The car company Ford honored Jonathan Butler this week with a Freedom Award, despite the University of Missouri student activist’s controversial comments about women, low-income workers and drugs.
Earlier this month, Heat Street broke news about some of the disparaging comments that Butler, who led student protests at the university last fall, had posted in blogs and videos several years earlier.
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In one blog post, Butler, the son of a millionaire railroad executive, admitted to chronic theft, saying he would “ideally” be caught and “beat like Rodney King.” On one of his videos, Butler and a guest discuss “male and female: which is better,” holding forth at length about how “ratchet women,” a derogatory term for women who are loose, lie. In other videos, he sings about crack cocaine and discusses how capitalism and America “piss me off.”
Before the awards, neither Ford nor the Charles H. Wright Museum, a co-presenter of the honor, responded to questions from Heat Street about the decision, despite numerous phone calls and emails to the contacts listed on the news release announcing Butler’s selection as recipient of the courage award.
The Ford Freedom Awards, held in Detroit, drew celebrities including musician Usher and former NFL player Jerome Bettis.
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After the award ceremony, a spokesman for Ford said in an email that Butler was chosen as an honoree after “the committee looked at his decision to go on a seven-day hunger strike to address racist incidents on a major college campus, an act that brought widespread attention to the issue.”
The Ford rep did not respond to questions about Butler’s sexist, classist, racist and ageist comments. Ford’s group vice president described the Courage Award recipients as “true unsung heroes,” according to the Detroit News.
Since Butler rose to national prominence last fall during protests at the University, he’s delivered half-a-dozen speeches, including events at Harvard and Duke law schools, as well as the keynote address at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration.
MORE: Inside the Fallout at Mizzou
After Heat Street’s investigation into Butler’s social-media presence, the celebrity-talent booker All American Speakers apparently dropped him, removing his page, which had been active just days earlier.
Two days after our story ran, Butler appeared to respond on Twitter, writing that “Me 5 years ago ≠ me today.” Since then, he’s taken down his blog and deleted his Twitter account.
The University of Missouri is still struggling after the protests captured national attention last fall. It prompted a backlash from donors, alumni and sports fans.
In part because of that negative publicity, undergraduate enrollment dropped nearly 25 percent this year, a plunge one reporter compared to New Orleans’ Tulane after Hurricane Katrina. Mizzou shut down two dorms in anticipation of the smaller incoming class, also accelerating the scheduled closure of two more. The school’s budget has shrunk by $32.5 million.
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During the chaos last fall, Mizzou did not enforce policies that forbid protests that disrupt campus operations and prohibit sleeping overnight on the campus outside of dorms. As the Columbia Tribune reported this week, the university is expected to enforce these rules more stringently going forward.
