IS GOOGLE RACIST?
collegian.csufresno.edu
Monday, April 23, 2018
PAGE 6
Fresno State’s Award-Winning Newspaper
EDITORIAL
Will we learn from our mistakes?
CONTROVERSY
Civil rights groups defend Jarrar By Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado @cres_guez
Archives
Lars Maischak, Greg Thatcher and Randa Jarrar. The Collegian’s Editorial Board asks whether we can learn from mistakes by professors who shared their political views on campus or on social media and were criticized for it.
By Collegian Editorial Board @thecollegian
It’s the politics of it all that has us spinning in circles. We have been here before, and we will likely come back to this same place in the future. We can predict that another professor or administrator or even a student will soon face the wrath of online attacks for what they may say or do if it offends political junkies on either side of the spectrum. We find ourselves in a quagmire. It is the result of Fresno State English professor Randa Jarrar’s far left remarks on Twitter calling Barbara Bush a racist who raised a war criminal. Jarrar’s comments are shocking. Some of the responses from the right have been worse. The problem with politics today is that we are not looking to make friends
with strangers online who hold different views – much less make amends after we’ve let out our vitriol. When Jarrar said Bush was a racist who raised a war criminal, we saw no attempts by those who disagreed to understand what she meant and we saw no attempt by Jarrar and her supporters to fix that problem. Instead, the entire situation went into a menacing downward spiral. The question for the Fresno State community is: what, if anything, should we do together to survive this digitized political division that is here to stay? The fact is that social media is a hotbed for political speech and activity and any idea is subject to be torn apart by people next door or some who are thousands of miles away. Mistakes will be made on both ends of the political argument. And we can learn from them. We don’t need to get into arguments over everything. That a professor at a public university criticized the Bush family shouldn’t worry anyone too much. She’s a professor who is tasked with teaching difficult subjects, often some that will make your blood boil. The Bushes are a powerful family. They can take care of themselves, or
they wouldn’t be one of the biggest political dynasties in the United States. John or Jane Doe don’t need to speak for them or even fight their fellow man for them. Two people with different mindsets should be able to come together and explain the differences in their beliefs – even in 2018. There are ways to check power in the biggest and smallest levels of America’s democracy. Those systems will do the hard work for us. There needn’t be a mob of Twitter users attacking a single person for her views when a system is in place to make sure she knows it when she did something wrong. We’d ask for you, the reader, to simmer down and relax. The internet is not going anywhere. Politics is not going anywhere. Your energy is best kept doing things that benefit you and it doesn’t need to be wasted over spilled milk. The next time this online political faction reaches too close to home and you must respond, carefully craft your views. Be modest in your response to different opinions. And more importantly, don’t do it in a place where your thoughts are limited to 280 characters.
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T
he fallout of the tweets sent out by Fresno State English professor Randa Jarrar has continued nearly one week after the controversy
began. But even as the university plans an investigation into Jarrar’s tweets, several civil rights groups are calling for that investigation to stop. Not long after the news that former First Lady Barbara Bush died at 92 last Tuesday, Jarrar wrote on Twitter that she was happy Bush had died. Jarrar called Bush a “racist” who raised a “war criminal.” The responses to those comments were swift. Dozens of people on the social media platform railed against Jarrar and the fact that she taught at Fresno State. That pressure led to a statement from the university that same evening. University President Dr. Joseph Castro distanced the university from Jarrar and said her comments were made as a private citizen and not as a representative of the university. At a news conference last Wednesday, Fresno State assessed how it would move forward as the public outcry began to grow. Jarrar frequently responded to critics that she could not be fired for her tweets against Bush and the way she stated them because she was a tenured professor and therefore protected. Provost Dr. Lynnette Zelezny was asked by the press if that was the case, and she responded by saying that it wasn’t necessarily so. Whether or not Jarrar will be disciplined over the Twitter incident is unclear. Several news outlets also reported that she posted a number to a crisis hotline at Arizona State University and passed it off as her own cell phone number. Zelezny said a university investigation involving the administration, its legal counsel and the California Faculty Association will review the facts in the case. It is unknown if Jarrar has spoken with the university since the online skirmish began. “Fresno State will allow applicable law, policy and requirements of the faculty collective bargaining agreement to unfold,” Zelezny said. “We underscore that we are in motion and that we are taking this matter very seriously.” Though the matter seems to be of concern to the university, Jarrar’s comments are being defended. Several civil rights groups in a letter to Castro asked that the university
See CONTROVERSY, Page 3