Editorialist Exposes Pro-Homosexual Prof's Classroom Bias
by Jim Brown
October 20, 2004
(AgapePress) - A conservative columnist says he is using the First Amendment to expose the personal ideological bigotry of a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and show that the so-called "Queer Studies" movement is a sham.
Cal State English professor Cliff Snider has come under fire for telling students they could not write argument papers on subjects like abortion, same-sex marriage, and other topics in which he says there is "no other side apart from chauvinistic, religious, or bigoted opinions and pseudo-science." Townhall.com columnist Dr. Mike Adams wrote a column criticizing Snider for his liberal bias, after which the instructor threatened to sue the conservative editorialist.
Snider charged that Adams had committed copyright infringement by "illegally" publishing portions of the professor's assignments. But the Townhall.com writer says Cal State-Long Beach's self-proclaimed "queer literary critic" needs First Amendment sensitivity training.
The website to which Snider referred as his website, Adams points out, is a California State University, Long Beach Internet site. "To have the audacity to suggest that he somehow is in ownership of a public university website was astounding," the columnist says, "but the other thing was his lack of familiarity with the fair use doctrine under copyright law. For academic purposes you can quote portions of a person's work for the purpose of offering critique."
Adams asserts that Snider, "in his emotional overreaction to the situation," is demonstrating "a profound ignorance of the First Amendment and a profound disdain for academic freedom -- except for instances where he is expressing his own views in front of a captive audience of people he controls."
A Long Beach student has filed a complaint against Snider for using an hour and a half of his English class instructional time to talk about his disapproval of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Adams says the Cal State-Long Beach English professor is obsessed with sexually perverse literature and his own hatred for Bush and wants to stifle the academic freedom of students who disagree with his views.