#%* you, civility

A University of Iowa professor took the bait this week when she fired off a salty “&*#! you” to college Republicans, starting a %@^# storm of debate about tolerance, diversity and good-old freedom of speech.

The email blast to UI faculty, staff and students was an invitation to attend Conservative Coming Out Week events, including the (wink-wink) Animal Rights BBQ. Ellen Lewin, Anthropology and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies professor, was not amused.

But when I called on Friday, she didn't really want to talk about it. She forwarded me a statement, instead: “I'm afraid I lost my temper and did something very regrettable,” she wrote, going on to say her profanity wasn't appropriate, “let alone professional.”

UI College Republican Chairman John Twillmann seemed pretty gleeful about the exchange. By losing her cool, Lewin handed him a lot of power. How else is a kid going to get on Fox News?

You can't even blame Twillmann telling Facebook friends his group meant no offense, saying “tough” in the same breath to people who might find his group's choice of words offensive.

There's nothing new about young people talking out of both sides of their mouth about fairness. Like idolizing Nietzsche or Hunter S. Thompson, it's something most of us grow out of.

College Republicans' adviser and UI political science professor Tim Hagle was right to defend his group's right to thumb their noses at the establishment.

And Twillmann is right, too, there is no copyright on the phrase “coming out.” Just like there's none on “blood libel” or even the n-word - so culturally toxic that even its euphemism feels a little wrong.

But it's disingenuous for grown people to jump on that bandwagon to pretend that Lewin's response - as crude, as knee-jerk and ungraceful as it was - came out of left field.

Free speech doesn't mean people have to like or respect you no matter what comes out of your mouth. If someone calls you on what you've said, even crudely and imprecisely, that's not oppression - that's life.

The UI was right to distribute the group's email, and Lewin was within her rights to respond. Could she have done it more eloquently? You bet.

It's a lesson all us big mouths learn sooner or later: There are ways to start a dialogue, and there are ways to start a fight. More often than not, you get to choose which one you'll end up with.

What you don't get to do is switch midstream, to cry foul when someone calls you on what you've done.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net