Meet Prof. Click

Feminace, ,

…because I haven’t.  Met her, that is.  But a friend of hers has written this amazing post, telling us just who this women is.

The fucking narrative of her as some sort of free speech bully, shoving a “poor” student (who, need I remind you, couldn’t wait for a fucking press release from his ‘subjects’) and even calling for ‘muscle’ to help her smash his freeze peaches, is of course, bullshit.

But let’s focus on Prof. Click now.

A similar incongruity and ignorance confronts us when reckoning with media coverage of my friend and colleague Melissa Click, the recently fired Mizzou professor accused of behaving badly while attempting to protect student activists who rightly continue to insist that black lives matter. A video of Melissa resisting an unannounced student photojournalist went “viral” and was framed as a violation of the first amendment; how soon we forget the right of “the people peaceably to assemble.”

For her actions, she has endured rape and death threats, because that’s just how women who piss of reactionaries are treated nowadays, and tryhards ‘splaining the First Amendment, while they can’t figure out how the free speech actually fucking works.

For many politicians and pundits, Melissa has become the stereotypical “liberal professor” who brainwashes students into left-leaning ideologies when, ironically, the Melissa I know is far from an ideologue: as a scholar and teacher of communication and critical thought, Melissa’s job — like mine — is to help students think about and voice their concerns thoughtfully. Whereas many politicians and pundits characterize Melissa as impeding free speech, I know she was actually trying to promote and protect such speech for students of color. Ironic, indeed. 

This is how an ally behaves – protecting the actual marginalized.

(Photo Credit: Lacy Rushin of statuslabs.com)

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Meet Prof. Click

About the author

Feminist, womanist, atheist, asexual writer of erotica. Liberal, progressive, non taker of fuckery. Owned by a cat named Weasel. Social Justice Alchemist, turning spoons into rude ragebombs. Will talk about abortion to your group for food.
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6 thoughts on “Meet Prof. Click”

  2. kimleder
    2

    It annoys me that the Right and the MSM (the same thing IMHO) have basically succeeded in framing the encounter as a free speech issue.

    Not to mention they endlessly repeat the lie that she ‘shoved’ the intruder and called for ‘muscle’ to deal with him.

    1. Feminace
      2.1

      Seriously.
      The ‘shove’ was a push to his camera. He barely moved.
      And the ‘muscle” she called for was for more people to block him.

      But she’s in the wrong.

  3. uncleebeneezer
    3

    It’s really disappointing (though unsurprising) that these two bits were never by the media in their free speech narrative:

    Click: Well things moved very quickly that day. Things felt hectic. And I see myself in the video being very flustered and unprepared to handle that situation. I definitely would’ve slowed down. I would’ve had a more respectful conversation with the person I encountered (Mark Schierbecker). The person I encountered broke through this spontaneous circle that had formed around the students to give them some time and he didn’t introduce himself the way the professional journalists I had encountered that day commonly introduced themselves. Given that the students were under threat, I was concerned about who he was. So my intention was to protect the students, but I could have done that in a much more peaceful way.

    And

    Click: Well I think there’s a lot of the context of the story that hasn’t been reported. Part of that the students had been speaking to the media all day. They asked for a temporary break to prepare for a press conference they would have in front of the press that day. And so I do believe the students had a right to ask for that quiet moment to plan, to prepare for the press conference.

    I don’t remember either of these being reported at the time, and I followed the story fairly closely. It probably would have made no difference with the haters but I’ve seen quite a few people who normally do better, who got sucked into the free speech narrative and these points being raised and highlighted at the time, might have done a decent job of preventing that.

    1. Feminace
      3.1

      It’s a goddamned shame indeed, especially when Schierbecker himself admits in the Skepticon 8 video that he just didn’t want to wait for the press conference. Such entitlement just disgusts me.

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