Blogger wins free speech battle, Cal Poly dean loses

FREE SPEECH! THIS IS AMERICA, JACK!

Some of you know reading Cal Coast News that I was sued recently for many blog posts directly related to the Jubail University – Cal Poly fiasco. Oh, don’t worry about me, it turned out really fine and I am ‘richer’ for the experience! It probably makes some sense to provide a very abridged version of what transpired. However, if you want more details you can search it on my blog (rogerfreberg.com/blog) or CalCoastNews.com.

THE SWEET CAL POLY – SAUDI ARABIA CLOSET COURTSHIP

The discussion of the Cal Poly – Saudi Arabia educational effort for Jubail University brought up many concerns within and without the academic community: 1) Could a public university negotiate with another country (Saudi Arabia), 2) Would women, Jews and gays have the opportunity to teach in Saudi Arabia or would participation be restricted as has been sterotypical 3) Were Cal Poly degrees going to be awarded to Saudi citizens completing only a partial college program and 4) Why wasn’t there any real review of the proposed program internally or externally by the Faculty Curriculum Committee or other interested Cal Poly ‘stakeholders’?

By the way, do I really need to talk about Saudi Arabia? This is a simple country with simple punishments, like of removing body parts for the sins of jay walking, back talking females and western ideas. A country that only utilizes 50% of their population intellectually, politically, socially and economically is troubled and destined ultimately to fail.

Cal Poly earns national attention once again. It was uncovered that discussions between Cal Poly’s Administration and Saudi Arabia seemed to have almost reached competition when the university community finally got wind of it. Naturally, this raised a lot of displeasure and suspicion. One openly lesbian student, supported by both major student political parties, ran for Cal Poly student body President on a platform calling for a public review of the project and won election. Discussion on the Saudi issue went viral with many national news and blogging groups sharing all of our original concerns. It is safe to say that Cal Poly was once again savaged by the publicity and their reaction with a lack of transparency did nothing to help their case.

What happened next? The Jubail University project either died a natural death, or maybe, it just went underground–I really don’t know. My hope is that Cal Poly will be more forthcoming and transparent in the future, but there are no checks and balances in this system, so another Jubail can happen again. Let’s just say, I have very little ‘hope.’ There is a reason that Cal Poly continues to have problems. Whether they are personnel, strategic or economic challenges, many public administrators are just not used to facing these things in their workday life. Managers in the private sector face these problems everyday and consequently, they tend to measure up when put to the challenge. I have always felt that the managerial approach at Cal Poly was a simple one: for a little problem use a little stick and for a big problem use a bigger one.

There are more than one way to manage public relations, people, situations and crisis, but it was Cal Poly’s short sighted myopic approach that eventually did them in. Academic administrators are often not quite used to the realities of public scrutiny, freedom of speech, or the very free internet. In any event, when the actions of Cal Poly administrators were exposed, they behaved I believe in the classic style of the Nixonian White House; deny, evade, fabricate and – finally – panic. Not discussing the truth is an all too common response to a troubling situation.

BTW, I guess the Saudi’s didn’t know Cal Poly had a pig farm? I thought that would have killed the deal.

REPERCUSSIONS and SLAAP

I don’t know exactly why some administrators feel they were singled out by me on the Jubail project, or by calcoastnews.com in the coverage of the Cal Poly – Saudi engagement; but the failure of the Jubail project did have the positive effect of causing some reshuffling in the administration’s ranks and, eventually I believe, this will create a new positive campus climate. In any event, there were obviously some hard feelings; but if they were looking for someone to blame they should’ve looked into the mirror, first, to find the culprit.

This did not stop some very unprofessional things from happening. My wife was angrily confronted by the wife of an administrator, who yelled that my wife should be held responsible for my blog because her photo appears on it. It came to my ears that someone actually suggested she be fired. Silly boys, we’ve already had that dance. What happened next was even more bizarre; I was named in a lawsuit along with Cal Poly and CalCoastNews.com’s Karen Velie for — as near as I could tell – wrongful termination of a Cal Poly administrator. Even though the complaint was with Cal Poly, I was amused to see that most of the writing seemed about me! Wow! I must be powerful and very cool, but then, I always knew that!

There was one piece of humor that tickled me: the case was being wrangled for location, Cal Poly wanted to move the case up to San Luis Obispo from where it was originally filed in Los Angeles. Those representing Cal Poly got all nasty when I wouldn’t go along until my anti-SLAPP suit (already with a court date in L.A.) was heard. They even wanted me to help pay for the move, which was really only a convenience for them, funny boys and girls.

GET SHORTY!

There were a few folks on “the very wacky fringes” that thought “Roger’s gone too far, he’s going to get it now!” These are the same folks that think any speech or an opinion that isn’t consistent with theirs – by definition – is “hate speech.” What they probably didn’t realize is that California leads the way in the protection of “free speech” and “freedom of the press” and that is just the way it is, even reinforcing freedom of blogs on the internet. If you get sued, there is this little thing called an anti-SLAPP suit that you can bring against the person suing you. This legal action forces the person suing you to prove that they have a chance of winning — good luck on that one. If they lose the anti-SLAAP, you recover your legal fees, which of course, we did. In fact, we got a court ordered nice five figure sum! Holy Heritage Financial!

The only question I have now is: do I want another Harley or a used Humvee?

THIS IS AMERICA

So, let me be the first to remind all those would-be censors and say, “This is AMERICA, Jack.”! And let me add that The Bill of Rights and freedom of the press and free speech is something worth defending…. Worth all of us defending, because you never know when your speech may be deemed ‘evil’ and someone might want to censor you or remove a body part!

Without the right to speak freely, all of our rights become meaningless.

Thanks to all those who stood tall.