Michigan Republicans Want Professor Fired for Saying She Hates GOP for Being Intolerant

By Jack Lessenberry, Michigan Radio

19 December 14

here’s a reason college professors historically were given tenure. It was so they couldn’t be fired for politically unpopular views.

There have been times when intellectuals were fired, persecuted, even killed for unpopular views. Views such as the once-horrifying ideas that blacks were the intellectual and social equals of whites or that women should have the right to vote.

Well, every social and scientific advance has started with an unpopular idea, back to that crazy guy who thought the world went around the sun. That doesn’t mean lots of controversial ideas aren’t stupid.

Many are. But what makes America special is that we have a complete right to express them, thanks to the First Amendment to our Constitution. “Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech or the press,” et cetera.

Well, apparently state Republican Party Chair Bobby Schostak hasn’t read the Constitution. He and other Republicans want University of Michigan Professor Susan Douglas, a nationally respected communications scholar, forced to resign for a column on a website called In These Times.

The column begins: “I hate Republicans.

“I can’t stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz … or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform, or championing fetal ‘personhood.’"

While this has given some people fits, it seems clear that many of those denouncing the column haven’t actually read much of it. Schostak is clearly one of these.

Forgetting the First Amendment, he says “it should not be tolerated by the University of Michigan.” And he denounces Douglas for supposedly “isolating students because of their political ideology.”

She doesn’t do that.

Douglas’s column is in fact a denunciation of polarization and intolerance. She blames today’s Republican Party for being most guilty of this, and puts forth evidence to support this claim.

But she clearly isn’t saying she hates Republicans in the way Nazis hated Jews. She hates the spirit of intolerance, dogmatism, and intellectual rigidity coming from so many Republicans today.

Years ago, she notes, she worked for the Republican leader in the Rhode Island State Senate, and so admired and respected him she could have imagined marrying him had he been younger.

Today, the nation is far more polarized, something she laments. Her column is a compelling argument that the GOP is most guilty of this. Douglas ends by saying she misses the moderate, rational, reasonable Republicans she once knew, “and the civilized discourse and political accomplishments they made possible.”

You can agree, or not.

But she has every right to say this. Schostak is a paid political functionary, but U of M regent Andrea Fischer Newman, who also denounced the column for what it was not, should know better.

Susan Douglas’s most important charge, I think, is that Republicans “have crafted a political identity that rests on a complete repudiation of the idea that the opposing party and its followers have any legitimacy at all.”

Anyone who watches Fox News knows what she means. Republicans have every right to take issue with Douglas. But it is hard to see how they can unless they seriously address this charge as well.

ALSO SEE: Obama Admits Cuba Policy Failed

Obama Finally Acts Like a Nobel Laureate

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

18 December 14

ormalizing relations with Cuba was an act worthy of consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m not saying he deserves the prize, too many other actions by Obama led to more violence and suffering in the world.

The diplomatic thaw can lead to more peace and justice if it is the first step. The most important move that can be made would be to lift the cruel and unjust embargo against Cuba. For over 50 years the embargo has made a poor country poorer.

The failed policy has not weakened the Castro Government, instead it has exacerbated poverty in what was one of the most vibrant economies prior to the Cuban Revolution.

According to the Smithsonian: “By the late ’50s, U.S. financial interests included 90 percent of Cuban mines, 80 percent of its public utilities, 50 percent of its railways, 40 percent of its sugar production and 25 percent of its bank deposits – some $1 billion in total. American influence extended into the cultural realm, as well. Cubans grew accustomed to the luxuries of American life. They drove American cars, owned TVs, watched Hollywood movies and shopped at Woolworth’s department store. The youth listened to rock and roll, learned English in school, adopted American baseball and sported American fashions.”

For the Cuban elite and American investors all was great. But for many in Cuba, the resources were concentrated in the hands of an elite class that was enjoying life with their partners, the American Robber Barons. The inequality led to the Cuban Revolution. When the Batista regime fell and American-owned resources were nationalized by Castro, the capitalists in Washington decided that they would do all they could to make sure the revolution failed.

The Cuba policy reminds me of the Republican strategy for dealing with Barack Obama’s presidency. They did everything they could to make sure more Americans would suffer and blame the President for their pain.

The US embargo on Cuba was designed to inflict pain on the Cuban people and force them into regime change.

Regime change never came. Some would argue that the embargo helped Fidel Castro unite the Cuban people against the “real” boogeyman in Washington.

President Obama, while not fully lifting the embargo, did make some moves that will increase commerce between the two nations. While these actions should applauded, we must be vigilant. A return to the day when Cuba’s economy is dominated by US corporations is not what the Cuban people need. Exploitation is not the answer, but if you listen to Obama’s cabinet it may be exactly what they seek.

In a statement released by the State Department, Secretary of State John Kerry said: “This new course will not be without challenges, but it is based not on a leap of faith but on a conviction that it’s the best way to help bring freedom and opportunity to the Cuban people, and to promote America's national security interests in the Americas, including greater regional stability and economic opportunities for American businesses.”

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said: “These historic actions by the President chart a new course for our country’s relationship with Cuba and its people. It will improve the lives of millions and will help spur long overdue economic and political reform across the country. Expanding economic engagement between the Cuban people and the American business community will be a powerful catalyst that will strengthen human rights and the rule of law.”

So buyer beware, while increased economic activity between the United States and Cuba could be a good thing, we must make sure it does’t lead more exploitation by Cuba’s powerful neighbors.

President Obama said in Cuba yesterday: “There’s a complicated history between the United States and Cuba. I was born in 1961 – just over two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, and just a few months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, which tried to overthrow his regime. Over the next several decades, the relationship between our countries played out against the backdrop of the Cold War, and America’s steadfast opposition to communism. We are separated by just over 90 miles. But year after year, an ideological and economic barrier hardened between our two countries.”

Those differences have hardened for many Cuban Americans, but at the same time younger Cubans living in the United States support the president’s actions. They are the future, voices of hope and reconciliation. Let’s not listen to the voices of the past, being amplified by politicians like Marco Rubio who I am convinced express the view of an ideological fraction of the Cuban American community that will soon become the minority.

If we follow the direction the Obama administration is taking on Cuba, one day liberal Cuban politicians will start prevailing in South Florida and extremists like Marco Rubio will be out of office.

In a statement on Cuban television, Raul Castro called on President Obama to lift the embargo through executive action. Many are saying it will require an act of Congress. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait on the “just say no” Congress – since this policy was initiated by Obama, we know they will do everything they can to reverse it.

The Cuban and American people are pawns in the GOP’s political strategy. They will continue to do everything they can to make sure the Cuban and American people suffer, in hopes that they will blame the Castros and Obama. Let’s instead support the president’s Cuban policy and point the finger at the cruel politics of the Republican Party.

Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.