Justice For Loretta Capeheart: An Appeal to Defend Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Signatories:
Noam Chomsky, Institute professor (emeritus), MIT
Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights*
Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union*
Dave Zirin, Sports Editor, The Nation
Ahmed Shawki, Editor, International Socialist Review
Anthony Arnove, Editor, Haymarket Books
Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed*
David McNally, Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto
The Coalition Against Corporate Higher Education (CACHE)
Mike Davis, Professor, UC Riverside
William Keach, Professor, Brown University
Deepa Kumar, Associate Professor, Rutgers University
Hector R. Reyes, Associate Professor, Harold Washington College, Vice Chair, HWC Chapter, AFT Local 1600
Helen C. Scott, Associate Professor, University of Vermont
Marvin Surkin, Professor, Long Island University, Ramapo College
Pranav Jani, Associate Professor, English, Ohio State University
*Organizations listed for identification only
URGENT APPEAL
This is an urgent appeal for your support to defend Professor Loretta Capeheart in her struggle with her employer, Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) in Chicago. After four years of legal action, we are now awaiting a key decision from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals—a decision that could set a precedent for free speech rights on campus and possibly move the case on to the Supreme Court.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) wrote, “If upheld on review, the district court’s ruling would deal a major blow to professors’ academic freedom and free speech in the Seventh Circuit—and quite likely beyond, as it would send the unmistakable message that faculty members aiming to speak out and be active in campus dialogue risk having their careers damaged.”
WHAT IS THIS CASE ABOUT?
Capeheart is a ten-year tenured professor at NEIU and a respected union and community activist. Capeheart has been a leader in union struggles, anti-war work and attempts to promote the rights of students and faculty, especially Latino/a faculty. Unfortunately Capeheart and other campus activists face one of the most repressive and scandal-ridden campus administrations in the country, presided over by NEIU President Sharon K. Hahs, an arrogant opponent of student, worker, and minority rights on campus. NEIU administrators have engaged in a well-documented history of retaliation against Capeheart for her principled activism. The administration has denied Capeheart a department chair position and earned merit pay increases, and waged in a campaign of slander against her.
In Capeheart v. Hahs et al., a Federal judge concluded that Capeheart could be punished for speaking out against the war because she advised a student club. The court agreed with NEIU’s lawyers that academics have no right to free speech under the Supreme Court decision Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006).
In Garcetti, the Supreme Court stripped most government workers of their rights to speak in the workplace but made a footnoted exception for professors. In deciding against Capeheart, the lower court effectively ignored this footnote and left faculty—and all workers— with fewer rights. Other federal courts have similarly misapplied Garcetti. Now the pending decision from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals will either reject the new limits on faculty rights set by the lower courts— or further establish them. Either way, this decision could then proceed to the Supreme Court.
(via cultureofresistance)
Sure to piss off the racists, Supreme Court decision tells judges they must consider history when sentencing aboriginal people.
Sentencing judges who do not carefully consider lenient or creative sentences for aboriginal offenders are violating the law, the Supreme Court of Canada said in a major aboriginal law decision today.
Releasing rulings in a pair of much-anticipated cases that go to the heart of separate treatment for aboriginal offenders, the court said that considering factors such as cultural oppression and a history of abuse in the residential school system must be central to the sentencing process.
“When sentencing an Aboriginal offender, courts must take judicial notice of such matters as the history of colonialism, displacement, and residential schools and how that history continues to translate into lower educational attainment, lower incomes, higher unemployment, higher rates of substance abuse and suicide, and of course higher levels of incarceration for Aboriginal peoples,” a 6-1 majority said.
For those who are unaware, this is something that the Supreme Court already ruled on back in 1998 in a case called Gladue AND is backed up by a section in the Criminal Code (Canada has a system whereby all criminal law is federal, thus applies across the country). However, that section has been consistently misapplied and the ruling was more in the way of a ‘suggestion’ for sentencing judges. Now it’s an order.
Of course, this will be called racism, reverse racism, or other such bullshit.
But this is a serious step in the right direction when it comes to actively recognising and addressing the impact of colonisation and systemic racism and abuse towards aboriginal peoples in this country.
Wowow
Yes.
(via cultureofresistance)
We are not neutral against injustice
By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
The idea that political observers, analysts and scholars have to be unbiased and neutral in order to be considered “credible” is just another colonial tool to keep us from speaking truth. Methodological Imperialism has created an artificial “zero point” (read, Empire’s worldview) from which we are to never depart in our analyses, and whomever dares digress is rejected by the Academy for not maintaining enough “critical distance”.That’s right, emotional distance from occupation, massacres, usurpation of our land and rights, the stripping of our dignity, that’s the zero point of “balanced” analysis and reasoning.To be taken seriously and “heard” by the White Man, we are to remain politically neutral to injustice while treating it as just another “viewpoint” that needs to be balanced against another one, even when that other one is what we know to be truth. What they, and many of the colonized among us, fail to see, is that neutrality and objectivity are two entirely different levels of analysis. There need not be a fact-value split when our values stem from hard facts.We should take pride in saying that we are not neutral, nor will we ever be, but we are objective. Our bias is the product of our objective reading of the politically constructed reality they have built. And we will never succumb to this subjective value, we will never embrace this ideology of neutrality that will strip us not only of our humanity, but of our objectivity too.Malcom X: ”I will never say that progress is being made if you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches… there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made, and they haven’t even begun to try to pull the knife out. They won’t even admit the knife is there!”
(via cultureofresistance)
KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
See posts http://tmblr.co/ZeT5ixHdZcRa and http://tmblr.co/ZeT5ixHdXs-L
#Justice for #Assange
“It’s not unrealistic to suspect there are things going on behind the scenes that have influenced how the case has been handled.” — Swedish lawyer in an anonymous survey, April 2011.
Supreme Court Appeal Hearing: 1 and 2 February. Watch it LIVE
The Supreme Court Appeal Hearing starts at 10:30 on 1 February 2012. The Supreme Court has released a press release about access to the Supreme Court on those days, and has published the case details on their website. Supporters will hold [a vigil in front of the Supreme Court before and during the hearing. Find out how to get there. View the map here.
Recent developments on Justice4Assange
Thank you @MeltemArikan for the tweet. :)
