What You Need to Know About the Past Seven Days

Free Speech

The United States has almost 225 years of experience with freedom of speech, yet sometimes it seems no more understood today than it was back in December of 1791, when the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were ratified. You may think that this right — as gloriously unruly as it is fundamental to our idea of democracy — would be celebrated as one of the republic’s most important contributions to civilization. At times that does not appear to be the case.

The latest free-speech dust-up began last month when Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, refused to stand when the national anthem was played before a series of preseason games. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” said Mr. Kaepernick, who is biracial. “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

To no one’s surprise, tempers flared. But Mr. Kaepernick did not back down. “I’m seeing things happen to people that don’t have a voice, people that don’t have a platform to talk and have their voices heard, and effect change. So I’m in the position where I can do that, and I’m going to do that for people that can’t.” The 49ers issued a statement recognizing “the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.”

Other athletes followed Mr. Kaepernick’s lead, including high-school and college players in a variety of sports. Social media filled with memes supporting and opposing the protests (or commenting wryly on them: “People need to start respecting the flag,” says a heavily bearded guy carrying a gun, “of the government I am stockpiling arms against”). And the chancellor of the University of Texas system, William H. McRaven, a retired admiral, felt strongly enough that players should “stand up straight” during the anthem that he sent around a memo saying so. Coaches and players, he wrote, “should face the flag and place their hand over their heart as a sign of respect for the nation.”

“I spent 37 years defending freedom of speech and freedom of expression,” Mr. McRaven wrote. “Nothing is more important to this democracy.” While no one should be compelled to stand, he said, protesters “should recognize that by sitting in protest to the flag they are disrespecting everyone who sacrificed to make this country what it is today — as imperfect as it might be.”

Disrespect is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but if Mr. Kaepernick’s stance against oppression can be interpreted as “disrespecting everyone who sacrificed,” how do we have a productive conversation on what makes the republic imperfect?

Back to Class

Last week faculty members at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus returned to their classrooms after administrators ended a lockout that had lasted nearly two weeks. The union representing 236 full-time professors and 450 adjuncts said it had “won a victory,” although not a new contract: The union and the university agreed to bring in a mediator to help them settle their differences, and the union agreed not to strike for the rest of the academic year.

Famine in North Carolina

As a friend from the Tar Heel State put it, “it’s like a potato famine struck Idaho.” He was referring to the NCAA’s decision last week to move tournament matchups scheduled for North Carolina venues to other states. The decision was a rebuke to the state’s legislators and governor, Pat McCrory, a Republican, for House Bill 2, the March law that drew national attention for requiring transgender people on state property to use bathrooms marked for the sex listed on their birth certificates. The NCAA noted in a statement that the law goes much further than that, invalidating “any local law that treats sexual orientation as a protected class or has a purpose to prevent discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals.”

Seven NCAA tournaments will be relocated, including contests in baseball, golf, lacrosse, soccer, and tennis. But it’s the loss of the first two rounds of next year’s Division I men’s basketball tournament, which were to take place in Greensboro, that stung North Carolinians the most (they do love their basketball).

Governor McCrory, noting that HB 2 is being challenged in federal court, said the legal process should go forward “without economic threats or retaliation.” He added: “Sadly, the NCAA, a multibillion-dollar, tax-exempt monopoly, failed to show this respect at the expense of our student-athletes and hard-working men and women.”

Two days after the NCAA decision, the Atlantic Coast Conference followed suit, announcing that championship contests scheduled for neutral venues in North Carolina would be moved, but that those on campuses would remain, because its member universities are all “strongly committed” to “the values of equality, diversity, inclusion and non-discrimination.”

Assault Charges

Meanwhile, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said last week that she was raped on February 14 by a member of the football team, and that the university had taken no action even though she cooperated with its police and Title IX office and “did everything a rape victim is supposed to do.”

The student, Delaney Robinson, said in a public statement that after she had recounted what she could remember to a nurse treating her for sexual assault, she was interviewed by university police investigators, “who consistently asked humiliating and accusatory questions,” including “What was I wearing?”

“My humiliation turned to anger when I listened to the recorded interviews of my rapist,” she continued. Investigators “spoke to him with a tone of camaraderie,” and even “laughed with him when he told them how many girls’ phone numbers he had managed to get on the same night he raped me.” In a highly unusual move, she filed her own misdemeanor assault charges against the football player, Allen Artis, even though local prosecutors said the campus-police investigation was still open. Mr. Artis turned himself in to court officials the following day and was released.

The university said in a statement that while it “tries to complete an investigation as quickly as possible, our priority is to ensure that the factual investigations are complete and conducted in a fair and thorough manner.” Mr. Artis has been suspended from the football team.

‘Marginalia’

Longtime readers of this newspaper will recall that for years the founder and former editor compiled a lighthearted weekly column, signed only "—c.g.,” that tended to focus on misspellings, miswordings, and outright mistakes. c.g. is also, it’s fair to say, a font fanatic, so obsessed with typography that he regularly replaced the oddball ampersand found in a Bulmer italic headline with a Baskerville ampersand he liked better.

He came right to mind last week when a tweet linked to a Wisconsin State Journal article revealed a supersize font faux pas by the University of Wisconsin: “WISCONSIN” appears in both end zones of the football stadium with three of the four n’s upside down. In fonts with serifs, an uppercase N has them in three places — upper left, upper right, and lower left — but not on the lower right.

Hey, mistakes happen, right? The university said this one occurred after football uniforms were redesigned this summer and the end-zone typeface was updated to match. Corrections are in the works.

Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.