No Problem But I Wish He Would Cut the Bullshit
Below is my reply to my Colleague’s request. That, in turn, is followed by his original email request, “Open comments on your blog.”
Please Note: His request comes in the wake of an Hunter College Senate Committee decision to reverse my department’s grade appeals committee decision to give a final grade of B to a student whom I flunked for cheating. The worse case of cheating I ever had at Hunter, Rutgers University – New Brunswick campus and LIU Brooklyn campus. I did rebuke the D:F/M committee, somewhat, suggesting that certain members recuse themselves for academic indiscretions and kinkiness (the indiscretions and kinkiness will most likely be described in later blog posts).
Another note: Colleague Shore uses faux rhetorical devices, which should be familiar to those who have jousted with him on Hunter campus listservs but probably won’t be to “outsiders.”
More about that later.
Reply to Colleague Shore:
1) The comments were shut off a long time ago because everyone who had been posting on the site, especially students enrolled in my classes, moved on to Facebook. My students didn’t like the requirement that their posts had to be free of bad grammar, punctuation errors, misspellings, typos, syntax, etcetera. They expected me to copyedit their posts, which I did for that group I took to the Democratic National Convention in Denver when Obama was nominated to be President. Facebook, they made clear to me, offered them more freedom for how they wanted to express themselves. I didn’t care much about their opinions in their posts, I just wanted them to express themselves well, sans bad grammar, et. al.
The mass exodus left me to deal with spam and what looked to me as spam attacks, so, I eventually turned off comments since it had become rare for the site to get what I considered a sincere request to post.
2) Regarding your comments, “I read your Wordblog regularly, as I do other department publications, and read that you are a supporter of Freedom of Speech and a strong opponent of censorship and bullying. I support all of these,” I also am a strong opponent of bigotry and racism, especially when it occurs in the Department of Film and Media Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York.
I’ve told you and others, as well as have written and posted on campus listservs, that I “appreciated” your comments wherever they appeared because I believed many on the lists knew of or at least had suspicions about your idiosyncratic proclivities or where you were coming from and knew what you were and because I knew you would put your feet in your big mouth – over and over and over again, in essence, corroborating what I had been posting about the department.
You were the only one in the department who has made upfront comments at department meetings, like, QMFE, “the department can’t have standards for its students because that would negatively impact our black student majors.” You and I know that others felt that way and probably spoke that way in private conversations, but there you were putting it on the table at department meetings. Priceless. There are other comments of yours that I cherish because they are revelatory about you and the department. Keep up the good work.
So: We haven’t had a Collegial relationship for years, that’s a fact and not a complaint, and that’s solely because of your belligerence and your chairing of the D:F/M grade appeals committee a while back. Your comment about being a “strong opponent of censorship and bullying” is a lie, especially regarding censorship. You’ve been actively involved in supporting censorship on Hunter-L, the College listserv, that is, censorship directed at me for writing about the debauchery in our department.
When I get an email from you, like the one that I’m responding to now, I know it’s an element of a ploy or a stratagem for another episode of academic debauchery in the department. So, I suspect that you and Tim and maybe others are up to something. And, of course, your pitiful and insipid sophistry with all its prevarications is insulting and boring.
You and Tim and others could start blogs or Facebook pages to address my postings if that’s a serious concern. Or, you and Tim and others can email me laments or comments or responses and I will review them for posting, similar to how comments are moderated at the New York Times, as an example. I am really serious about giving serious consideration to proposed blog posts from Colleagues.
I also believe that you and Tim and/or others should bring this matter up at a faculty meeting. I’ve tried a few times in the past to do this, that is, the rancor between me and the bigots, racists, bullies and practitioners of Academic Indiscretion and Un-Collegilaity in the department, and my requests have never made it on the agenda for discussion at department meetings.
So, send me your “stuff” that you would like to see posted. And I will do the best that I can to consider publishing it. As always, transparency is very important.
Best,
GM
Larry Shore’s Original Email:
From: Larry Shore [lshorel@optimum.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 12:14 PM
To: Greggory w Morris
Subject: Open comments on your blogDear Gregg
I read your Wordblog regularly, as I do other department publications, and read that you are a
supporter of Freedom of Speech and a strong opponent of censorship and bullying. I support all of these.I am therefore requesting that in order to uphold these principles, and to be consistent, that you open the https://blog.hunterword.com/ to comments.
It is simply not right and fair in a world of a market place of ideas that you are able to take ongoing potshots at the FM faculty on your blog without anyone, including the faculty, being able to reply.
You are entitled to your views but others should be able to reply.
I wont even go into all the various attacks – without any evidence- you direct at a number of us.
It is a matter of funadamental fairness and the free flow of information. No one channel can be allowed to dominate if it is the only channel.
None of us have blogs like you attached to a “college online newspaper” which attack you.
To not allow responses is nothing other than censorship of alternate views. The free Flow of Information
requires a two way flow of information so that people can evaluate the arguments and make their own decisions.For you to use your blog for ongoing attacks on colleagues with numerous undocumented accusations,
without allowing a right of reply is nothing other than a type of bullying.I have read many of your posts about bullying and your actions qualify.
Some examples:
A Wajngurt snippet: “Elizabeth Farrington, an expert on women in higher education, defines campus bullying as behavior at colleges and universities that tends “to threaten, to intimidate, to humiliate or to isolate members of the working university environment [and] that undermines reputation or job performance.” It occurs frequently …”
Bullying is an escalating process in which the person who is bullied is in an inferior position. Bullying in the workplace is an act of aggression, and it is associated with high stress levels and lack of collegiality. The bullying employer demeans, humiliates, and intimidates employees as individuals.
So I look forward to you living up to your opposition to censorship and opening your blog to comments.
Yours sincerely
Larry Shore
Gregg Morris, editor of the WORD and this site.
This logo of Colleagues, including some who have retired, complicit with or supportive of phony Violence in the Workplace complaints filed in D:F/M. This is being revised and any Colleague who believes he/she has been poorly portrayed should contact me.
Tags: Academic Bullying, Andrew Lund, Arnold Gibbons, Bernard Stein, Billy d Herman, campus bullying, Carolyn Kane, Christa Davis Acampora, Greggory w Morris, Gustavo Mercado, HUnter College Faculty Delegate Assembly, Hunter College Ombuds Office, Hunter College Senate, Isabel c Pinedo, Ivone Margulies, James Roman, Joe McElhaney, Joel Zuker, Karen Hunter, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Martin Lucas, Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, New York Healthy Workplace Advocates, Peter Parisi, Ricardo Miranda, Robert Stanley, S3863/A4965 – The NYS Healthy Workplace Bill, Shanti k Thakur, Steve Gorelick, Stuart Ewen, Tami Gold, Timothy Portlock, Tony Doyle, workplace bullying