University of Missouri Fires Communist Labor Studies Professor Don Giljum: Democrat-Media-Complex Decries 'Shirley Sherroding' of Radical Academics

At CBS St. Louis, "Union Official, College Lecturer Don Giljum Resigns After AFL-CIO Pressure, UM-KC Won’t Rehire Next Semester." And Big Government, "Labor Notes: Union Official, College Lecturer Don Giljum Resigns After AFL-CIO Pressure, UM-KC Won’t Rehire Next Semester."

The university's obviously embarrassed. The dude was fired for teaching violence in the classroom, for making statements personally advocating violence against capitalists:

I can’t really honestly say that I’ve never wished, or have never been in a position where I haven’t wished real harm on somebody, or inflicted any pain and suffering on some people that, you know, didn’t ask for it,” Giljum said, “It certainly has it’s place.

And now this is all over the news.

Right on cue, the progressive-left's meme is the "Shirly Sherroding" of radical academics. The claims are that the videos were selectively edited and that students' privacy rights were violated. See USA Today, "Career-ending videos of professors are unfairly edited, university officials say"; Chronicle of Higher Education, "Videos 'Ripped' From Online-Course Footage Bring Threats to Instructors"; and especially, Inside Higher Ed, "The Shirley Sherrods of Academe?"
So far co-instructor Judy Ancel, the Director of the Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has not been relieved. And she's making aggressive attempts to refute the video evidence. From the Inside Higher Ed piece:

Ancel, the other instructor, said in an interview that she works on annual contracts and that the university has not taken any action against her. She also released a statement in which she explained the context behind some of the quotes shown in the video.

For example, she noted that one of her quotes in the Breitbart video is: "violence is a tactic and it's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic." Here is what she said really happened: "After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, 'One guy in the film ... said 'violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.' " In this instance, she said, "Breitbart’s editing has literally put words in my mouth that were not mine, and they never were mine."

Both Ancel and Giljum said that a course about the history of the labor movement would of necessity discuss violence. Ancel said in her statement: "Any examination of labor’s past would be incomplete without discussion of violence (which for the most part was directed at workers), and analysis of its roots. At no time did my co-instructor, Don Giljum, nor I advocate violence."

Insurgent Visuals, the media production team that produced the clips from Ancel and Giljum's classes, rejects allegations of selective editing, and specifically rebuts Ancel's denials:

Ancel cannot deny that she and Giljum were discussing violent tactics–and, in Giljum’s case, recalling his personal experience in using fear and intimidation.

So she, and the university, have resorted to a red herring–the false claim that students’ “right to privacy” was violated.

None of the individual students in any of the videos was identified. Furthermore, Ancel herself encouraged students to share the course materials widely, saying in one lecture:

…all labor education materials are uncopyrighted, and to be shared. We do not believe, for the most part, in intellectual property rights. That’s one of the principles of labor education. We share.

This is not an “attack on the rights of working people and on anything that is public,” as Ancel wants Missouri taxpayers to believe. This is about the promotion of violence as a political tactic in labor disputes in a public university classroom.

The fundamental context–which Ancel distorts–is that she and Giljum discussed violence–and militancy, and intimidation, and law-breaking–in the course of teaching impressionable students how to get results through union organizing.

If, at times, they stated that “the tactics have changed,” at other times they seemed to condone those tactics–with Ancel, for example, stating that “there are some people whose definition of terrorism is just an army without a defense budget.”

At one point, Ancel stated: “the struggle for public employee unionism cost lives”–real lives, because people “had to fight for it.”

No doubt she partially meant the lives of those who suffered to win labor rights in America, a large number. But let there be no doubt that labor violence cost lives among those who resisted, for whatever reason–those innocents who were the casualties in the battles she supported.

More on this later.

Andrew Breitbart will be on Bill Maher's tonight: "HBO 'Real Time' Maher hosts Breitbart, Waters, Patrick Friday night, expect fireworks."

RELATED: At Flap's Blog, "Video: Union Leaders Teach Advanced Thug Tactics in University of Missouri Labor Courses." And The Rockin' Conservative!, "Manager of Nuclear Power Workers Union Advocates Industrial Sabotage and Violence."