1) This is a quick and frankly merciless thread on Babson’s language of ‘thorough investigation’ as the process by which they justified firing a professor for protected extramural speech.
2) The purpose of an *investigation* is to determine the facts of a case. However, the facts of this case were not in dispute, nor is fact-finding in this case a relevant justification for firing a professor for speech.
3) According to @babson’s statement, the professor’s post was deemed threatening, and that was the basis of the decision to fire. Determination of whether the speech constitutes a threat is therefore the relevant process for justifying the decision.
4) The language of ‘thorough investigation is for this reason mere smokescreen, also simple bullshit. The question is a matter of interpreting the words and determining whether they’re actually threatening.
6) So my question is: who were the personnel involved in the ‘thorough investigation’ that led to this professor’s firing for obviously satirical speech? Given that, as I’ve explained, ‘investigation’ is just bullshit-speak for ‘reading,’ who performed this reading?
7) What were their credentials as readers? Where’s their work? Where’s their detailed, evidence-based explanation for their interpretation that the professor was seriously threatening Kim Kardashian’s house?
8) If you fire a professor for speech, the burden’s on you to show your work, to show your evidence. Until the administration at @babson does this, every student there is entitled to hold them up as an example of making unsubstantiated claims. F-paper. Set a better example.
9) How can students be expected to learn, to make evidence-based arguments, to be careful readers and critical thinkers, when their administration models illiteracy? /end
