Correction Request: Inside Higher Ed

In an April 29, 2011 item by Scott Jaschik, Inside High Ed published this false statement provided by University of Missouri professor Judy Ancel:

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.”

That is demonstrably false and misleading and was addressed in a subsequent post at Big Government by Insurgent Visuals after an additional careful review of the film in question.

In fact, the activist she “quoted” from the 1993 film At The River I Stand, Coby Smith, said, “…we saw non-violence as a tactic, and a tactic alone,” not, as Ancel erroneously claims,”violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s appropriate, the appropriate tactic” (our emphasis). Smith’s original, full quote appears at 1:02 – 1:15, below:

Factually, the class had been primarily discussing violence, not non-violence, and as opposed to quoting Smith accurately, which she has since falsely claimed, Professor Ancel distorted, or otherwise misquoted, Smith, thereby defining violence as a tactic with some appropriate use within today’s labor movement using her own words to do it, not Smith’s.

Inside Higher Ed owes Big Government, Insurgent Visuals and its readership a correction, given that the publication appears to have been misled by Ancel.