Issue #4 Free Speech Scenario

Steven M. Walters, M.Ed.

Kent State University

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Our colleges existing website has become an essential showcase of our community
partnerships and commitment to education. Our website is also seeing an ever increasing
presence in notoriety with the surrounding communities and local schools for offerings and
functionality. The website is maintained with the highest professional standards possible with
features that provide full accessibility for our administration, for our teachers, for our current
students, and for our future students who want to earn their degrees with us.
Our website has become a central part of our marketing plan in our recruiting efforts and
has been proven to be a part of our increasing enrollment. New students, and their parents, have
repeatedly reported that it was the look and feel of our colleges website that helped them make
the final decision to come here.
In surveys collected from our current students, there is overwhelming evidence that
shows that students appreciate the ease and accessibility of being able to pull information from
online documents, presentations, research, and postings. All of our faculty have begun to
embrace and utilize the full power of our webpage from course offerings to blogs and webpages
related to their fields of study as well as personal agenda material. Our faculty has been steadily
and consistently adding an ever growing amount of their expertise and relevant bodies of work
into course content to support our students success. Students have become accustomed to
trusting that the content that is available to them through our website is thoroughly vetted as
being truthful, responsible, and ethical.
Our web space is also available for both students and faculty to utilize and create, not just
collegial content, but personal webpages and blogs from family and friends pages to personal
agenda biases and sometimes, unfortunately, incomprehensible propaganda.
The reason we are here today is because a student group has been outraged by a webpage
that contains personal bias agenda content denying that the Holocaust ever occurred. This

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webpage is part of the colleges web space and was wholly built and populated with content by a
tenured professor. Professor Doumas is provided web space just as all instructors are per the
colleges mandate. The student group making the complaint has provided legitimate
documentation of Professor Doumass postings and are demanding that his pages be removed.
When calmly and professionally approached by the group and myself the professor refused to
remove his material, arguing that there is no policy set by the college that restricts his use of
Web space and that his right to academic freedom outweighs everything else including the First
Amendment that provides freedom of speech.
The tenured professor in the center of this potentially PR disaster teaches radiographic
technology. He teaches his course to prospective x-ray technicians; he is not a historian! Yet,
he has used our Web space to supply extensive material about the Nazi Holocaust, arguing that it
never happened. When our prestigious faculty historians reviewed his material they all stated
that it is nonsense. Professor Doumas has also supplied links to a large number of other sites that
make his same claim about history. After linking to these other sites, from his page on our
website, viewers can see evidence that these websites promote hate, violence, and human rights
violations of women, children, and people who are not of the same origin. These linked websites
are considered by many groups to be hate groups but under United States law are still protected
by free speech. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) urges a greater focus on education and
counter speech since effectively policing online Holocaust denial is unachievable due to the scale
and scope of the Internet and due to the United States' First Amendment (Anti-Defamation
League (ADL), 2011). This means he is free to say what he wants until he violates a code of
conduct or standards set by the college.
You can be assured that anyone searching for this type of material can find it as easily as
our students can search and find information though our library system. There is no way to

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know how many people have seen his postings or the damage it has caused for our colleges
image, but be confident in the fact that his content will spread quickly. To make matters worse, I
have received inquiries on the site from Canada and Germany. As of the end of 2006, 14 mostly
European countries had laws against Holocaust denial including Germany and Austria where
they take these laws very seriously and vigilantly prosecute both speech and behavior having any
reference to Nazis and Nazism (Bazyler, 2006). If the International community can easily find
his information on our site it is certain that our surrounding community and media outlets will
soon be finding it, if not already.
The professors imminent plans, as he told me, is that he intends to send out automatic
spam messages and updates to newsgroups and electronic mailing lists using his college email
account to spread his disturbed message and misinformation. That means that people will no
longer have to search for it! The impact of this could be very damaging to our colleges image
even though the messages did not come directly from us. Each and every email sent out will
identify this college as the source of those emails implicating us in the dissemination of whatever
he wants to put in those emails. People receiving those emails will believe it came from us since
the URL everyone will see is www.profdoumas@ourcitycollege.edu.
The Doumas claims he is protected in what he says and or writes about on the Web by the
First Amendment of the United States Constitution and his rights of Academic Freedom as a
tenured professor. The student group making the complaint provided verified information from
the National Educational Association that states the First Amendment guarantees freedom of
speech, but the Constitution does not guarantee that you can't be fired for expressing your
beliefs as part of your job. The courts could decide either way --- and the burden of proof shifts
sharply to the professor (National Educational Association (NEA), 2016). Based on that

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statement from the NEA, if this professor makes any statements in his classroom and witnesses
provide proof that he did do, the legal department could take proper actions.
When I reviewed this concern on the National Educational Associations website I also
found that a college or university cannot fire a tenured professor without presenting evidence
that the professor is incompetent or behaves unprofessionally or that an academic department
needs to be closed or the school is in serious financial difficulty. Nationally, about 2 percent of
tenured faculty are dismissed in a typical year (NEA, 2016). If Doumas does send out spam
messages through his college email account, he could be considered to be acting in an
unprofessional manner, but only if we strengthen our own colleges acceptance use policy for the
Internet to say so.
I have made sure that there are no links from the official college website to his pages and
or material. The professor has removed anything from his pages that identifies our college.
Although any email transaction he sends out through his email account shows our Web address
and provides a distinct way of identifying our college. Just by the fact that he did have our
college mentioned in his webpages could be useful in proving he violated the acceptance use
policy of the college, if we had one in place.
Recommendations for our college-wide acceptance use policy for the Internet.
In 2006, Northwestern University (NU) had a similar situation where an associate
professor expressed his personal views on the same topic; denial of the Holocaust ever occurring,
calling it a myth (Jaschik, 2006). The Universitys President released a public statement that is
still on display in NUs website. President Bienen wrote, Like all faculty members, he is
entitled to express his personal views, including on his personal web pages, as long as he does
not represent such opinions as the views of the University (Cubbage, 2006).

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If our professor spams through his college email, with the colleges URL, it could be construed
that the college approves of his reprehensible opinions.
Northwestern University has a link to a disclaimer on their homepage. The beginning of
their statement is in an oversized font assumingly stressing the fact NU had nothing to do with
what the professor claimed, Northwestern makes online resources available to all segments of
our community but does not review, edit, or endorse all items accessible from these pages
(Northwestern University, 2016). (See the entire disclaimer as it appears in NUs website in
Appendix A).

To help us resolve this issue I recommend the following actions be taken promptly and with
all the urgency of a crisis management situation to head off any public relations nightmares that
can bring about campus unrest in the forms of media bias towards the college, protests, riots, and
or legal concerns.
1. Add a disclaimer to our website homepage based on Northwestern University. (See
Appendix A)
2. Amend, adopt, and approve the Bulk Email Approval Policies and Procedures
published by Northwestern University Information Technology. (Appendix C contains a
portion for Guidelines and Criteria for bulk mail to prevent the use of our colleges email
system.)
3. Seek legal advice on how to separate the professors content from the colleges website.
Removal of his material is censorship and is most likely a violation of Free Speech.
4. Involve the colleges chapter of American Association of University Professors to lobby
him from making an unprofessional decision.

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5. Have our college President write a direct letter to the professor stating that if he carries
out his plan to spam through his college email, he will be immediately terminated for
inappropriately violating the professional code of conduct policy of the college. The
legal department can provide case rulings to add bite and substance to the letter.
6. Notify the Board of Trustees of the professors webpage content, his imminent plans, and
what courses of action are being taken to protect the college.
7. Suggest to the student group to begin a petition drive to seek out signatures of students,
faculty, administration, and the public denouncing the professors opinions to show that
our college does not support in any way, shape or form the content of his personal beliefs.
8. Move his office to an uncomfortable part of a building in a show of distancing him from
the college.
9. Contact and provide the FBI with the professors webpage to investigate for evidence of
illegal activities even if by association through his provided web links. With what I saw
in some of his provided links there may be deeper issues in his agenda.
10. Do nothing and watch our college spiral downwards by turning a blind eye to this kind of
behavior and rhetoric.

A last thought on this case before we should begin taking action:

This excerpt is from the American Association of University Professors, Policy Documents &
Reports 3-4:
College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and
officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free
from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes

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special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public
may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all
times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of
others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution
(AAUP, 2001).

Free speech is costly when misused!

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APPENDIX A
Northwestern University Disclaimer as shown on their webpage:

http://www.northwestern.edu/disclaimer.html

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APPENDIX B
The University of Michigan Law School provides these web pages as a service to our
users. We cannot and do not guarantee that the content on this website is absolutely current.
However, every effort is made to ensure that it is kept as up to date as possible.
The University of Michigan Law School website may include hyperlinks to websites maintained
or controlled by external organizations. The University of Michigan Law School does not
routinely screen, approve, review, or endorse the content, products, or services that may be
offered at these websites. In no event shall the University of Michigan Law School be responsible
or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in
connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods, or services available on or
through any such site or resource (University of Michigan, Law School, 2016).
APPENDIX C

Bulk Email Approval Policies and Procedures

Definition:
Bulk email, by definition, is unsolicited email sent quickly in large quantities, and is
recognized as an efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly use of
technology for facilitating communication within the Northwestern community. Bulk
email messages can be sent to a mailing list email addresses or a pre-defined
target group, managed by LDAP. The potential misuse of bulk email is also
recognized. The purpose of the following guidelines provide guidance for the
appropriate use of bulk email at Northwestern University, and when necessary, the
approval to send bulk email through the enterprise NU Bulk Email system.
Guidelines and Criteria
Generally speaking, bulk email is appropriate for:

Messages that directly relate to carrying out the business of the University.

Messages that are not in line with the mission of the University

Messages that relate to changes in University policy or time sensitive issues.

Messages that inform a select group of people (e.g. faculty, staff, students, members of a
specific school or department, etc.) of an announcement or event related to their specific role
within the University.
Announcements that do not meet this criteria of urgency and/or critical University information, should
seek other methods of relaying their information, such as the Plan-IT Purple Calendar, Daily
Northwestern, Northwestern News, and other campus listservs.
Inappropriate use of Bulk Email includes, but is not limited to:
Messages that are personal in nature
Messages that are commercial in nature with the exception of those messages that are in
support of University business and are approved by the stipulations defined in this policy.

http://www.it.northwestern.edu/policies/bulkemail.html

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References
AAUP, (2011). Policy Documents & Reports. American Association of University Professors.
Policy Documents & Reports 3-4 (9th ed.). American Association of University
Professors: Washington., D.C.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL), (2011). Holocaust Denial and Freedom of Speech in the
Internet Era. Christopher Wolf, November 18, 2011. http://www.adl.org/combating
hate/cyber-safety/c/holocaust-denial-and-freedom.html#.V3KdzLgrK70
Bazyler, M. (2006). "Holocaust Denial Laws and Other Legislation Criminalizing Promotion of
Nazism". International Institute for Holocaust Studies. December 25, 2006.
Cubbage, A., (2006). Statement by Northwestern University President Henry S. Bienen
regarding associate professor Arthur Butz. February 6, 2006.
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2006/02/bienen.html
Jaschik, S., (2006). A Holocaust Denier Resurfaces. Inside Higher ED, February 8, 2006.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/08/butz
University of Michigan, Law School, (2016). Michigan Law University of Michigan Disclaimer.
https://www.law.umich.edu/disclaimer/Pages/default.aspx
National Educational Association (NEA), (2016). The Truth About Tenure in Higher Education,
Higher Education Departments of the National Education Association and the American
Federation of Teachers. http://www.nea.org/home/33067.htm
NEA, (2016). The Truth About Tenure in Higher Education, Higher Education Departments of
the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
http://www.nea.org/home/33067.htm
Northwestern University, (2016). Disclaimer. http://www.northwestern.edu/disclaimer.html
Appendix A., NU Disclaimer, (2016). Northwestern University, Disclaimer,

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Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

http://www.northwestern.edu/disclaimer.html
Appendix B., University of Michigan, Law School, (2016). University of Michigan Law School
Disclaimer. https://www.law.umich.edu/disclaimer/Pages/default.aspx
Appendix C., Bulk Email Approval Policies and Procedures, (2016). Northwestern University,
Evanston, Illinois. http://www.it.northwestern.edu/policies/bulkemail.html