Kansas Lawmakers Seek to Muzzle University Employees | Care2 Causes

[Panich52]

As someone who lives and works on the Internet, I’m very thankful for my freedom of speech. I can sit here and opine about the events of the day and stay mostly free from government harassment and intimidation. Not everyone is so lucky. The range of government backlash for speech activities is wide and varied, ranging from flogging and other violence to something much more subtle that’s going on in Kansas.

Kansas is not, in fact, threatening to flog bloggers and other writers for what they write. But that doesn’t mean that a chilling effect isn’t underway.

Last week, a bill was submitted to the Kansas legislature that would prohibit university professors from using their titles when writing newspaper editorials or op-eds. This seems like small potatoes, I grant you, but it’s actually kind of a big deal.

The bill, dubbed House Bill 2234, is in some ways shrouded in mystery. According to the Topeka Capitol-Journal, no one is really sure who submitted the bill. State Rep. Joe Seiwert was heard discussing the bill, but — and I may be being generous — seems confused about what it actually does. According to the Capitol-Journal:

Seiwert indicated the bill would allow colleges to have policies that would allow employees to use their titles.

“If you’re going to put your name on something, it has to have a policy saying you can do it. That’s all the bill does. So if the university has a policy that anybody can write a letter using the university’s name as a credential for credibility, you’re fine,” Seiwert said.

OK! So no worries then! Except that’s not what the bill says at all. In fact, it says just the opposite. This bill requires all public colleges and technical schools in the state to “adopt and implement, or require to be implemented, a policy and plan which prohibits an employee from providing or using such employee’s official title when authoring or contributing to a newspaper opinion column.”

It gets weirder. Not only does it require universities throughout the state to stop their employees from using their titles in editorials, they are only required to do so when it’s a matter of public concern. Specifically, university employees can’t use their titles if they are expressing an opinion about an elected official, a political candidate or any matter pending before the legislature or any other public body in the state.

So I guess if the chair of the political science department at the University of Kansas wants to complain about all the dog poop piling up in his front yard, he can use his title. If he wants to discuss rising political representation or something he might have studied, nope.

This is all very perplexing. What would cause someone to submit a bill that, if passed, would impede the ability of educated people to speak on the very topics about which they are educated, and, furthermore, makes it harder for regular lay folks to separate the wheat from the chaff?

According to Courthouse News, it could be because university professors have been getting more vocal about their criticisms of governmental policies and elected officials. Political science professor Dr. Chapman Rackaway belongs to an organization called Insight Kansas, a blog run by a group of university professors that specializes in analysing Kansas politics. Opinions from that blog turned up in letters to newspapers. Rackaway believes that this bill is designed to combat this type of speech.

There’s really no proof of that other than circumstance, and maybe it’s just a coincidence. But intentional or not, this bill could hamper the public’s ability to get good information on important issues and it could make it harder for knowledgeable people to get that information out there.

Not only is this bad policy. There could be constitutional problems, as well. In Pickering v. Board of Education, a public school teacher was fired for writing a letter to the editor that was critical of the head of the school board. The Supreme Court said that the teacher couldn’t be fired for that unless her letter contained knowing or reckless falsehoods.

This bill doesn’t fall neatly into the Pickering analysis. The state isn’t technically keeping university employees from speaking, just from using their job title while they do it. But the job title is what makes us listen. We shouldn’t judge opinions based solely on the credentials of the people who spout them, but it’s perfectly OK to take an opinion on climate change from a Ph.D. climatologist more seriously than the opinion of someone who hasn’t spent their lives studying that type of thing.

This bill is a muzzle, and it makes public officials look fragile. And if they are fragile enough to be broken by harsh words, maybe it’s time to vote the out.

http://www.care2.com/causes/kansas-lawmakers-seek-to-muzzle-university-employees.html

..

[starroute]

1. Sounds like one of those bills ALEC writes and hands to legislators

I don't know what's really going on here -- but the fact that the legislator "seems confused" about what the bill actually says suggests it was written for him. And that means either ALEC or someone like them.