.

The claim that statements in a blog are self evidently "threatening" presupposes the answers to the very questions that are at issue here. Just because Shakespeare wrote something in which murder is recommended (Macbeth) doesn't mean Shakespeare was a homicidal maniac. We know from the context -- it was a play, after all -- that Shakespeare didn't really mean literally to advocate what he wrote when Lady Macbeth urges on Macbeth. And that's exactly the question here -- did he mean it?

I don't think that the answer is self evident, and in any case, the answer is to examine the behavior of the person (as the authorities are quite properly doing) to see whether it corresponds to the behavior of someone who actually means what is seemingly advocated, not to censor what was written. And any sanctions should be based on what the examination of the behavior uncovers, not what was written. (Which is why, by the way, Gagnon's friend -- if what she has written is correct -- didn't even have to think about applying what one commenter called an "absurd standard;" the authorities have to wonder about whether that standard applies, and have to look into his behavior, precisely because the authorities don't know him the way the friend does. Why should the friend have to confront Gagnon about a problem the friend knows -- because she knows Gagnon -- doesn't exist?)

I'm also struck by the implicit claim by one commenter that advocating castration is merely being "anti-male," and therefore apparently harmless and innocuous, whereas advocating rape is another order of seriousness altogether. Sounds like a double standard to me.

P.S. For whatever reason, preview doesn't show the paragraph breaks that are originally written, and which do show up in the ultimate post.

UNH has a long unpleasant record of denying its faculty and students free speech rights. A quick google will give some examples; perhaps the most notorious is the case of Don Silva, ten or twelve years ago, written up in several articles at the time in the New York Review of Books.

What about an analysis of guys wanting to copulate with women's ears? Is this a Viking practice, along the lines of the blood angels? And people need to learn that the internet IS and always WILL BE a public space; you publish, it's out for all to read (which I thought was supposed to be the bliss of the whole thing?).

What about an analysis of guys wanting to copulate with women's ears?

And the purpose of such an analysis would be... what? To continue and promote the post-modern academy's practice of writing more and more about less and less?

It seems that my question may have been answered.

The professor writes advocating castration of males (generally?) - no action.

The student writes (with whatecer degree of seriousness) about sexual violence against the woman who is threatening sexual violence against men - disciplinary action is taken.

The conclusion seems to be that the University supports sexual violence against men (or perhaps only white men), but disciplines violence related writings directed against women.

I just wanted to point out that, as I understand it, it was not the professor who recommended castrating anyone. It was a student and the student (again, based on what I've read here) did not say that she was going to go out and castrate anyone.

There is a big difference between suggesting that the only good man is a castrated men (though I can certainly understand why that is offensive) and stating that you, yourself, want to castrate or rape or whatever someone else -- and that difference doesn't have to do with race or gender.

I suppose that it would be too much to consider how neither Gagnon nor the English teacher's female student seem to have no respect for their opposite gender. Ken makes the eye-socket comment...he does not respect women. Whether or not it was in response to some other comment doesn't matter. The female student suggests castration...she does not respect men. Whether or not that particular comment was in response to yet another statement doesn't matter either.

Ken hears such an anti-male statement, and yes it may offend him, but instead of remaining calm and responding, he makes a misogynistic comment. I guess I don't see the humor in those kinds of statements, or ones about castration.

Stuck in his own world of presumed power, he'll soon run up against a wall of extreme feminists who'll verbally abuse him via his blogsite (oh, wait, that's right, it was "removed"). Right. Let's not give anybody a chance to respond to his comments. I guess that, in a way, the university has not only banished him from the class, but may have inadvertantly protected him from any well-deserved backlash.

Maybe since we're trained to respond defensively and our responses reactionary (even after careful consideration, some of us still respond by bashing), that's what we should come to expect. I would want to know why so-and-so would make such a statement, instead of just launching a verbal counter-attack. Maybe that's too optimistic, but I prefer it that way.

Oh, and by the way, this is on the same campus that banned the Penis Monologues, which they found offensive, but still allows V-day and the Vagina Monologues. What was it Alice said? "Phallocentrism becomes Phallophobia."