Free Speech Under Siege at UCLA as Conservative Professor Tries to Save Job – Breitbart News

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If you dare question the (il)liberal orthodoxy, youre a pariah. And an adjunct professor at UCLA is in danger of becoming another victim.

Keith Fink has taught classes on free speech, contemporary issues, and entertainment law at UCLA for a decade. A lawyer by trade, Fink went on Fox News Channels Tucker Carlson Tonight show earlier in May to discuss the schools attempt tofire him in a star chamber review meeting that excluded him and his representatives.

The administration doesnt like what I have to say, Fink told the Los Angeles Daily News. I also support students basic rights to due process and the school doesnt like that. I show the students how their rights are violated. I dont believe in trigger warnings. I dont walk on eggshells. I dont believe in safe spaces. I run against that current.

The current at UCLA, as well as at most American colleges, is to stifle free speech or anything that runs contrary to the politically correct dogma now practiced on many campuses. Last June an appearanceby former Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos at the school was canceled after protesters blocked the entrance at the beginning, followed by a bomb threat. Another Milo event at UCLA earlier this yearwas also scuttled after the school claimed that it could not provide adequate security.

Fink is now undergoing a review process that he said probably willlead to his dismissal, since hes not a tenured professor at UCLA. His plight has drawn the attention of his students, who held a rally on campus Friday with signs saying free speech is under attack and keep your agenda out of our classroom to support him.

UCLA officials issued a statement Friday with regard to Finks employment, claiming that (t)he content of his courses has never been curtailed. UCLAs process for reviewing instructors is comprehensive and fair, and he has been afforded the full due process considerations mandated by the collective bargaining agreement.

Fink teaches in the Communications Studies Department, which happens to be the same one that your humble correspondent taught nearly20 years ago as a teaching assistant while a graduate student at UCLA. I taught several communications classes on journalism, and one time was asked to givea lecture for an adjunct professor who needed the day off.

Before deliveringmy presentation in front of about 300 students, I carefully reviewed the course material and couldnt help but laugh at the boilerplate liberal talking points about the state of journalism. The most galling item was the claim that the media establishment had an overwhelmingly conservative bias keep in mind that this was at a time whenFox News was in its infancy and the Internet was still being invented by Al Gore.

I ripped apart that lecture and instead gave a talk on the medias liberal bias, backed by my own experience as an actual practicing journalist (as opposed to most professors who teach in communications, including the one I was subbing for). Near the end, I held a no-holds-barred Q&A session and gladly answered each and every question. My presentation was received very well, with a number of students commending me for a refreshing and eye-opening discourse afterward.

Needless to say, I was not asked back for more.

That might be the fate awaiting Fink at UCLA as well since he clearly holds a view on free speech thats no longer acceptable in academia.

That would be a shame, said Mick Mathis, a senior at UCLA who attended Fridays rally.

This is supposed to be a marketplace of ideas, Mathis told the Daily News. And its not a marketplace of ideas if theyre trying to get rid of somebody with a contradictory viewpoint.

Follow Samuel Chi on Twitter @ThePlayoffGuru.

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Free Speech Under Siege at UCLA as Conservative Professor Tries to Save Job - Breitbart News