I'm very confused by your superfluous Duke reference. No one's being accused of anything -- there aren't even any suspects. Or were you saying, maybe someone just innocently left their noose around?

Also, the "(if not before)" is priceless ass-covering. Indeed, whoever would have thought that people might have been falsely accused prior to an incident in 2006??
 

Sorry to be dumb, but could someone who knows the law explain what could be the crime here, in the literal sense, where the police could arrest you for doing it?
 

As to your first point, 5:43, I've seen references to an ostensibly jealous white professor in several media accounts already. Whoever this guy (I think it's a guy) is, he's one step away from being accused.

Also, your interpretation of my "ass-covering" is overly cynical, as you indeed seem to be. In fact, that was a bit of a shout-out to people who were smarter than I was about the Duke thing (I gave Brodhead more credit at the time than he was due).
 

Unfortunately, 7:02, designation as a possible "hate crime" doesn't necessarily depend on the literal sense of things.
 

7:02 here. Thanks for the clarification, 8:36. I thought people might assume, from the fact that it was being labeled a crime (with a modifier), and that the police were all over the place, and that the president of Columbia had labeled it an "assault," that an actual criminal act had been committed, rather than a (howerver loathesome) exercise of free political speech under the First Amendment. You never know what the laws are these days. I thought that Rich, being a defender of free speech and of leniency for harmless campus criminals, might have known something about the applicable law here that I don't.
 

Columbia surely knows how to be in the news these days...
 

9:24, I really don't know if this kind of act would break some sort of harassment or intimidation law. I'm sure it would violate some policy that Columbia has, but is it illegal? Dunno.
 

9:24. to quote RB "...is it illegal? Dunno?" but really to even try to attribute it as an "...exercise of free political speech under the First Amendment." is loathsome.
 

Not so sure about that. Letting Neo-Nazis march in Skokie and speechify about the need to rid the country of jews, blacks, etc......is not so very different. Still, the legal difference, of course, is that this is a purely visual/visceral communication (i.e., non-cognitive), which gets (not entirely rightly I think) different First Amendment protection than verbal speech. "Fighting words" and pornography, alike are treated as conduct rather than speech, and based on that questionable distinction, can be regulated notwithstanding the First Amendment. I don't know if the noose is a hate crime under city/state/federal law. It is, though, probably viewable as a credible physical threat, and thus criminally punishable. In any event, I would doubt it has protection as free speech.