Jason Kilborn Part 4: Hey Maybe He's Just An Asshole? It just keeps getting so much worse. Just wait until you hear unfiltered Kilborn and his Jesus complex. There are also some incredibly embarrassing details about the "settlement" he and the school came to. Not only embarrassing for Kilborn, but also for thefire.org. If you didn't know, thefire.org actually sucks. Not only will you hear some of that, future parts contain way more about how much The Fire sucks! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress Green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 13, and that's my co-host, Remy.
I'm Thomas Smith.
Remy's on the show for a debunk.
Naps.
Do babies need them?
Remy's here to say no.
Yeah.
We're going to learn from the Remster.
I'm joined by Lydia Smith, and we are forced to record at a time when all of our kids are around.
So this is the best we could do.
You may hear from Remy.
Okay.
So we're about to go into part four of Jason Kilbourn.
It just keeps getting more and more fun, all kinds of good stuff.
But we wanted to jump in here to make a few little announcements.
Actually pretty cool announcements.
First little announcement.
We've said this some places.
I don't remember where.
Lydia is now full-time with Sirius pod, where there's woke and Sirius inquiries only in different forms.
Yes.
Congratulations.
Thank you for hiring me.
I really appreciate the opportunity.
Yeah, I looked at all the applicants and it's actually a totally blind resume.
Is this a sound financial decision?
Absolutely no idea.
But is it the only decision that could possibly be made?
Yes, because I simply, people may have noticed, just cannot keep up with it anymore.
It's too much work, too much for one person to do.
Back before I had a family, I could do anything, I could accomplish anything.
All I'd do is just not talk to you, and then just feel like, I'll be working, and then just go work.
But now I have too many people to not be able to talk to.
That doesn't work.
And so I found that I just desperately need help.
And then it just so turned out that Lydia, as she started taking this on a little bit to help out, is just incredibly good at it.
Not only behind the mic, but off the mic, is just an incredible influence on the company, as it were.
It's just the kind of thing where it has to be done.
I cannot continue creating all the podcasts that I want and need to create without you.
And so that's the decision that we're making.
Lydia has left her job and she's now full time along with me.
Yeah.
And that's a scary thing.
And so if you don't like us being very scared, Please go to patreon.com slash where there's woke or patreon.com slash serious pod and support the show.
If it's something you were, you know, on the fence about, if it's something you just hadn't gotten around to, by all means, please do so.
Or, you know, if you, if you were going to do a pledge at it to get, you know, up in the tiers and get the bonus stuff, that'd be good.
Speaking of bonus stuff, we've got some offerings.
You may have noticed there was a monthly hangout that we were supposed to do on both shows.
You know, it's a newer thing.
We're just getting started.
And I, I just had not had the wherewithal.
To get it going, but now that we've got full-time amazing hot employee Lydia Smith.
We're doing that So this will be the first monthly hangout October We're calling it a serious hang and we're gonna combine it for both the shows So because this is a top patron thing, so this is a $5 and up patron event.
This is a very intimate hang and We're going to either answer your questions or, you know, I know how these things work.
I know that we're already paring this down to a small number of super amazing patrons and availability and scheduling being what it is.
If Lydia and I log in as just her and I, we're going to talk about things from behind the scenes.
Like, so research we didn't get to for where there's woke possibly, what we're planning to do.
Yeah.
Irons in the fire.
Real behind the scenes info.
It'll be a lot of fun.
For SIO, we can talk about interviews we've booked or we're trying to book.
Studies we want to cover.
We've got a lot of behind the scenes stuff that'll be really fun.
Peek behind the curtain.
To talk about.
Yeah, we'll bring a curtain and we'll do that.
So that'll be, again, if you'd like to, you know, maybe edit your pledge up a little bit to join us, we would love that.
It's $5 and up patrons on either Patreon or, you know, if it's both, you get to actually come be with us.
Come sit.
Yeah, we have a guest room.
You can just move in.
Just live here.
Yeah.
No, it'll be super fun.
I'm really excited for this.
So it's October 26th.
And we try to do a time that works for as many people as we can.
I know it's hard.
There's so many time zones, but it also has to work for us as in we need people watching our kids while we do it.
So it has to be kind of during the daycare time.
So it's going to be at 3 p.m.
Pacific.
We're hoping that catches some of the like, you know, almost happy hour Pacific time people, but then also East Coast time.
You're off work.
You can have a beer with us or something or a glass of wine.
Yeah.
We're hoping that's a good time.
It's kind of the we think it's the best of all worlds.
And if you're in some other time zone besides those two, well, you're on your own.
Just do whatever you need to do.
That'll be super fun.
There's one more little bonus thing to that, which is our top, top, top patrons, the final tier.
If you would like to join that one, you get to play games with us if you'd like.
Now we'll do a little sign up.
We'll see if there's interest in this.
And we're thinking some code names.
So after this hangout, we will step aside to a private Zoom.
With anyone who wants to play games with us.
Play a little Codenames.
A little Horse Paste.
A little horsepaste.com.
We'll start with that and if, you know, we'll see how it goes.
If people sign up and they want to play something else, we could always play something else.
We'll see.
Yeah.
But that's available to the top patrons.
I'll do a patron post that only you will see for your eyes only.
Don't tell anyone about it.
We'll gauge the interest in that, do a little sign up.
That would be super fun.
So that's a sort of the top level reward there to make sure we are giving our patrons as much as we can because you really do make the show happen.
You give both of us now the ability to do this work.
There's so much more we want to do and so much more we want to look into and accomplish and FOIA.
So many more people we want to FOIA them.
So many FOIAs I want to do.
We want to FOIA the fuck out of everybody.
You're going to get a FOIA, you're going to get a FOIA, you're going to get a FOIA.
FOIA everybody.
So yes, once again, October 26th, that's Thursday apparently, and that'll be our first one and we'll do this every month.
We have scheduled this for right when a Sharks game is, hun, so I've already memorized.
I'm sorry!
So this one's cancelled.
Never mind.
Take everything back.
I didn't consider the shark sketch.
I was looking at all the other calendars.
Missed the hockey one.
Spoiler, they lost.
I already saved myself the time.
Or maybe we play the Sharks game while we're on the Hangout.
Oh, I could do that.
They are literally slated, predicted to be the worst team in the history of the NHL.
I'm not even joking, like they might be the worst team.
That's what everyone's predicting.
So not going to miss much.
Anyway, I'm excited for that.
One more, a little announcement.
This one's actually the giantest of all for where there's WOCUN.
Although Patreon, in their infinite genius, has taken away the ability to actually set a patron goal, which is incredible to me.
I don't, I don't, I do not know what the fuck they're doing over there.
They literally took it away?
Oh yeah, they took it away a few years ago, I think.
It's the dumbest thing, that place.
But anyway, we're going to set a manual patron goal.
We have set a manual patron goal.
This is, listen up, this is actually a big one.
If we hit a thousand patrons, Eli Bosnick is going to come on and do his Gamergate essay.
That's right.
He has written an essay on Gamergate.
He was going to use it for one of his shows, but nobody wanted that noise, I think.
We are the only ones who want to take on that sludge.
And of course, it's not just Eli doing his GamerGate thing.
We also, of course, would do a dub-tee-dub around GamerGate and incorporate Eli's essay into it.
So if we hit a thousand patrons, folks, We're going to do Gamergate and Eli, he's been working on this.
This is not like a casual, he's going to come on and just like spout.
He's been working on a detailed essay.
He literally told me, he's like, yeah, I'm going to make sure it's all like annotated and stuff for the patrons.
So like, that's another thing we'll do is we'll post the annotated version for the top patrons and stuff.
Like this is a serious, this is Eli doing a serious thing.
Big research project.
Yeah.
This is like a real, so patreon.com slash where there's will get us to a thousand and that will happen.
Seriously.
Or Eli just never has to.
He's done all this work and will be like, sorry man, we're just, there's no place to do that.
Gone.
Yeah.
Just throw it away.
Just literally throw it in the trash.
So I am so excited.
Thanks so much to Eli for agreeing to do that.
1,000 patrons.
We can do it.
Don't do it for me.
Do it for Lydia Smith.
Alright, so with those announcements aside, again, the hangout, we'll put all this on Patreon and you'll see the posts, the hangout, the games, the everything, the Gamergate thing, once we hit a thousand patrons, all that aside, let's get to more of why Jason Kilbourn actually just sucks.
He sucks.
If you remember in part one, I read the FIRE thing that's like the him posing like fucking Superman in front of the thing.
They just had their big victory and their victory was they just agreed.
I'll read that line again.
FIRE's new defense fund is here to save college faculty jobs.
And we just closed our first case.
That's August 31st, 2021.
Is that article?
OK.
So what has happened before that is he's received the letter that I just kind of read you some of.
It looks like they met June 18th, quote, to discuss the law school's response to the May 28th letter from the OAE conveying the results of the investigation.
So they met June 18th.
And now here's a letter from July 2nd, essentially putting in writing what they've agreed to do here.
This is pretty important.
The conclusions reached by OAE indicates a need on the law school's part to pursue the following course of action, which involves both A, requirements intended to address OAE's substantiation of conduct constituting a policy violation, and B, recommendations intended to address the matters about which OAE did not substantiate policy violations, but that I would like to address going forward in a collaborative, collegial manner.
So A, here are the requirements as laid out by this letter.
One, for the next four semesters that you are assigned to teach one or more classes at the law school, if a student complains to you about a class session or an interaction with you and alleges racial or ethnic harassment or similar conduct, you should immediately report that matter to the dean or dean's designee before you respond to the student, individually or to the class as a whole.
This process is intended to provide the law school and university with the opportunity to work with you to help you prepare an appropriate response and or develop other steps to resolve the situation in a collaborative fashion.
At the end of these four semesters, the dean will determine whether this process should be extended, and if so, for how long.
So that seems fucking... That's nothing.
That cost him nothing.
That's, hey, if this ever happens again... Yeah, like, run this by us.
Two, for the next four semesters that you are assigned to teach one or more classes at the law school, your class sessions will be audio recorded and the law school will also exercise oversight by reviewing these audio recordings to help foster a non-discriminatory, non-harassing classroom environment.
The dean will assign one or more appropriate faculty members to perform this oversight.
The dean or dean's designee will address any matters of concern that are observed in any such class session recordings with you as soon as is practicable.
At the end of these four semesters, the dean will determine whether this oversight should continue, and if so, for how long.
Again, nothing.
That's fine.
Especially because all of his classes were being recorded anyway, right?
Now it's just about that oversight.
So that's nothing.
I mean, I say that's nothing.
That's fine.
It's a fine step to take, but that doesn't cost him anything.
Yeah, this isn't imposing really anything on him other than, hey, don't be racist.
And it's an observation, like a pretty typical experience for anyone in teaching professions and stuff.
I know like K through 12, it definitely is.
You know, granted, it may not be every single class, but that is something that teachers are often used to.
Someone, you know, sitting in if it's physically present and observing their class and providing feedback and stuff.
Right.
Yeah.
And he already knew they were all recorded anyway.
Yeah.
And he already would have assumed he's going to be under scrutiny from the students after that.
Like, it's not adding any more scrutiny, really.
Three, at the conclusion of the second semester, and this is the last requirement of this letter, at the conclusion of the second semester in which you are assigned to teach one or more classes, blah, blah, blah, if the dean concludes that by virtue of your actions and conduct, you have not effectively maintained a non-discriminatory, non-harassing classroom environment, you will complete a training program non-harassing classroom environment, you will complete a training program designed and administered by Vantage Solutions, LLC.
The goal of the training will be to ensure that you appreciate the importance of your position, including your voice and authority, in the classroom and when assessing students, how your words and actions impact others.
You will be deemed to have completed the training program when Vantage Solutions provides a written report to the law school indicating that you have 1.
Engaged constructively in action planning and identified what you will do differently in class on assessments and when otherwise interacting with students orally and in writing, and 2.
Developed the skills and tools to effectively engage with a diverse group of students on sensitive topics.
That's a final recommendation.
And that's if and only if he concludes the Dean concludes that you haven't maintained.
You're not getting it.
Yeah.
Then in addition, there are recommendations.
And I'm not going to read all this, actually.
But it's like during our meeting June 18th, we discussed the following recommendations.
And keep in mind, this is your boss recommending something.
Now, clearly he has tenure and he's pretty hostile toward his boss now.
Yeah.
But he's in a fucking privileged ass position.
There's no such thing as tenure for an Amazon worker.
There's no such thing as tenure for most people in the fucking country.
But he's in a super privileged position and he can just totally blow this off if he wants to.
But his boss, his employer is saying, we encourage you to, you know, submit anything, any exam you're going to do that's anything like this, submit it to the dean first, et cetera, et cetera.
We encourage you to use the same approach when using grade bumps or anything like that.
So it's like, this is based on the stuff that he wasn't found guilty of, but like, you know, was maybe an issue.
So it's like, hey, maybe run this stuff by us.
This is a recommendation.
And finally, here's number three.
I'll read this one.
I strongly encourage you to begin immediate participation in the small group study sessions designed by the Law School Faculty Committee for Diversity, Inclusion and Campus Climate.
The committee assigned you to a group.
You may join the group at any point.
All faculty have access to the box folder with reading and viewing materials.
A lot of these recommendations and kind of like next steps, right, that they're expecting of Kilbourn to take are protective of him, too.
Like it's putting them in a position where if there is a nuisance complaint that they're able to help advocate for him.
So it's not, you know, a he said, he or she said, you know, they said situation.
And if you choose to frame it that way, that's actually, you know, helpful resource now where He could feel a little more confident moving forward that he has sort of that support from his administration.
So let me read you the end of the fire article.
That's the puff piece.
That's like him.
Look, we've closed our first case.
I'm going to read you the last few paragraphs of that, keeping in mind what you just heard.
Thank God for the Faculty Legal Defense Fund, he said.
Fire gave me the comfort of public support and solidarity.
The FLDF gave me the silver bullet of real legal action.
Having a gladiator standing beside me and shaking his sword, that alone is enormously powerful.
That's the quote.
Through the fund, FIRE connected Kilborn with local attorney Wayne Giampietro.
With help from the FLDF team at FIRE, the pair reached a resolution with UIC.
Kilborn agreed to alert the dean before responding to student complaints about racial issues, and the audio of his classes would be recorded.
Both stipulations Kilborn welcomed in order to protect himself against spurious complaints.
To your point.
Yeah.
And one he'd already decided to take independently.
Killborn strongly objected to mandatory sensitivity training or signing a non-disclosure agreement that would have barred him from publicly commenting about the ordeal.
He said it's thanks to the credible threat of action by an FLDF attorney that the administration's final resolution did not contain these elements.
The resolution in my case was like most good compromises.
It pleased no one, so it must have been the right one, he said.
The average person doesn't enjoy fighting.
If I enjoyed fighting, I would have remained a lawyer.
I was tired of it, emotionally tired of it.
I'm grateful for FIRE's backing, both moral and financial, without which I don't know how I would have made it through the hell of these last six months.
Kilbourne lamented that he didn't get his day in court to fully vindicate his rights, but he wanted to get back in the classroom and move on to training the next generation of lawyers.
The fund puts faculty in the driver's seat, and if they and their counsel find a settlement that works, they never even have to go to court.
Quote, what FIRE and the Legal Defense Fund gave me is the ability and the credibility to go to the administration and defend my rights, he said.
I had a lawyer standing beside me, ready to act even if we decided to take no action, and that means a lot.
Doesn't that sound like, yeah, we agreed to do basically what they said anyway?
Pretty much a majority of it.
Yeah.
It sounds like maybe he leveraged this fucking nonsense to get out of a mandatory training.
So that's so the fire.org is boasting that they, you know, we closed our first case.
And by the way, the other articles reference that as a settlement.
But like, is it a settlement if if your employer is like, hey, man, you fucked up.
Here's what we're going to require you to do.
And he's like, I'm gonna sue if you make me do a training program.
They're like, oh, fucking, all right, man.
Here's what we'll do.
And it's, they agree to some stuff.
Just a negotiation.
I feel like a settlement is like, it's not a settlement if there was never a legal complaint, right?
Like, isn't a settlement like you sue and then you settle?
It's not.
Hey, we might sue you.
So let's agree to something.
That's not a settlement, but whatever.
Maybe it is.
I just, it feels funny to me.
It feels like the only reason I bring it up is I think it's fire trying to like bolster.
They're like this defense fund closed a case.
Yeah.
It's like, nah, man.
You turned something that was like gonna be like a 1 out of 10 punishment into like a 0.7 out of 10 punishment.
Like, okay, cool.
You might be wondering then what happened?
You know, like why wasn't that the end of the story?
So the way Killborn tells it, under pressure from Balsa and Jesse Jackson, UIC reneged on its agreement with Killborn.
So it is true that when news broke that he was returning, Balsa was not happy.
October 29th, they start a new petition.
And that one has 790 signatures.
The next goal is listed as 1,000.
So, you know, a little more attention.
And it is true that I think Jesse Jackson interacted with it.
You know, there's some like couple local TV interview type things.
This petition, I mean, look, tempers are flaring, but see how out of bounds you think this is.
This is in a, by the way, change.org petition by the, by Balsa and stuff.
Last year, an investigation opened up about a tenured professor at UIC that repeatedly made racist comments and participated in discriminatory practices, both within and outside the classroom.
This is not only about his language choice in a exam.
He has made racial comments in the classroom.
He has directly contacted students who felt profiled by him.
He has used threats of homicide.
He has interviewed on media platforms, alluding to the idea that he has done nothing wrong.
Threats of homicide is the one thing you could say like, all right, but yeah, I mean, you kind of did.
Like, that's barely overstating it.
Yeah.
And by the way, this one includes the use of the word redacted.
So it acknowledges that the words were redacted in the exam.
So it continues.
While UIC law conducted an investigation into his discriminatory practices, Professor Jason Kilbourn was placed on administrative leave.
The investigation was prompted by Kilbourn's choice to use redacted versions of the N-word and the B-word on an exam.
This happens to be the only instance of wrongdoing Kilbourn seems to acknowledge.
Here's the bottom line of it.
The Black Law Student Association calls on Black students and allies to demand the prompt removal of Jason Kilbourn from UIC School of Law in addition to a multitude of other relevant demands.
We seek a safe, non-hostile classroom environment.
So, the way he tells it, this and with Jesse Jackson's help, has intimidated the school.
And the worst quote they have, and I would put this in the category of You found a student who said perhaps a dumb thing.
Quote, when asked by the Chicago Crusader if it is true that Kilbourn called black law students cockroaches, the president of BALSA said, yes, he did.
There are reports that came out of the Office of Access and Equity that have everything that he has done from the claims all the way to what has been sustained and confirmed that he has done and those discrimination tactics he's used over the years.
What's funny is, their own puff piece didn't include the more damning quote from that student, but I tracked it down.
The interview goes on, which is, you know, that's objectively not what he did.
He didn't call black law students cockroaches, we know that.
Asked in what context would Kilbourne have called black law students cockroaches, Shannon said, "I'm not sure.
His fight came long before my association got here.
I just became the president this past month, but even Kim Cross works with me consistently, and she was the past president.
She can attest to where those claims are from.
Our job as the Black Law Student Association is that we promote the needs of black students, It doesn't take a mass amount of people to say what has happened to them under this professor's leadership.
But when those students came forth, we don't ask every question.
We ask some questions, and we fight for them, Shannon said.
The administration has ignored them, but what the Office of Access and Equity has done is to confirm those allegations.
And so, that's like the worst quote of a student in this.
You know, that's someone saying, yeah, well, I wasn't even here.
You know, that's the new president of BALSA.
I wasn't even here, but I understand he called black students cockroaches, which he didn't.
And so I can understand him not being super happy that he's still being protested in this way.
But note that one of the reasons people are still mad at him is he's gone on this spree of interviews saying he did nothing wrong and only acknowledging the fucking exam question.
Yeah.
So, like, who's to blame here, my dude?
This could have been killed by him.
He could have been done with all this very easily.
Many times over.
Many times over.
And here's where that person who, again, I think that is not a great quote.
Here's where they do, I think, say something pretty fucking reasonable that isn't included in that article.
When asked who is responsible for voting him out of the university, Shannon said, because he's a tenured professor, he would have to go against the entire UIC system.
It would take the provost of the university, the chancellor, the vice chancellor, and the dean of the law school to appeal to the board of trustees, as well as the greater UIC system, and vote him out.
Quote, what they are failing to do is even start that process, she said.
Termination takes a long time.
Also, severe sanctions take a very long time, and neither one has been discussed among the university members, Shannon said.
So keep that in mind.
She is responding, again, she's a little bit, yeah, a little bit ahead of her skis on some of the stuff or whatever, but she's responding to the fact that this is very much a, could you even call this a slap on the wrist, like the agreement they actually came to?
I'd barely even call that a slap on the wrist.
Right.
Barely.
And I think they have a right to say, you know, this isn't sufficient, and have that conversation and kind of raise those concerns.
That's absolutely within their rights.
Yeah, you know why?
Because we live in fucking America.
Freedom of speech.
Fire.org.
This fucking student.
Again, these are students.
He's a fucking professor.
He's a grown-ass man.
These are students.
They have the right to say, eh, we think this guy should be fired.
That's your right as an American to fucking say that.
And also acknowledging that it's unlikely to come to pass, right?
That that might not necessarily be the outcome that happens, however much you may want that to be, but you think that the process itself is worth pursuing.
Maybe the student that wouldn't speak to OAE would come forward and speak in that scenario.
Maybe.
Who knows?
But I think it's understandable to say we don't feel that this is sufficient.
And what we want is to continue to have this conversation with actual potential consequences, knowing that the threshold for that would be pretty high, but we still want to kick that off and start having those conversations.
Seems completely reasonable to me.
Now, this is where I'm going to come back to the fact that these fucking institutions are very conservative, because here's all that happened.
So you've got them with Jesse Jackson joining a protest saying this guy should be fired, etc, etc.
Is he fired?
No.
Do they even start the process?
No.
Do they do fucking anything?
Well, barely.
Because here's what happens.
All that happens is he's denied a 2% merit-based salary.
And so he carens it up.
He has his attorney for fire email or whatever, write a letter.
Dear Dean Spanbauer and Chancellor Bills, I am counsel to Professor Jason Kilbourn, who has brought to my attention the notification to him that he has failed to meet the school's criteria for a merit-based salary raise.
I have been aware of the school's activities in responding to a student's complaint that somehow Kilbourne had violated the school's policy 1100-004.
I did not become directly involved in those proceedings because it appeared that you had decided to treat that complaint as providing no basis for any significant adverse action against Professor Kilbourne.
OK, that's a weird way to characterize that.
Like the fact that they got a good deal because of being a huge pain in the ass.
Yeah.
That's not the same as saying that means the other side acknowledges there is no there there.
No, that's them probably being like, fucking all right, man, whatever.
Dean Spanbauer's letter of July 2nd sets forth a result of the meeting.
And that's the letter I basically read to you that you had with Professor Kilbourn, along with associate dean, blah, blah, blah.
In the letter, the dean expressed a desire to move forward and address the issues in a collaborative, collegial manner, as well as setting forth numerous positive and excellent accomplishments of Professor Kilbourn in his teaching and collateral activities in the school.
What?
I didn't actually see that in the letter.
I don't know what that's talking about.
That's weird.
Therefore, it was with great astonishment that I read Dean Spanbauer's message of September 6th to Professor Kilbourn, basing the refusal to grant him a merit-based pay raise on the findings of the OAE regarding that student complaint.
That a dean of a law school would base any decision on findings such as those issued by that committee is indeed shocking.
The report issued by that entity is a model of illegal and unlawful conduct.
Sir, am I being detained?
That's what this reads to me as.
Oh, no.
I love the language they dip into.
The report issued by that entity is a model of illegal and unlawful conduct of which any school of law should be ashamed.
Oh, God.
The proceedings of the OAE violated Professor Kilbourne's due process rights by, among other things, relying upon anonymous statements to which he was never given an opportunity to respond.
Further, any fighting a violation of school rules of policy for the reasons in that report is an egregious violation of his First Amendment rights.
Wow.
What?
And this is all for three grand.
Yep, for 2%, basically.
You must be aware of the numerous entities which have expressed outrage that an adverse action of any kind be taken upon such a basis.
Indeed, those findings have caused UIC to be identified as one of the 10 worst colleges for free speech.
More on that later.
That's just this lawyer basically saying what FIRE has done as evidence?
Yeah.
Like, okay, cool.
Check out our database.
Yeah, and I don't know if he specifically works for FIRE or if FIRE might have just paired him with Kilborn, but fucking, all right, man.
That's why I wrote this blog, or someone I know wrote this blog saying you suck.
It is clear that while you wish Professor Kilborn to move forward in a collaborative collegial manner, the school wishes to do nothing of the kind.
Rather, you clearly intend to continue to violate Professor Kilborn's constitutional rights by continuing to penalize him for actions which are worthy of no penalty of any kind.
That a school which purports to teach the law is intentionally ignoring the provisions of both the United States and the state of Illinois constitutions is outrageous to say the least.
Wow.
Who didn't get a 2% raise because he was found to have created a harassing environment to black people, essentially, to black students.
That's so crazy.
You don't think that you're allowed, like, any action taken against him is a violation of the Constitution.
Like, what a fucking hyperbolic sack of shit.
Therefore, I demand that you take the following actions.
Rescind and remove from Professor Kilbourne's file your letter of February 2nd.
Rescind and remove the letter dated February 17th, notifying him of the commencement of the investigation.
Rescind and remove from Kilborn's file the findings letter.
Revise Professor Kilborn's annual evaluation letter to remove any reference to any purported policy violation.
And rescind the action denying Professor Kilborn the merit-based raise, which he has clearly earned, and grant him that raise.
Your failure to grant the relief requested will leave us no alternative but to take the appropriate legal action to enforce Professor Kilborn's constitutional rights Which you have so egregiously violated.
And they get really forceful here, hun.
If we are forced to file suit, we will not only name the school, but also the school officers and employees who have participated in violating his constitutional rights.
Oh, scary.
In addition to recompense for the harm he has suffered, we will also request the court to award Professor Kilborn punitive damages since the rights you have violated are well settled.
And in addition, his costs and attorney's fees in prosecuting that action.
I look forward to your prompt response.
Good day, sir.
I don't even think the school responded.
The next thing we have is from November 11th, and this is the so-called reneging or whatever.
This is what happened.
Keep in mind that the demands are like, fire this fucking guy, start the process, and all the school is doing, and in addition to receiving, like, how much of a pain in the fucking ass is this asshole?
And he's making, you know, media rounds, and he's having his lawyers send, like, real fucking Karen drive-through Wendy's Style letters of like, how dare you not grant me my 2% raise that I justly deserve for even though I fucking am a piece of shit and suck in every way.
Here's what they said November 11th.
So that's nearly, what is it, a couple months later?
I don't see any response to that bullshit written in crayon.
Yeah, two months later.
I am writing in reference to my letter to you of July 2nd that set forth certain requirements.
And I'm not actually, I won't read this whole thing, but effectively, here's what happened.
The crux is, quote, I very recently learned that you have been unable to participate in this law school training because the group you were assigned to has not regularly met.
In light of the fact that this training opportunity was not fully made available to you as expected through no fault of your own, you are now preparing to return to the classroom this spring without training in the critical topics covered by the small group sessions.
Meanwhile, the situation at the law school remains fraught.
And it is important to minimize the possibility of further incidents and disruption to the educational experience of our students.
I have considered this matter and must now require that you participate in an individualized training or coaching program of the type described in Section A1 of my letter before the start of the Spring 22 semester.
You will be required to successfully complete this individualized training no later than December 10, 2021, before returning to the classroom to teach your Spring 2022 assigned classes.
I will be in touch in the coming days with more detailed information.
Please understand that this training is not a punishment or a sanction for past conduct.
Rather, it is intended to afford you an opportunity for having better success in the future as a member of the faculty in our law school, which has a very diverse student body.
It is intended to help assure that the learning environment that your students experience is a positive one.
All the requirements and recommendations in my letter of July 2, 2021 remain in place except as modified by this letter, and so long as you adhere to those requirements and act in good faith upon my prior recommendations, as well as following the above requirement, you will be deemed to be in compliance with your obligations in this matter.
I want to note a couple things.
For one, the fact that the Dean is just modifying their agreement at will, doesn't that suggest that, like, he didn't really, like, gain a settlement from them?
That was, you know, like, if you have a settlement, that means like, fuck, all right, we found a settlement.
Signed it.
Yeah, like.
This very much reads like he has been making a big deal and FIRE has been making a big deal about this quote-unquote settlement, but it sounds like this makes me think it's more than just the dean of the law school being like, yeah, all right, here's what we want you to do and him being like, okay.
You know, it's pretty much that.
And secondly, look at it this way.
Balsa and Jesse Jackson and those people are demanding he be fucking fired.
And your dean comes to you and says, we're now going to just require that you complete this little course.
And this is not a punishment.
This is just, you know, things are kind of tense.
Let's do it.
And this other thing that, you know, we had suggested hasn't been made available to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Any non-fucking asshole would be like, whew.
Avoided that one.
Yeah.
Here it is.
These people are asking for my head.
And my dean, who is being fucking unbelievably kind to me in this moment, is saying, just complete this fucking training course, dude.
That's it.
And then you're good to teach.
Yeah.
That is bending over fucking backwards for this asshole.
Now we're going to transition firmly into the Killborn is an Asshole segment, combined with the legal fallout section, kind of the end of this story, the last bit of this story.
More of an asshole?
More?
There's a lot more.
I mean, there's just more revealing that he's an asshole.
It's been ever-present.
We've always known.
Yeah, there's a lot.
And including.
Just in case I haven't teased it.
Including a bonus deep history thing I found that is so good.
I cannot wait to read it to you.
Oh God.
It's the, I've been, I've been teasing Lydia with this for what, a couple days?
Like I can't even, it's just, it's tantalizing, downright tantalizing.
You're like, just you wait.
Blinking my eyelashes and holding secret documents that I can't tell you about yet.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's good.
But before that, we last left off with Him getting a fucking amazing deal from his dean, essentially.
People want his head.
Jesse Jackson's... I saw the pictures.
Jesse Jackson's there.
Yeah, I was going to say, he's kind of there.
He's very old, but he's there.
If he's showing up and protesting you as a person, yeah, that would probably make some sort of impact.
People want his head.
People want him fired.
People want to start the firing Process and his Dean despite everything that this asshole has put the school through the Dean's like alright You're gonna need to actually do this training program because you know, you were supposed to do this other one.
It didn't start That wasn't your fault.
It wasn't available.
But now we are going to require you to do it.
I found something Oh This is good, hon.
This is what's so hard about this work, because it's impossible to know when you're done.
And truly, you're never done.
Like, I could just keep reading, reading, reading, reading.
And I found something that I hadn't noticed the first 400 times I read it, and it's related to something I already had kind of sniffed out, you know?
And maybe it'll be a little pat on the back, because I made the point that, like, if the Dean is just kind of modifying their deal unilaterally, what is that?
So we saw thefire.org and Killborn cheering this settlement they reached, you know, this agreement they reached, all that stuff.
They literally did a puff piece press release about it, an article about it, about how truly they're heroes for helping him get this settlement, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, check out this sentence that I didn't notice the first 400 times from the UIC press release.
Okay.
That came kind of in the wake of around now.
So it's in chronological order.
I just hadn't gotten to this yet in telling you that is.
We're there in the story and I go to reread it again to like tell you about it.
And I noticed a sentence I just hadn't noticed before.
So this is a little press release on the website, UIC Today, whatever, you know, like the college website.
And it's, well, maybe I'll read just a little bit of it to give you a flavor of what it's essentially saying.
And this is November 30th, 2021.
This is after the deal.
This is after the unilateral modification of the deal.
This is the next thing essentially in the story.
Over the last few weeks, there's been interest and concern expressed by internal constituencies, external groups, and media regarding the discrimination and harassment complaint filed against a UIC law professor and the subsequent investigation by the university's office
We believe it is important to share with you the facts of this matter to ensure accurate information is broadly accessible and to address questions that have been raised by the partial release of complaints, the OAE Internal Investigation Report, Freedom of Information Act by the media, and subsequent administrative measures.
A step-by-step summary of the filed complaints, the process that investigators followed, the findings reported, and this is the link They're just introducing the link that, remember, I tried to start this Box account and get and I couldn't get and then you finally found it for me?
Yeah.
That's just talking about that.
UIC remains unequivocally committed to fostering an environment conducive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You get the picture.
They're just like kind of telling people what's going on.
But below that note from Chancellor Emeritus, if that's how you pronounce it, Is this like maybe a section of the investigation report?
It's like a little bit of the investigation report or something, or it's maybe just further information.
It's basically another summary of the investigation report.
It's not the whole thing.
So it's weird.
I don't know exactly what this is, but anyway, it talks about outcomes, talks about like some other stuff.
And I just noticed in the small print, the last sentence of outcomes, Again, keep in mind, the big deal the fire made about the settlement, all the times you've heard that reference.
You remember this one?
Last sentence.
UIC Law Administration did not enter into an agreement with Professor Kilbourne regarding the above requirements and recommendations.
He was informed in writing of the measures to be taken, and he acknowledged receipt and understanding of them.
How good is that?
Oh my god, what an asshole.
Wow.
It's so funny.
How disingenuous of Fire, too.
I mean, it's one thing for, like, this guy.
Fire sucks.
That is part whatever five of this.
Fire fucking sucks.
We will get to fire, hon.
Fire fucking sucks.
They try to, you know, launder their reputation by doing some amount of good work, and fine, it's better than not doing that.
But they fucking suck.
And this is an embarrassment, like an absolute embarrassment.
And we've barely even touched the tip of the iceberg with this.
But fire is the one who's behind their lawsuit, as you already know, and we're going to get to the status of all that.
I've played some of this interview.
I've even played parts of this, but I very surgically, you know, I've kind of kept some stuff to for the storytelling purposes.
And now we're going to hear we're just going to hear fucking Killborn unfiltered.
And we're just going to get all this.
I've been protecting him from you, from your scrutiny to tell the story.
But now we're going to we're going to hear it all.
Killborn does start doing that program that they ask him to do.
He starts doing it.
And so I'll let him tell what happens, including what he thinks is like a major gotcha.
Get ready for this.
This is a big he's got he's got us.
He's got everybody.
So they assigned me to do this online sort of diversity course put together by Cornell University, which was frankly not that terrible.
But they also, of course, wanted to make it more burdensome and painful for me, and so they assigned me a series of these supplemental readings, which concentrate on race.
The Cornell program is quite balanced, and it focuses on diversity in every respect.
Gender, ethnicity, background, ability, a variety of other aspects.
But UIC is obsessively, frankly, focused on race and race alone, to the exclusion of everything else.
Buddy, did you get in trouble for discriminating against people's financial background or was it because of race, you idiot?
Yeah.
Why?
Yeah.
I love this.
The thing you're in trouble for is about race.
And you're like, yeah, no.
So the Cornell one was great because it was about everything.
But this UIC, they're obsessed with race.
Yeah.
They really got stuck on that race thing.
Yeah, man, that's what you got in trouble for.
It's like if you're a construction worker and you drop a crane load of bricks on someone, and they're like, okay, well, you gotta do some training before you can come back.
And you're like, all these trainings are about crane safety!
Fucking assholes, why are you so obsessed with cranes?
There's other things at the workplace.
It's like, yeah, man, but what you did involved that.
So they send me these supplemental readings, which by and large concentrate on racial issues.
The very first thing that they send me, on like page five, was talking about, you know, some situation.
And they go, for example, you know, a white person who is overly friendly to Black people might be called a, quote, N-space lover.
Like, my eyes bugged out of my head.
I'm like, you've subjected me to a year-long relentless campaign of torment because I wrote N space on my exam, and now the very first reading that you give me says N space in it.
Like, this is clearly normative.
I clearly did nothing wrong.
This clearly was, at best, a colossal misunderstanding.
Yet here we still are.
And my lawyer has sent this thing right back to them and said, listen, we demand an explanation as to why the very first supplemental reading you're assigning this guy contains the very alleged horrific sin that you have been relentlessly tormenting him about for a year.
Not surprisingly, we haven't received an answer.
So that's a clear gotcha, right hun?
Do you have any response to that?
He's got us.
We're dead to rights with that bulletproof point.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I guess some of my questions would be the context.
It's not just a random exam question that he's 23-year-old individual and having to read this and respond to an exam question, it's literally implicit bias training and discrimination training and anti-harassment stuff, right?
Like, it might be more relevant, but I'd be curious about the context of exactly what's being presented there.
Here's the problem with this whole point.
That's not what the whole thing was about.
He's lying.
It's not about the exam question.
I've read you 50 times where they're like, this is not about the fucking exam question, you idiot.
Yeah, that's part of it, but it's also mainly, like they even say, it's particularly about your response, your intimidation of students Who signed a petition!
Think about how intimidating that was.
That is just so out of bounds for a professor to do.
He got in trouble for that and a few other things.
And overall, the preponderance of the evidence being he created a bad environment in those ways.
And he was guilty of harassment, particularly in his response to these students.
It's not about the fucking exam, dude.
He's just lying at this point.
You know, I know, he knows.
That he's just lying.
He knows it's not about that.
Either he believes all this, and he's completely committed to his own alternate reality, could be, or he's just knowingly lying.
There's no other option.
He's been told in writing, in no uncertain terms, it's silly.
It's honestly silly.
It's silly that anyone goes along with this, let alone an organization dedicated to free speech that's going to put hundreds of thousands of dollars, not an exaggeration, Hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least, in legal fees to fight for this guy.
For what?
Because he got denied a 2% raise that was, again, a merit raise.
So, you know, you need merit to get it.
You should show merit.
And something that doesn't show merit is being essentially guilty of creating a hostile environment for your students.
Yeah.
That's what you're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over for his $3,000 raise?
Yeah.
It's just preposterous.
Absolutely preposterous.
So because of that, he said that, and I love that he's like, the school didn't respond.
Yeah, you know why they didn't respond?
Probably because they wiped their fucking ass with it.
It's nothing.
It's nothing.
It doesn't matter.
Oh, you would, I demand, sir, at dawn.
You know, they give them this formalized language.
What is the explanation for this?
That this contains the thing.
They're probably like, fucking who cares?
I'm not even answering that.
It doesn't matter.
So obvious.
How many more times, how many more times should we say, hey man, it wasn't the exam question.
It was everything else.
Yeah, we're going to send you to active listening seminars next.
Hey, you just signed up, signed yourself up for five more trainings.
And also, I mean, there's so many exaggerations.
It's hard to, you know, I'm not going to call them all out, but putting him through hell for a year, the victim complex.
Dramatics, yeah.
Yes, he had a rough time, I'm sure, because he's fucking nuts.
But there was a whole period of like several months, like six months where nothing happened.
Yeah.
And then the end result is the most minor slap on the wrist that you can imagine.
And everyone wants him fired, but his dean essentially sticks up for him, even though he doesn't recognize it and only wants him to do this training he's now trying to do right now in the timeline.
He's had a pretty good, in my mind, he could just shut the fuck up and go about his life and it'd be fine.
But no, of course.
And for whatever reason, maybe just again, as a product of seeing some more puff pieces about him or the fire.org being willing to shell out the dough, whatever it is, He's suing.
He sues.
His complaint goes live.
That's actually what this interview is about.
That's crazy.
And so let's hear him talk more about it, because it's just, it's delightful.
It's absolutely delightful.
We've witnessed quite a number of these kinds of cases that are based on the first basis in my lawsuit, which is the First Amendment.
I'll explain that in a second.
But it's extremely rare, actually, to see the kind of complete abject failure to follow the most basic rules of fairness Here, which we call due process.
And the university has completely fallen on its face on that score as well.
So that's another basis.
They've completely violated my academic freedom.
That's another basis.
So there's a lot going on.
But I do think it's fair to encapsulate the lawsuit as being a First Amendment lawsuit.
First Amendment, as everyone I think probably well understands, is you can't be punished by a public actor for your speech.
And immediately, you've got to recognize, as I'm sure many people are responding right, well, you know, you can't just say whatever you want, right?
If you just yelled out at some student in the back, hey, you, you know, and then use that word, you know, you wouldn't be protected.
Of course, I wouldn't be.
And this is the common reaction that I'm seeing in comment blog fields.
You know, I'm like, no, moron.
You've got to understand the First Amendment has built in restrictions.
I'm not suggesting, and no reasonable person ever would, that the First Amendment allows me to say whatever I want.
I would like to read a little from the complaint to contrast something real quick.
In one of the accounts, which again, I'm not a lawyer, this is not a law show, but I have some experience.
In one of the accounts that's about, you know, him fucking, am I being detained number two or whatever.
You know, the complaint is against the university, all the people involved in their individual capacity and their official capacity.
Well, I'm not going to break down all that stuff.
There's a lot of legal nuance.
I'm going to go through some of it, but I just wanted to read you one sentence from that part of it.
Since academic freedom protects plaintiff's speech, that speech cannot lawfully be found to violate OAE's policy in a way that could lead to the punishments meted out to plaintiff.
Plaintiff has the right to advance his pedagogical goals as he sees fit within the confines of state and federal anti-discrimination law.
Nothing he did or said violates any law.
Therefore, neither OAE or any of the defendants can lawfully arrogate to themselves the power to declare that plaintiff cannot teach his course as he sees fit.
So I just want to ask you, do you see any daylight there between, well, of course I can't say whatever I want, moron.
And that, cause that sounds to me like as long as you didn't say anything that literally breaks the law, then you can't like the employer.
Yeah, has no ability to say like, hey man, maybe don't be really shitty in a bunch of different ways.
As long as it doesn't violate the literal law, this would mean that he could say whatever he wants short of breaking the law and his employer could do nothing about it.
Does that seem right?
No.
That seems a little insane.
Like, for example, I don't see why he couldn't just read racist propaganda in his class.
Like, why would that?
It's pedagogically, it's what I need to do.
That's obviously not the standard.
Like, for sure, the campus, you know, I'm not, again, I'm not a lawyer, and maybe there are more restrictions than I would think by the law, but it would be pretty insane to me if they could do nothing.
Like, they can't even, by the way, keep in mind what they did.
And this is part of the legal calculation that, you know, I almost died laughing thinking a jury, this is not getting anywhere, that a judge probably or somebody that somebody I guess would decide what they did in terms of the irrigating, the ability to punish him.
He had to do a fucking training.
That's it.
You had to do a little training.
That's all.
Literally all you had to do.
Yeah.
Do a little training, buddy.
That's it.
The law actually does not go for his bullshit, I don't think, as much as he does.
I mean, I think from my experience, a judge is going to be like, really?
That's what you're saying violated your freedom of speech.
The fact that you had to like do a training, like imagine.
So any training is like compelled speech against your whatever is what you're saying, because that's like compelled speech.
That's, you know, it's ridiculous.
Now, and here's where he says something that is downright jaw-dropping to me.
OK, play this.
Get your feelings, get your react.
This is an absolute hack job of an investigation by an investigator who herself was the president of the Black Law Students Association at her law school when she was in law school two or three years before joining this investigation.
I mean, it's not a conflict of interest directly, but it clearly is a reason for people to say, hmm, I really expect that person to be free entirely of bias against Professor Kilbourn and to sort of take a sort of straightforward approach to this investigation.
That's clearly not what happened here.
Does that remind you of anything that you can think of?
If you are saying he can't do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?
No, I don't think so at all.
No?
No.
He's proud of his heritage.
I respect him for that.
But you're saying he can't do his job because of it.
Look, he's proud of his heritage, okay?
I'm building a wall.
Now I think I'm going to do very well with Hispanics.
He's a legal citizen.
You know why I'm going to do well with Hispanics?
Because I'm going to bring back jobs.
And they're going to get jobs.
Right now.
They're going to get jobs.
I think I'm going to do very well with Hispanics.
But we're building a wall.
He's a Mexican.
We're building a wall between here and Mexico.
The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings.
Rulings that people can't even believe.
This case should have ended years ago on summary judgment.
The best lawyers, I have spoken to so many lawyers, they said, this is not a case, this is a case that should have ended.
This judge is giving us unfair rulings.
Now I say why.
Well, I'm building a wall, okay?
And it's a war between Mexico, not another country.
He's not from Mexico.
In my opinion, he's Mexican heritage.
And he's very proud of it.
Does that remind you of that at all?
At first, I do this translation, and it's probably a deep character flaw of mine, where I hear things not quite as horrible as people put them at first.
I'm trying, just out of the principle of charity, to be... I heard it as... The first time I watched this, I just heard it as, oh, she was president of this organization at this school or something.
I was like, oh, okay, yeah, that's...
Yeah, I guess that's that's a little bit.
Listen again.
He because he keeps he starts at a place and then he keeps like becoming more and more like Trump.
Like he starts by an investigator.
Who herself was the president of the Black Law Students Association at her law school.
At her law school.
Yeah.
So not this one.
She was in law school two or three years.
So not now.
Back when she was in law school.
Before joining this investigation.
I mean, it's not a conflict of interest directly.
But it clearly is.
Look, I'm building a wall between Mexico and thing and he's like, it's that it's literally that because it even does the Trumpy thing where he knows he can't.
Well, OK, Trump, Trump barely did this, but like he does the thing where he knows he can't quite just come out and say she's black.
That's what like.
But he's doing this like, look, it's OK.
It's not a conflict of interest.
Like, here's what I want to ask you.
How much different is what he said then?
She's black.
So therefore she can't judge it.
How much different?
Where's the daylight?
She was president of the Black Law Students Association.
Not the same organization.
Whatever their version of it was at her different law school.
So, could she have been like treasurer?
Could she have been just a member?
You don't think he would have said the same thing if she was just a member of it rather than a president of it.
What do you think would have been the okay, would she have had to just abstain from being a member of this organization at her school?
I'd have to imagine membership is probably pretty high percentage wise, you know, of any black law student.
I would imagine it's a pretty high percentage just because There aren't very many black law students, of course, and that's the kind of circumstances in which you need to kind of work together, that kind of thing.
I would imagine membership is pretty high as a percentage of students who go there.
So like, where is the daylight there?
You're just saying she's black.
That's all you're saying.
It doesn't matter that she was a president of a totally different organization that just happened to also be about black people at a loss.
It's absurd.
And him saying, I love the dog whistling too.
Do we really expect that person to be free entirely of bias against Professor Kilbourn and to sort of take a sort of straightforward approach to this investigation?
Take a straightforward approach to it.
That's pretty dog whistly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A black person can't take a straightforward approach to it.
They can only take a biased approach to it because they're black.
That's what he's saying in so many words.
Virtually identical to the Donald Trump Mexican judge scandal of 2016.
That was before the election, actually, I remember now.
I didn't remember that until I just looked up that video.
Like it was that long ago.
I would have said it was in like 2017 or something.
But yeah, it's exactly the same thing.
There's almost no difference.
Yeah.
I mean, that's that's a great connection and didn't even cross my mind.
But like the second I heard his voice, I was like, oh, yeah, it is hard to keep all of the fucking racism straight.
Yeah.
So, uh, a little more, a little more evidence for the, this guy's a fucking asshole and probably a racist actually, uh, Colum.
What do you think?
Oh yeah, definitely.
We gotta play some of his hyperbole because it just, it, it hyperbolizes and hyperbolizes.
It gets so good.
Like you keep thinking that you're going to like, okay, he's all right.
He's jumped the shark.
And then there's five more sharks that he's like, it's amazing.
That's clearly not what happened here.
So my due process, right?
The things that you would expect an ordinary, fair investigation to look like, this investigation will look nothing whatsoever like that.
And you simply cannot, as a public institution, treat people in that way and then harm them without giving them fairness of what the problem is and a fair opportunity to defend themselves.
Do you remember when I was reading you the investigation report?
You remember that time?
Oh, it was a great Chris Farley sketch.
Hey, you remember that time, hun, where I read you the investigation report and he is quoted extensively at every single turn of it?
Yeah.
Because he was interviewed as a part of that and got to respond to each and every fucking thing.
That's called due process, idiot.
This guy's a lawyer.
I know.
I've been thinking about this the whole time.
He's either a pathological liar or believes his own bullshit that much because That's due process.
Due process doesn't mean, first of all, and this is just me fucking reasoning on the back of the envelope.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty fucking certain of these things.
The due process like requirements would kind of scale with how serious the thing is.
If the school was going to execute him, yeah, you'd want some fucking due process.
You'd want letter of the law, all that shit.
If the school is fucking saying, yeah, we've determined you violated a policy, what should you do about it?
Take a fucking class for five.
Yeah.
Sure, you are due some process, but that's not going to be that strict a requirement for that low of a thing.
It's just low stakes.
He's not fired.
That would maybe be a slightly higher burden, I would think.
Again, this is just me reasoning, but it's usually how it works in the law.
And furthermore, he was Interviewed and gave him a chance to respond at every turn.
The only thing he could be talking about is that he wasn't given a chance to know exactly who the students were, exactly when he wanted on his fucking terms to know everything so he could respond in real time, like as they were talking at the same time, you know?
But that's just fucking bullshit.
That's just his narcissism.
You don't get that.
That's not due process.
That would be like magical, you fucking, you're king for a day process.
This is the due process was he was interviewed.
He got a chance to comment on every single fucking thing in the report.
Yeah.
Your situation, one thing I've noticed, is that it's similar to instances we've seen in the past with something like classic literature, where a professor or a teacher has gotten in trouble for reading an expletive or a slur in a book from way back when in an academic context, but they still get in trouble for it.
Your case is similar, except As you point out, you didn't even use the slur.
You used a letter followed by blank spaces.
So what do you think it says about the current state of our higher education institutions where something seemingly so non-troversial... Are you prepared for an extremely level-headed take?
Oh, God.
...can lead to this whole mess, a legal battle.
I'm afraid it says quite a lot and I'm afraid what it says is extraordinarily scary.
We have literally set back higher education 300 years before the enlightenment.
This is exactly the kind of debate that used to happen in medieval universities where someone would say something Like, for example, the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, and there would be this incredible inquiry into that, right?
How in the world can anyone say such a horrifically- What an egomaniac.
And so, I mean, I would not, if all of this exploded, have thought that putting end space on an exam and a question about employment discrimination would even be regarded as heretical.
However extreme your view of the appropriate discourse might be, I would not think that that crosses any lines.
But one of the things that's really opened my eyes after all of this exploded in my face was there are examples out there that are even I'm going to skip ahead because that's we've already heard that this is where he goes into artisanal coffee and then the mixing up the names.
But don't worry, he gets back on track.
You might have thought it couldn't get worse than saying he's literally fucking Galileo or whatever.
Yeah, seriously.
No, we're we've we're we're just getting started.
Oh, my God.
And in order to do this next part, I'm going to play a little bit.
It blended in and I kind of I again sculpted around it before.
But this is where he's talking about the professor, by the way, once again, Patreon dot com slash where there's woke where you can get the bonus content, which was this mini debunk.
I'm not going to reveal it here, but we will have to talk slightly about it to respond to this black man who had been in that class inadvertently.
Right?
This happens all the time with white people, with all kinds of other people.
You just forget their names, right?
We don't, you know, these people aren't our, you know, lifelong friends.
And of course, they point this out.
He tries to apologize, which, by the way, if there's any professors out there listening, understand one lesson of the current rules of engagement.
Apologies are like throwing lighter fluid on the fire.
Never, never, never, never apologize.
Period.
Because the apology, as in this case, led to an increased firestorm.
Oh, his apology wasn't clear enough, and it wasn't this enough, and it wasn't that enough, and it made us feel dehumanized.
Patrons are laughing their fucking asses off who have heard that debunk.
Again, I'm sorry.
I can't give it away.
It is, you know, it's on the Patreon.
Our lips are sealed.
Let it suffice to say that's not an accurate representation of what happened in that case.
And here he is judging from that thing that he can barely remember that he completely just botches.
It's nothing to do with it.
Now he's extrapolating that apologies were the problem.
Do you think apologies were the problem with his story?
Where does he even get that for him?
The part where you were intimidating fucking witnesses was the problem, dude.
And once again, you just have to grab your head and go, am I hearing this right?
Because this poor student, this poor professor mixes up a couple names, goes, hey, sorry, right?
One last comment on this, where is this bringing us in higher education?
I mean, I would have thought, as I was quoted as saying very early on in this whole ordeal, I would have- Hey honey, you braced for a really level-headed take.
I'm scared.
We would all agree as members of civilized society that if you're walking along the street and you inadvertently bump into somebody and you quick turn around, but hey, sorry about that.
We would all agree that the appropriate reaction of the person who's been bumped into is not to pounce on you and kick you in the head until you like are bleeding.
What?
Apparently I was wrong.
There is a very large segment of people in our society, many, many of whom are among the students and particularly among the faculty and administration at higher education institutions today, who believe all the old rules are off.
Those old rules too significantly constrain us.
They were written by people whom we hate, they stand for terrible things that we oppose, and therefore all bets are off.
We write the rules now, and if you inadvertently bump into us, and God forbid if you say you're sorry, we will be And it's an open question of whether we'll let you even live or not.
Thank goodness I have tenure.
I never in a gazillion years would have thought tenure was going to be required to save my job for this utterly ridiculous thing that has just happened to me.
This is not what tenure is supposed to stand for.
Wow.
Is that right?
What do you think?
It can't get any worse.
And we might let you live.
He's literally, by the way, he's like, we live in a society.
He's literally doing that take.
I would have thought that we live in a fucking society.
Oh, my God.
That's crazy.
It's downright insane.
Like, this is... I'm concerned about him at this point.
Yeah.
Certifiable.
I mean, this is... He was asked to go to... Kicked in the head.
Bleeding.
Oh, man.
So now we've got to transition.
This will transition perfectly.
I've actually drawn it up well for one son, because he's going to kind of give us some predictions.
Okay.
Note that this is now a year and a half ago that this happened.
So I will be able to call out some of these predictions.
Not all.
It's not a lot of stuff, as you may know.
It takes a very long time, but there's some of it that I can reveal to you.
So here we go.
In closing, I want to ask you if there's any update on this lawsuit.
Maybe there's an inside scoop that you can share with our audience about where you're currently at in this process.
I wish that I had the inside scoop that University Council received this thing and said, oh, hey, wow, we now see you're serious and let's actually have a conversation.
We've heard absolute radio silence from them.
I don't expect that we're going to hear anything from them.
As we've seen so many other university cases like this, University Council believes his job or her job in every of these cases is not to act reasonably and try to seek compromise.
It is to circle wagons, dig trenches, Don't admit anything.
Don't recognize that we've got some problems here.
I could have partnered with the university to overcome this public relations firestorm, to have this be a teaching moment for us all.
It's his fault.
Hey, where did that public relations firestorm come from?
Him!
God, he created it!
to overcome this public relations firestorm, to have this be a teaching moment for us all, to come back together with healing and understanding, and everyone would have benefited.
That's not only not the choice that UIC made, UIC Council is very clearly directing us toward a totally unnecessary knockdown-dragout war.
And I'll tell you, I'm ready for it.
Fire's ready for it.
I have almost nothing to lose.
You've already destroyed my reputation entirely.
I have tenure.
There's no reason for you whatsoever to try to fire me.
And it's about time somebody is held accountable for this business.
The far left loves to talk about accountability.
Well, let's have some accountability on your side now.
We haven't heard anything about this, and I strongly don't suspect we will, until they throw some ridiculous nonsense back at us by way of defense.
Do you think that this lawsuit will make its way through the courts and get hashed out, or do you think the university will end up settling?
I don't think that the university could give me a settlement offer that I would accept.
I'm not interested in settling.
I don't want anything from the university.
I want them to be told, in no uncertain terms, there's this thing called the First Amendment.
You might not be familiar with it.
You obviously are.
He's talking to a law school, by the way.
He is the most pompous person.
We just became UIC's law school.
So they're kind of getting used to having some lawyers on campus.
Well, I've got news for you, UIC.
This lawyer is not going to be pushed around.
One of our jobs as public servants is to teach our students, and now apparently to teach the university, that the law actually matters.
You can't just ignore all the rules.
So no, we're not settling unless they agree to the very simple things that I told them to do, which they're not going to.
They want to be able to write the rules on the fly as they see fit.
It's not going to happen.
I don't think this is going to go to a trial.
Trials are about juries resolving factual disputes.
There's no factual dispute, really, here.
The question is, can the university run roughshod over the First and Fifth Amendments?
The answer, I think and hope, is no.
And before long, I think we're going to be able to get a chance to ask a court to tell you, I see, by way of what we call summary judgment, you lose.
Go and follow the rules.
That'll be the end of it.
I think that's a lesson a lot of people would be wise to learn is that there is no compromising on your rights and there is no compromising on the truth.
So props to you for that.
Whoa, pretty cocky there.
Yeah, probably one of the most pompous people I've ever heard speak.
Ever.
You see why I slow rolled a lot of that video?
Because you just can't even, it's like, and you know, to be fair, it could be hypothetically true that he could have been more reasonable and correct back when this happened, but he's just been so radicalized by his fucking echo chamber.
So like, in fairness, I mean, it doesn't prove that he was always wrong, but it If you can go that fucking badly into your own shit where you're calling yourself Galileo.
Yeah.
And it's just nonsense.
So those are some pretty confident words, don't you think?
That he's going to teach this fucking school.
It is the law school.
That was kind of confusing because it's like it is a law school, but he's suing UIC, but also the law school.
So, I mean, if he's suing the law school, it's not like they don't know the law.
It's a weird thing that he tries to pull.
You know, because he's suing people, the dean of the law school as well.
Well, anyway, but he's going to teach them a lot and they don't know something called the First Amendment.
So I think now is where we're going to transition to some of the legal stuff and some of the holy shit.
