Subject: criticism of Vanderbilt chancellor by administrator in charge of student media

From: Jonathan Farley <lattice.theory@gmail.com>

Date: 10/19/09, 10:36

CC: Chris Carroll <chris.carroll@vanderbilt.edu>

Hi,

Chris Carroll, who sent me an email saying that he agreed with my essay except for one or two points (he didn't specify which two, but you can guess), had this to say about Gordon Gee:
http://reason.com/archives/2004/08/01/the-wrong-lesson

' Chris Carroll, director of student media at Vanderbilt University and a former president of College Media Advisers, an organization that monitors collegiate censorship, worries that young journalists are increasingly "submissive." He cites a troubling case at his own university: "I had a freshman who was on something that I think could have been a story, [concerning] our current chancellor, with some of his affiliations with corporate boards outside the school. He kept digging and learning more and more and more, and he talked to the chancellor, who scared the living shit out of him....He said, 'You know I'm here on financial aid; these people can sue me, ruin me, ruin my family,' and he quit the paper. He's gone." '

I went to Carroll early on after one racist article was published by the Vanderbilt student publications, but, since such articles continued to be published, they must have been published with Carroll's approval (which he would justify, undoubtedly, on the basis of free speech, although that does not in fact cover libel, and even John Stuart Mill opposed "free speech" if it would incite a mob: "An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard." Note that I lived on the Vanderbilt campus, fortunately in a temporary room whose location only one other person knew.).

Regards,
Jonathan Farley

Cc: CHRIS CARROLL
Director of Student Media
615-322-6610
Sarratt Student Center, Suite 135 E
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN
chris.carroll@vanderbilt.edu