"Whether I'm right
or whether I'm wrong
Whether I faked a hate crime
or got beat like a gong
It's all about me
It's all about me! ..."
(apologies to the great sdj)
Posted on 12/10/2005 12:27:37 PM PST by Pikamax
Professor blasts KU, sheriff’s investigation Mirecki says he may sue university
By Sophia Maines
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Kansas University professor Paul Mirecki said he’s hired an attorney and is ready to go to the mat with KU and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.
“If I have to sue, I will,” he said.
Mirecki said he’s angry because KU didn’t back him after religious conservatives attacked him for his plan to teach a course dealing with intelligent design.
Mirecki became a political lightning rod after his new course was announced and his derisive comments on an Internet message board about conservative Christians and Catholics were later widely distributed.
His planned spring course was canceled. Still, some legislators said they would call Mirecki and KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway on the carpet for a public hearing.
On Wednesday the university announced Mirecki had resigned as chairman of the religious studies department. But Friday, Mirecki told the Journal-World he was forced to step down.
“The University penalized me and denied me my Constitutionally protected right to speak and express my mind,” he wrote in a statement prepared for the newspaper. “I’ve become radioactive and the University’s administrators won’t support me.”
Mirecki said his career was ruined and that “speaking engagements that I had lined up now have been canceled.”
On Friday, he displayed two black eyes and a bruise on his arm that he said came from a beating administered early Monday by two unknown men who had followed him in a pickup truck as he drove to breakfast. He said his attackers mentioned the controversy.
He said he was not pleased with the sheriff’s investigation because he had been “treated more like a criminal than a victim.”
He said he was interviewed by officers several times, “once for five hours straight. They keep asking me the same things over and over. They seized my car; they entered my office and seized my computer. They said they need them for their investigation but it didn’t make any sense to me.”
Lt. Kari Wempe, a spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, released a statement Friday night that said the sheriff’s office had not seen a copy of Mirecki’s prepared statement to the media.
“Until we are provided with a document from Mr. Mirecki, we are not able to comment on it. Our agency continues to thoroughly investigate this crime against Mr. Mirecki,” Wempe said.
Mirecki said he has hired Lawrence attorney David Brown to represent him.
Hemenway said he had been told by other administrators that Mirecki stepped down from his chairman’s post. He said KU has supported Mirecki.
“Professor Mirecki still has a job at the University of Kansas,” Hemenway said. “That would appear to be support for his rights to his tenured position and his rights to free speech ... The university deplores the fact that he was apparently attacked. We’ve said so.”
Hemenway also said he had been told that KU police called Mirecki to see how they might help him.
But Mirecki said the university had done little to back him and that he was fired as department chairman because he had the “temerity to challenge the power of the religious right in Kansas and the university capitulated to demands of the conservative minority.”
He said he felt let down by the administration and colleagues who sought his resignation Tuesday.
He said he had no choice but to sign the resignation letter, which was typed on stationery from the office of Barbara Romzek, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Mirecki said he lived under threat of another attack.
“If the University doesn’t support me, I could be in more physical danger because the University is not standing up to the religious extremists,” he said.
He said the number of threatening letters and e-mails has increased since the chancellor called Mirecki’s online comments “repugnant and vile” in a public statement.
He said he also had received more than 2,500 e-mails and letters from academics around the world supporting him.
“The University has a duty, as a protector of intellectual honesty and debate, to support its teaching staff when controversial issues are raised,” Mirecki said. “Now those on the right are emboldened and feel they can take this a step higher.
“At this point, I just want this to be over.”
Sometimes public events are so unexpected...and sometimes they are so predictable it's almost painful. Like this story.
Sounds like Mireckis story has some holes in it and he has retained an attorney to keep him from digging them any deeper. I could be wrong about that but evidently the cops see it the same way if they asked him questions for five hours. Of course they could be wrong as well. We'll see.
"Mirecki says he may sue university"
Typical liberal rat.
Looks like that week old fish-tale is really starting to stink. Perhaps Mirecki should hire Michael Newdow as attorney. Then there would really be a circus in town.
Waaa?
Department chairs serve at the pleasure of the dean, and can be dismissed for any reason or no reason. Sorry, Charlie: Embarrassing your employer in the national media is not a good career move.
Drama king.
My knee jerk reaction was that he hired the guy or guys to beat him up exactly in order to initiate a lawsuit. If so and he keeps it up, the next story on him could be an arrest for perjury and conspiracy to defrauding the courts.
Photo here and interesting discussion of injuries: (larger photo further down):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1537819/posts
"Whether I'm right
or whether I'm wrong
Whether I faked a hate crime
or got beat like a gong
It's all about me
It's all about me! ..."
(apologies to the great sdj)
[“The University penalized me and denied me my Constitutionally protected right to speak and express my mind,”]
This pompous ass needs to do a little more research on The Constitution. He doesn't have a "right" to force other people to provide him with a forum and an audience for his views.
If he wants to speak, he's free to do so the same way as the rest of us rubes.
Could it be that the University also has a constitutionally protected right to speak and express their mind ?
Not bad Stultis, not bad at all. I'm sure Sammy would take no offense, he had an excellent sense of humor.
If I were beaten up, I'd be railing against the thugs that came after me, but he's mad at the school. Suspicious, and telling, IMHO.
This guy is really stuck on stupid.
Was the "intellectual honesty and debate" part when he wrote that he was going to use his mythology class to rub the fundies big fat faces in it?
“If I have to sue, I will,” he said.
Mirecki said he’s angry because KU didn’t back him after religious conservatives attacked him for his plan to teach a course dealing with intelligent design.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...
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