harassment

“The Strange Case of the Threatening Hypothetical”, Continued: The Verdict Is In!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Victim

Lawrence Connell, the Widener School of Law criminal law professor placed on administrative leave for using the school Dean in a “violent scenario” to illustrate legal principles to his class, has given a revealing and clarifying interview to the National Association of Scholars website.

This section is most relevant to his current plight, and the fairness of complaints leveled against him by some of his students. It’s also about one of my favorite topics in criminal law, attempt law, which has a significant ethical component, as you will see. But the main point of interest is that includes one of the supposedly racist, sexist, threatening hypotheticals he used.

Q: Can you give me an example of a hypothetical you might have used in class, to which the students who complained might have been referring? Can you describe the context in which you would have used it? Continue reading →

The Strange Case of the Threatening Hypothetical

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Lawrence Connell, a tenured associate professor at Widener University School of Law in Delaware, is fond of using famous or familiar people in the hypotheticals he presents to his criminal law class.  One of his imaginary scenarios involved him as a murderer, and the school’s Dean as his victim. Now he is on administrative leave from the school, as administrators investigate  him for using “violent scenarios” that some students complained violated the school’s discrimination and harassment codes.

Widener University spokesman Dan Hanson, meanwhile, has declined to provide more details on the matter, but insists that Widener is committed to academic freedom.

Right. Continue reading →

Abuse of Power in the Schools, Part 2: “Beat the Jew”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Seven seniors at a high school at a La Quinta, California high school have been suspended for three to five days, causing some of them to miss graduation, because they participated in a role-playing game, organized on Facebook, after school during their own personal time. The school administrators found the game objectionable, which you will be able to understand. But nobody was hurt, and no laws were broken.

That is all we really need to know. That the seniors were disciplined by the school for an activity completely unrelated to school is a pure abuse of power. This is an outrageous extension of school and government authority into the private lives of the students involved. It should not matter what the game was…not to the school. The governments of La Quinta, California and the United States couldn’t outlaw the game, nor could they forbid citizens to play it, not could they punish citizens that did.

Now, because you may be  curious, here’s a description of the game. Continue reading →

Isolating Corey Haim: Child Star Deceit and Disinformation in the Media

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is clear that the news media, and especially the entertainment and pop culture media, don’t want to lose their cuddly child performers. Thus when a former kid star like Corey Haim perishes at a young age, the victim of a dysfunctional childhood turned fatal by addictions to fame and drugs, the sad story is usually told as a cautionary tale about how one young actor’s early promise and talent turned to dust and destruction because of his own weaknesses and missteps. A responsible media would use such events to examine the larger, serious, and mostly ignored problem of child abuse and exploitation in the entertainment business, and its terrible toll of casualties.The media is not responsible on this topic, however, and in the case of Haim, seemed to go out of its way to falsely represent his fate as the exception, rather than the rule. Continue reading →

More Humor Ethics: the “Offensive Joke”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Ethicist Jeffrey Seglin answers ten everyday ethics questions over at the Real Simple website, and pretty much knocks them out of the park…except this one:

“If someone tells an offensive joke, is it my responsibility to speak up about it?” Continue reading →

Showdown at Brookstone: An Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Thanks to the enterprising employees at Brookstone, that odd chain that sells expensive gadgets for tasks that aren’t that important anyway, Ethics Alarms now encounters what has all the signs  of a genuine Ethics Train Wreck. Ethics Train Wrecks are situations where one unethical act sets off a chain reaction of bad judgment and rash behavior, and by the time all the carnage is over, anyone who was near the event, and those who tried to make sense out of it or clean it up, end up looking bad and arguing with each other. Recent Ethics Train Wrecks include the Valerie Plame affair and the Prof. Gates arrest. President Obama won’t get involved in this one (I hope!), but it has it all: gender, religion, workplace relations, law, Fox News. Continue reading →