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Updated [April 9]! University administrators now say American Sniper will run tonight as originally planned. So will Paddington (whew). Details here.
Updated [April 8]! Replacement movie added below.
The University of Michigan's Center for Campus Involvement canceled a showing of American Sniper after 300 students protested, saying the film
not only tolerates but promotes anti-Muslim...rhetoric and sympathizes with a mass killer. Chris Kyle was a racist who took a disturbing stance on murdering Iraqi civilians...watching this movie is provocative and unsafe to...Muslim students who are too often reminded of how little the media and world values their lives.
This is (or was, anyway) a college, right, where learning and uncomfortable ideas are occassionally encountered?
At least the proactively offended students at least made a gesture toward intellectual freedom and free speech:
Although we respect the right to freedom of speech, we believe that with this right comes responsibility: responsibility of action, intention, and outcome....
As U of M students, we ask you to please reconsider showing this movie in order to be a welcoming place to students of all backgrounds, ethnicities and religions. The University of Michigan should not participate in further perpetuating these negative and misleading stereotypes.
An immediate question arises: Why do the signatories assume that the audience will simply absorb whatever is presumed to be the offensive message of the movie's producers? The assumption that the audience is a lump, or a blank screen upon which an agenda in projected, goes unstated but is wrong and offensive. Audiences have minds of their own. For starters, wouldn't it be more interesting and effective to push for a viewing and a discussion of the film's apparent intentions and the audience's responses?
University officials confessed to their thought errors across social media, reports The College Fix.
“While our intent was to show a film, the impact of the content was harmful, and made students feel unsafe and unwelcomed at our program,” stated The Center for Campus Involvement, which oversees student activities and is run by university employees, as it announced its decision Tuesday on its various social media accounts, including Twitter and Facebook.
“We deeply regret causing harm to members of our community, and appreciate the thoughtful feedback provided to us by students and staff alike.”
Let's leave aside whether American Sniper actually foments anti-Muslim sentiments or actions (Read Kurt Loder on its anti-war message and Charles Paul Freund on Iraqi audience responses here).
The idea that a college is an unfit arena in which to show a lauded and successful—if controversial—movie is mind-boggling to say the least. The urge to excise any sort of negative energy, thought, or feeling in and out of classrooms on campuses is widely and appallingly documented. But this latest petty capitulation on the part of feckless administrators to student demands for the ideological bubble-wrapping of education makes some of us remember when college was supposed to be a place to have conversations not stop them before they begin.
Update: I neglected to mention that American Sniper was replaced with Paddington.
@Mashon45 Paddington will be shown instead.
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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."
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