BlueShiftRhino wrote:Based on my experience, the best that you can hope for from lobbying UMinn Morris is that PZ will be asked to remove the mentions of the university from his twitter feed and blog and maybe prevented from using university equipment to post. I suppose that it's vaguely possible that they'll make it harder for him to attend conferences (e.g., by not allowing him to miss scheduled classes for such), but that's a long shot. But these aren't nothing, so I won't argue against this.
In terms of what would be best for the US A/S community - and at the risk of using a very bad word - I see widespread "shunning" as the goal. There are two ways to achieve this: widespread grassroots support for it and focused "elite" support for it. Exposing PZ's actions to as wide an audience as possible - thanks, NoelPlum! - is good. Trying to calmly reach out to folks like NdGT, Dawkins, Harris, Nye, etc, is also good. If some folks are doing one of these and some are doing the other, that's great, too.
If your goal is loss-of-tenure and/or the Horde turning on him or something like that, then please send me some of what you're smoking. (Yes, I just revealed that I don't live in two particular states; 47 to go, assholes.)
ps. I want to be Karen Straughan when I grow up
He had to remove his UMM employer references from Pharyngula. That was in the days of him being hosted by SEED (before it changed its name to SciBlogs). That's been the sole action UMM has taken over all these years on all the horseshit he's pulled.
This morning he's bagging on The
Morris North Star again. The
Morris North Star is a crappy little student paper that he encouraged people to take and throw away in order squelch free-speech and dissenting views on the UMM campus because it espouses 'conservative' (which he labels as racist) views.
The Freezepage is here (if I did it right):
http://www.freezepage.com/1412940516ANZPGFNOCV
NOTHING HAPPENED.
So, all the "We gotta do something so let's harass him back through work" people really need to consider the evidence that their course of action ain't gonna do shit and he's gonna be right back where he was doing the same shit as ever AND GIVING HIM FUCKING VICTIM POINTS. I mean, beyond shooting him and making him a martyr, I don't think there is a (possibly) worse or least effective course of action as you play into his "I"m warrior, look at them try to get me for speaking truth to power" bullshit he does.
OTOH, if you just keep the pressure up in making him a pariah, maybe he goes the way of Joe McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, Father Coughlin, etc., etc., etc. He'll never be gone. But he'll be marginalized and contained, kind of like a chronic, but non-fatal, disease.
