UB Faculty Opposes Choice

A full-out attack on the University of Buffalo Students for Life has been launched, by faculty members.  It turns out they are only pro-choice when their own viewpoint is chosen.

“UB Students for Life brought in the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s Genocide Awareness Project, which compares the victims of abortion to the victims of the genocides of world history,” UB SOL president Christian Andzel told Ann Marie Hoffman of Life News. “Many events followed. One professor had a personal moment when she confronted my vice president in a violent manner. She then went on to shout expletives and was eventually arrested by the police.”

“She kept loudly repeating the F-word to describe her disgust at the possibility that pro-life students might be afforded the same First Amendment Rights, which she claimed justified her repeated use of the profane F-word in front of students on campus,” Mack Rights of the Frederick Douglas Foundation reports.

“Laura Curry, an adjunct media studies professor at the university, was arrested Monday after ranting about a pro-life display on campus that she claimed was profane,” Will Wrigley reported in The Huffington Post on April 17, 2013. “When confronted by police officers over her use of profanity, she claimed that her tirade was just as profane as the display, set up by the University of Buffalo club Students for Life.”

Other colleagues were sympathetic to her views, though perhaps less demonstrative than she was.  “We are writing to condemn the message of the anti-abortion protest that took place outside the Commons this week. In particular, we are disturbed by the equation of those who support women’s reproductive rights with those who lynched thousands of African American men and women in the 19th and 20th centuries,” half a dozen professors wrote in a letter to the editor that appeared in the student newspaper, The Spectrum.

Among the six who signed the missive were:

• Susan Cahn, Professor of History, whose research interests are “U.S. Women’s History, History of Sexuality, African American History, Southern History, Feminist Theory, LGBQ (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Queer) Studies;”
• Carole Emberton, Assistant Professor of History, of whom one of her reviewers on Rate My Professor.com wrote, “She’s really interested in hearing what you have to say and the books are actually good- we read A. Lincoln: Vampire Hunter;” and
• Theresa Runstedtler, Assistant Professor of American Studies, of whom a fan on RMP wrote, “Her lectures are mandatory because she has movie quizzes, but you learn a lot from the movies.”

Rounding out the sextet were: Lakisha Simmons, Assistant Professor of Global Gender Studies; Victoria Wolcott, Professor of History; and Jason Young, Associate Professor of History.

 

Ali Swee is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run jointly by Accuracy in Academia and its sister organization— Accuracy in Media.

If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org.