You Will Not Believe The T-Shirt That Got This Professor Kicked Off Campus!

Some of you will recognize the
T-shirt verbiage to the right as coming from the hugely popular HBO
series Game of Thrones.

Nobody at Bergen Community College did, alas, which led to the
suspension of Francis Schmidt, an art and animation professor at
Bergen Community College. The picture is of his daughter, who is
doing some kind of yoga stance.

Here is an account of what happened next, courtesy of Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education (FIRE):

Displaying a lack of both pop culture and First Amendment
awareness, administrators at Bergen Community College in New Jersey
placed Professor Francis Schmidt on leave this
past January, requiring him to meet with a psychiatrist before
returning to campus—just for posting a picture of his daughter in a
T-shirt quoting the popular HBO television show Game of
Thrones.

Schmidt, an art and animation professor, was required to meet
with Jim Miller, an executive director at the college, as well as
two other administrators prior to being put on leave because Miller
believed he received a “threatening email” from Schmidt.

There are many problems with this accusation. First, the email
was not sent from Schmidt. Jim Miller is a contact of Schmidt’s on
Google+, so Miller automatically received an email from Google when
Schmidt posted on Google+. Second, the “threatening” material was
a picture of
Schmidt’s young daughter doing yoga in a Game of
Thrones T-shirt with the quote, “I will take what is mine
with fire & blood.” For those who are unfamiliar
with Game of Thrones, this is a quote from the
character Daenerys,
who is pledging to retake the throne in Westeros, a war-torn
continent and the primary setting of the series.

Read more here.

FIRE reports that Schmidt is back teaching but notes, “it’s
worrying that Schmidt was forced to go through this ordeal in the
first place.” Worrying isn’t the first word I would use to
describe the situation. If you want to bring your views on the
situation to the attention of Bergen Community College’s president,

here’s her page.

Hat tip: Peter
Bonilla’s Twitter feed.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, here’s Reason TV’s recent
Tax Day video, which features GOT scenes and characters. Just so
there is no misunderstanding, this is meant as a fun way of
discussing the violence that men, women, and dwarves do – not
through weapons but through the tax code.