Unlike Europeans, Americans are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which means they have the right to speak freely — unless, of course, they want to keep their jobs.
The following report by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff recounts what happened to Karen Siegemund, the president of American Freedom Alliance.
A Casualty of the Long March Through the Institutions
by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff
I am currently finishing up another tour here in the United States, educating patriotic Americans about the state of free speech in Europe and how America’s First Amendment rights are under siege.
Two weeks ago I attended a conference hosted and organized by my dear friend Dr. Karen Siegemund, president of American Freedom Alliance, in Los Angeles. The topic of the conference was prescient in so many ways:
“The Long March Through the Institutions: The Left’s Revolution by Other Means”
The roster of knowledgeable speakers included David Horowitz, Trevor Loudon, Jim Simpson, Maj. Stephen Coughlin, Charlie Kirk, Michael Walsh, Bill Whittle, and many more. In short, Karen assembled an astounding line-up of experts on the subject matter who were able to educate the large crowd.
Little did she know it, but Karen was about to become the latest victim of the Left’s destruction of America’s liberties. Only a few hours after the end of this successful conference, Karen was told her teaching contract would not be renewed. She was fired for being too outspoken about her political views.
As Ann-Marie Murrell wrote at Politichicks:
For the past several years [Karen Siegemund] has been teaching Advanced Math and Ancient Greece at Le Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a private “dual language international” high school in Los Angeles. As an added bonus, she teaches these subjects in French.
[…]
Dr. Karen Siegemund should never have been fired (or “not renewed”) from her job simply because her employers didn’t believe the same way she believed. Karen probably didn’t like their politics either but that didn’t stop her from wanting to teach the children at that school. But that’s the difference between Totalitarians and true Americans. Americans believe in Freedom for all people. The ones stealing our Freedom of Speech only believe in freedom for a select few.
At the end of my presentations here in the United States, I always tell my audience: “Hang on to your hard-won rights! The Constitution is being taken away from you, bit by bit. Your enemies — many of whom are right here in America — make no bones about what they intend. They want to make the USA just like Europe — a subjugated state.”
My American friends: never think that what happens over there in Europe can’t and won’t happen in America. Dr. Karen Siegemund’s case proves that it is happening. I urge you to stand up while you still can.
Karen, we stand behind you! Never give up, never give in!
Read more about Dr. Siegemund’s case at Politichicks.
“Dr. Karen Siegemund should never have been fired (or ‘not renewed’) from her job simply because her employers didn’t believe the same way she believed.” — Unfortunately, this freedom cuts both ways. Yes, they are very much within their rights to choose with whom they wish to work for any reason whatsoever, political disagreement included, and discontinue a contract if they want to build an echo chamber around themselves. You have a right to free speech, but no right to a career if you make yourself disagreeable with those on whose decision your advancement depends. It is very much the same leftist-European way of thinking to believe that there was an obligation to ignore that and give you your cream anyway. If they started to take away unemployment benefits on such grounds… Come to think of it, there is only a small step between this kind of leftist power rule and full-blown sharia.
I think what you’re saying is that a private institution has the right to make its own mistakes and the school should not be subject to legal recourse simply because they made a horrendous choice based on a totalitarian philosophy, and fired an eminently-qualified teacher.
And I agree with you in that.
The school obviously caters to a wealthy elite who have the money to pay the enormous property, sales, and income taxes to support failed public schools with oceans of money. My own preference would be to blow the entire public education system to hell, and give people the responsibility for getting their own children educated. Perhaps then, there would be a competition among elite schools, and not so easy to fire a superb teacher.
The situation there cannot be compared to a free market for multiple reasons, the most salient of which is that the police simply don’t enforce laws against violence when the victims are conservative activists.
Our own homegrown Stasi ‘foot soldiers and informers’ are in place nationwide just awaiting a command center at the top.
Hmm, teaching ancient Greece in the French language in Los Angeles. Now that’s a skill set that may be difficult to transition to a new career.
Anyway, freedom of speech keeps you out of jail but it won’t keep you from getting fired. Most people know and accept this. Working for the employer of your choice is not a right.
She was already employed there and had held this kind of conference before. They moved the goal posts without telling her ahead of time.
It is an unusual skill set and she’ll not be easily replaced. They shot off their own noses and the strictures are closing in on them.
Notice that the Politichicks article on the matter makes clear the school owner was not the founder of the school, but either her daughter or grand-daughter. Commonly, a wealthy, prominent family sinks back into obscurity after a few generations, probably because of genetic drift. Anyway, I doubt that the present owner of the elite school had the faintest concept or appreciation of the founders’ original intentions.
There’s a strange phenomenon that some school administrators literally don’t care what the consequences are to the school of enforcing their PC philosophy. Evergreen College came into prominence by having white-stay-off-campus day, and by ordering police to stand down while a black mob attacked a professor who expressed disagreement with that policy. Enrollment has dropped dramatically, they had to close several dorms, and lay off many staff, but as far as I can tell, not a blemish on the career of the college president.
I have friends from the (deliciously former) Soviet Union. They were amazed to learn, after arriving on this shores. that Lenin was able to receive an education in Tsarist Russia even though his brother had been exiled to Siberia for political activity. That’s just not the way the communists operated in the Workers’ Paradise.
Only Islam as achieved a more thoroughgoing system of control over people than has the modern political Left.
Is education already lost to the mindless bureaucrats of the Left? The march through the institutions has been very thorough in subverting the value system and in depicting our society as an evil experiment that has gone on too long.
Like many others, I complacently sat on my hands while much of this was happening, awaking to the reality long after it had become possible to inculcate kindergartners with transgender theory and to produce “scholars” of American history who neither understand nor appreciate the lessons of our history.
Is it too late to reverse the process of decay?
Not without much bloodshed.
The very structure of public (and much “private”) education assures the climb to power of communist bureaucrats. You have a huge, top-down, bureaucracy supported with public funds, totally unaccountable, and run by tenured bureaucrats also on the public dole, totally unaccountable, and given pass-or-fail power over young victims without much life experience. The whole edifice is rotten to the core and aside from the obscene expense of the castles and Schönbrunn gardens on every campus, actually damages the majority of “students” passing through.
It happens the school that made the decision to not renew her contract was a private school. My first question would be, does the school get any tax-funded grants or supports? If so, it must give up those grants to be consistent with the notion of a private concern hiring whom it wishes.
Public schools worked until President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988 in 1962 which gave federal workers the right to join unions and engage in collective bargaining. Unions are uncontrollable when their employer has no competition.
Wouldn’t that also apply to their employers? Just wondering…