Maybe someone from the Dispatch reads CTH??? This is from today's front page.
Taavi
Free-speech fights flare on campuses
Reading list at OSU Mansfield prompts latest round of debate
Friday, April 21, 2006
Kathy Lynn Gray
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
A tongue-in-cheek suggestion that students at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus read a book by an ultraconservative author has landed a school librarian in the middle of a free-speech debate.
It’s a debate that has cropped up on several Ohio campuses this spring, from Kent State University to Capital University.
In recent days, however, the librarian’s case has stirred the most controversy.
It began as a committee of Mansfield faculty and staff members tried to decide which book each incoming student would be asked to read before classes started.
When Scott Savage, a librarian on the committee, noticed that all the books that were initially suggested had a liberal bent, he suggested in an e-mail that the committee consider four rightwing books.
"I was making a point. I want us to be aware of our biases," Savage said yesterday.
One of the books he had suggested in jest, The Marketing of Evil, by David Kupelian, was attacked in e-mails by several professors on the committee as homophobic.
English teacher JF Buckley wrote in an e-mail to all faculty members: "You have made me fearful and uneasy being a gay man on this campus ... I no longer feel safe doing my job. I am being harassed."
The Mansfield faculty members met March 13 and voted to ask for an investigation.
Several days later, Buckley and English teacher Norman Jones filed a complaint against Savage with Ohio State’s Office of Human Resources, alleging harassment based on sexual orientation.
OSU investigator T. Glenn Hill found April 6 that the complaint had no merit.
Although exonerated, Savage has filed a complaint with Ohio State against Jones and Buckley, saying they falsely accused him of harassment.
"It’s an academic-freedom issue," he said. "Speech is chilled by investigations of people for complaints that never should have been filed. That chills speech in and of itself."
Several news organizations and Web sites have picked up Savage’s story, and Savage said he has received about 150 supportive e-mails.
"I was smeared. It was a nightmare. Sexual harassment is the most toxic thing you can accuse someone of."
Evelyn Freeman, dean of the Mansfield campus, said the situation is unfortunate, and she has asked faculty and staff members in an e-mail to foster "an atmosphere where students, staff and faculty are free to express opinions and where different points of view are not only tolerated, but welcomed."
Buckley and Jones did not return phone calls yesterday.
The issue of freedom of speech on campus also cropped up at Capital University this week.
Alex Tornero, a senior from Reynoldsburg, had arranged for former homosexual Alan Chambers to speak on campus Wednesday about how Jesus Christ could change a homosexual to a heterosexual.
Tornero, his family and friends were paying for Chambers’ visit.
Tornero, 24, said a university official had told him that advertising Chambers’ talk might violate the school’s humandignity policy, but he heard nothing further from school officials.
However, about 200 students had planned to protest the speech, and the campus Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender group planned to attend and ask pointed questions.
Chambers canceled the appearance because of an ill family member.
Tornero said yesterday he feels his right to free speech was protected at Capital, and he doesn’t object to the planned protest.
"That’s their prerogative. This is America," he said.
Senior Dan Coleman, of Macedonia, led the opposition to the speech.
"We didn’t agree with the content and felt it was time that students stood up and said, ‘It’s OK to be who you are.’ "
However, Coleman, 21, said he appreciates that Capital allows such speakers on campus so that students can learn from a variety of viewpoints.
"We tend to have more of an inclusive approach than an exclusive approach," Capital spokeswoman Nicole Johnson said.
Kent State University has been dealing for several years with the case of a Muslim professor, Julio Pino, who calls himself "the most dangerous Muslim in America."
Pino, a tenured associate history professor, angered some faculty members in 2002 when he wrote a column in the school newspaper that was an ode to a Palestinian suicide bomber. Pino called the bomber a martyr.
English professor Lewis Fried called on the university to fire Pino, but Kent State President Carol Cartwright said at the time that the school supports the free exchange of ideas.
Pino now has a blog on the Internet where he writes that U.S. servicemen are butchers who massacre Iraqis and urges readers to "join the Islamic resistance."
Pino said yesterday he had no comment.
kgray@dispatch.com 
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Topic: OSU Librarian attacked by profs
