Lots of students have protested Milo Yiannopoulos during his appearances at colleges around the country, but now one teacher has filed a formal complaint about the conservative provocateur.
Doctoral student Alan-Michael Weatherford has filed a grievance against the University of Washington for allegedly creating a hostile work environment by allowing Milo to speak on campus in January. The Milo event was canceled after a man was shot in the campus’ Red Square area during the protest.
Weatherford filed the complaint through his labor union, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Though speaking to The College Fix this week, a law professor said the hostile workplace complaint wasn’t legally actionable because it targets “things which are essential” to his workplace.
Weatherford, a diversity and queer studies instructor, took UW President Ana Mari Cauce to task at a student government meeting last month. In an op-ed for the UW Daily, he claims he was harassed by “three entire 4chan forums dedicated to doxxing [sic]” him. Cauce responded, telling him that these were issues for law enforcement to deal with, not the school administration.
Weatherford claims he made himself a target of Milo’s fans after he supposedly organized a “day of resistance” by organizing “peaceful teach-ins” at the library across the venue where Milo held his event. Weatherford and the other students he assembled wore face masks and marched to protest Milo. He was caught on camera attempting to block someone from filming his group.
In his UW Daily op-ed, he wrote: “This is not about resolving some abstract question regarding whether and how we should tolerate bigoted speech in a democracy. This is about the concrete question of whether you are willing to take the measures necessary to protect my safety and my ability to do the work I came to the University of Washington to do.”
The UW’s department of Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media released a statement supported his remarks.
But George Washington University Law Prof. John Banzhaf told The College Fix that dealing with different opinions are just a part of the job.
“Most would agree that an important purpose served by a university is to permit its students to be exposed to new and often unpopular viewpoints, often by inviting (or having student groups invite) them to speak on campus,” he said in an e-mail. He said filing the grievance was nothing more than a “heckler’s veto,” where the threat of hecklers will cause a university to stifle speech they disagree with.
Acting on Weatherford’s grievance would be like “acting on complaints from doctors that they may be exposed to blood with the AIDS virus,” he wrote.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.