Cal State U forced to re-hire Quaker math teacher who inserted "non-violently" into loyalty oath

Atonius sez, "Marianne Kearney-Brown, the Quaker math teacher who was fired by California State University for inserting the word 'non-violently' into her loyalty oath to the state, has been reinstated after Atty General Jerry Brown clarified that the oath doesn't require employees to take up arms."

The idea that someone could be fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath came as a surprise to many Californians who were unaware that public employees are still required to sign it. The pledge was added to the state Constitution in 1952 at the height of anti-Communist hysteria and has remained a prerequisite for public employment ever since. All state, city, county, public school, community college and public university employees are required to sign the 86-word oath. Noncitizens are exempt.

Link (Thanks, Antonius!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Takuan

a basic tenet of totalitarian dictatorships is that everyone has to be guilty of something at all times. That way, there can be no heroes of the people. Which secures those in power. Witness the bred to the bone social and political cynicism of any East Bloc veterans. During the whole run of the communist dictatorship,loyalty was constantly demanded to be publically demonstrated by avowal. Not one person in that society from top to bottom believed it for a moment. In fact, the insistence on state loyalty utterly destroyed any interpersonal loyalties via instruments like the Stasi.

The current criminal enterprise occupying the White House was and is well aware of this. They will attempt return to power at the earliest chance. During their reign they planted as many seeds for the establishment of a society based on mistrust as they could. It would behoove Americans to do a great deal of weeding in the near future.
Loyalty oaths would be a good start. Who knows how long the coming interval of freedom will last?
zuzu

a basic tenet of totalitarian dictatorships is that everyone has to be guilty of something at all times. That way, there can be no heroes of the people.

This is perhaps the one and only thing Ayn Rand has ever said that didn’t seem blatantly “stolen” and vulgarized from someone else who said it better:

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
Takuan

she said that?

how very dissapointing
forgeweld

“”government” is exactly the same but can be frequently improved with a bullet.”

What wonderful brevity. Can you give some examples?
Tom

@22: Cardinal Richelieu said it better, at least by implication: “Give me six lines written by the most honourable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.”

What America needs right now is more people willing to say “No” when asked to do absurd things like sign loyalty oaths.

Hypocrisy is easy. But honour really isn’t so hard either.
scottfree

Umm…not to rant or anything but that Ayn Rand quotation /is/ in fact a vulgarisation of hegal and Nietzsche or dialectics in general. At least the parts of it that makes sense are. Power assumes the dialectically opposite position of the powerless; so if the state were criminal [but of course the state decides what is criminal], it would naturally criminalise the innocent.

Of course, that is a gloss, because most of the quote simply fails to make sense. The term innocent only makes sense within a judicial system, or a system of morality which would surely find its basis within a code of law, which emanate from the state. The powers of government are outlined in the constitution and go considerably beyond cracking down on criminals. She could make [and probably did] a philosophical argument that the state /should/ merely crack down on criminals, but the fact is, states have much more power then that.

For me, the interesting point is the arbitrary nature of law in the U.S., of which this loyalty oath is a perfect example. In the same way some guy drinking a forty on his stoop on 140th will be hassled while a yuppie can drink a bottle of wine with impunity in Bryant Park, here the law says you must take an oath, yes, but you will not be obligated to take any specific action because of it. The Quaker version of the oath is already implicit in the wording, although noone seems to have realised that until today. Or anyone flying out of or into the U.S. has no idea if they can do so with all their possessions intact. Most of the time you will, but sometimes, with no sound reason why not, you wont. So there is a question of what the law means when it is arbitrarily applied. For me, it stops being the law and starts being the whim of those with power.

So, umm…lalala…anyone else following the Arsenal match on the internet and trying to kill time?
Nelson.C

Oh, drat! Did I miss Life in Cold Blood again, because of a mere footie match?
technogirl

#18, error404, said ” It strikes me, being a Scot in the UK, …. I think whether or not they’d popped the old John Hancock to some flap doodle document would be the least of anyone’s worries.”

Ok, this is what I don’t get. Why do they use the “old John Hancock” as a figure of speech to represent a signature. Wouldn’t they use something more British or Scottish like “the old King John” or “the old Scrooge McDuck” instead? ;)
error404

re John Hancock and sundry other items of the North American vernacular.

I an so conflicted when it comes to this.On the one hand ou have the simply startlingly brilliant way that a smart Namerican speaks, and then the simply nauseating way that the Tardo Namerican foes.

“John Hancock”, “like white on rice”, “and what not” etc on one hand,”utilise”, “actioning” and the full schmeer of bizniz speek on the other.

Rarely heaqrd the language worked so well or so poorly.

So I pick the tall poppies and pepper my speech with them.

Very similar reaction to the US laws.

On the one hand the undeniable brilliance and soul enrichment of the bill of rights and the separatiiopn of church and sytate. Whilst subsequent muppets have done their damndest to reverse the good for their imaginary friend on the cloud.
Anonymous

As a legislative employee in the state of California, I was required to put my hand on a copy of the state constitution and swear an oath – and I only work in the mailroom!
Takuan

wots all this Hegel, Rand ,Nietzsche rubbish then?
I’m just sayin….
Takuan

Dear Technogirl

perhaps he descends to a familiarity of colonial speech in an attempt to put some at ease… or he’s a lying American bastard. I mean that in a nice, literary merit-full way.
poob

My fav prof, Kurt Bergel, was a hero Jewish refuge from WWII Germany. He was hired by USC only to discover that he had to take a loyalty oath. He declined and accepted a job at maybe half pay at Chapman College, a tiny liberal arts college.
He felt that a loyalty oath was a fascist tool.
Kinda like telling the airport clerk you are not a terrorist, they also serve no useful purpose.
zuzu

Umm…not to rant or anything but that Ayn Rand quotation /is/ in fact a vulgarisation of hegal and Nietzsche or dialectics in general. At least the parts of it that makes sense are. … most of the quote simply fails to make sense. The term innocent only makes sense within a judicial system, or a system of morality which would surely find its basis within a code of law, which emanate from the state.

The AR quote as I selected doesn’t read particularly vulgar to me (regardless of however I feel about the woman or her life’s work itself). My interpretation was that it simply addressed the problem of selective enforcement of law — namely only when it’s politically expedient or to quash challengers.

If you have a better citation / quote from Nietzsche or Hegel I’d love to hear it.
arkizzle

#27

So you don’t use any idioms or phrases that didn’t originate in the US?

Indeed, someone from another state, may question why you are using a turn-of-phrase local to them, and further, your meme-pool-neighbours may object to you picking out their memes for use in your pool, and the queen might not want you to use her language.

At this point you might ask why anyone would choose to ‘communicate’ with anyone else, in anything other than their own personal language of grunts and screeches, developed after a life of strictly controlled, unmingled monologue.
arkizzle

#31

Vulgarisation in this sense does not necessarily mean vulgar.

It is also:
” the act of making something attractive to the general public ”

” changing to a lower state (a less respected state)
”

So, she reworded, and simplified previous work. Vulgarised.
arkizzle

#31 re #33

I could of course be preaching to the choir.
scottfree

#31

oh please let’s drop it [he says as he goes on to defend his position ;-)]. I appreciate the sentiment you read in your quotation, but I don’t think it actually says that, if you start to look at it closely, for reasons that I admittedly fuzzily outlined above. But I’m a nitpicker, always have been, and the point we both seem to be trying to make is sufficiently complicated as not to find voice in a paragraph.

Basically, I don’t want to concede anything to Ayn Rand, actually, even this. Plenty of otherwise clever people get sucked in by her platitudes. My theory is its a bit like diets: you read her because your partner does. I don’t know why peoples partners read her. Its probably why they were single when you met them, anyway.

The main problem I have is her failure to distinguish between rule through law and rule through economics. The innocent man is ruled in any system of government through economics, without ever being found guilty: he or she must work and so on, and it /could/ be the role of state to ease up on that sort of rule, by mandating vacation time, state health care whatever, but it tends to ease up on the other sort of rule: giving industry carte blanch to work people as long and as hard as it likes. Rule of law and rule of economics are linked, is my point, and people are a bit too eager to think of totalitarianism as a political system rather then an economic one. Rand seems to say the government is restricting the popular freedom throuh rule of law, when in fact freedom is restricted by the lack of intervention in an economic system that demands all of ones time and attention. If you aren’t earning you must be spending.

Yup, big commie, me, whatever; call me Ayn Rant.

Attn Moderator: this is a cry for help. Please delete my posts. Your an enabler.
JJR1971

Slightly OT, but I had to confirm/provide proof I was (still) registered with selective service as a condition of being hired by my state university here in Texas. I provided said proof, but found the requirement itself very strange.

I agree that loyalty oaths are stupid. A real spy/terror agent, whatever, wouldn’t bat an eye at signing one, they’d do it as a matter of course.
Takuan

SPAM SPAM BITE ME SPAMMER
scottfree

it is as well. he left about five comments with that link. lol. interesting choices of random quotes tho.
Takuan

SPAM SPAM SPAM
technogirl

Thank heavens for Jerry Brown. A bit more conservative these days but still my hero after all these years.

Keep travelling to that beat of a different drummer, Jerry :)
Takuan

and, mR. Mac Scotfree, who gets what,when ,how?
Antinous

Error404,

Stick with me and you’ll be shittin’ in tall cotton.
coaxial

I had to sign tthathe loyalty oath as part of my employment as a graduate student researcher at UCSC. I was shocked that I had to sign it. I wondered if it was even legal, but signed it anyway because I figured that if a situation ever came up where it could conceivably be enforced, we’d be having much bigger problems.

Then I thought, “Wait. I’m from Illinois. Sure, last time there was civil war, California and Illinois were on the same side, but what about the next one? Could I be forced to fight against my home state? Or would I pull a Robert E. Lee, and violate my oath, and side with my home state?”

Dilemmas. Dilemmas.
Dan B.

Actually, Jerry Brown clarified that the oath didn’t require her to take up arms and at the same time verified that Cal was within its rights to fire her for altering the document based on previous court rulings. The resulting media shitstorm and faculty/student body/public uproar probably contributed to her rehiring.
Agent 86

Maybe we can keep the fuss up and get her a raise for her troubles?
Takuan

so,how about deleting 36,38?
acipolone

Are there many state institutions that don’t require a loyalty oath?

I work at the University of New Orleans and we require all new hires — part time, grad assistants, full time, etc. — to sign the Louisiana loyalty oath, agreeing to abide by the state constitution.

We had a graduate assistant once refuse to sign the oath because she didn’t know what it said. (She changed her mind once she realized her hiring, and subsequently her paycheck, would be held up until she signed the oath.)

Granted, I never read the state constitution and I don’t agree with the idea of signing something for the sake of getting paid, but it just seemed a silly thing to protest, especially if you want the job.

In this case in California, she was actually changing the wording of the agreement. In a public agency/institution, it’s not so easy as scratching off or writing in words you like or dislike. You can’t pick and choose the policies that you agree to — if we could, then we would hand-write in our own wording/conditions on everything we agree to: mortgages, loans, contracts, etc. How is this any different than taking an offer letter for a job for $40,000 and scratching it out to write $50,000, then expecting them to pay the higher salary?

As much as I give this woman props for standing up for her religious beliefs, I think the school completely caved in rehiring her. They just set a very unnecessary precedent for their new hires.

Give her a raise? No. She should be lucky she has a job at all.
Takuan

“You can’t pick and choose the policies that you agree to — if we could, then we would hand-write in our own wording/conditions on everything we agree to: mortgages, loans, contracts,”

I have a used car to sell you…..
evilrooster

You can’t pick and choose the policies that you agree to — if we could, then we would hand-write in our own wording/conditions on everything we agree to: mortgages, loans, contracts,

You can indeed pick and choose the policies that you agree to, if the other party in the contract agrees to it. The wording and conditions on a standard contract are just an administrative convenience.

Skip to the end if you’re easily bored.

- o0o -

IANAL, but here is a quick and dirty contract law overview. A contract (which includes a contract for employment, for a mortgage, for a loan, for the sale or purchase of anything…) is made up of two parts: OFFER and ACCEPTANCE. The offer and acceptance must match, or you don’t have a contract.

So in contractual terms, the State of California OFFERED her employment, said offer including the requirement that she sign the loyalty oath as phrased in the paperwork.

She declined, but OFFERED to be employed by the State including the signing of the modified loyalty oath.

Now, if it were an independent agent, the State could either decline (not employ her), or ACCEPT her revised offer.

As an arm of the government, however, there was a question whether it could make the OFFER that it did, since it seemed to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. In other words, there was a fair argument that the offer broke the law, no matter what happened regarding the acceptance.

She tested that, and it turned out not to be the case. So she ACCEPTED the OFFER as clarified by the document stapled to the oath. Bingo! Contract.

- o0o -

So if you scratch out $40,000 in the job offer letter and write in $50,000, you have made a new OFFER of an employment contract. The employer then has to ACCEPT that before you’re owed the extra $10,000 per annum.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

I don’t want to. They’re interesting.
Takuan

it is very important to distinguish between “god” and “the government”.

“god”is a malicious child with the power of life and death over you, with whom appeal is laughable and the contract voluntary

“government” is exactly the same but can be frequently improved with a bullet.
scottfree

Well, Takuan I’m glad you asked. The answer lies in the question, what is value? Because you see…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Weekends over. Addiction to message boards is over. I’m free. FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Back to work YAY. [the exclamation mark on my keyboard is broken, I'm not being sarcastic, my eyes seriously hurt].
Pipenta

#5, I read your post and I just don’t know where to start. It tires me out just to look at it. So I’ll skip it, except to say yuck.

Don’t recall signing a loyalty oath for the nutmeg state, but I think they did run a security check on me. That’s something fairly recent.

I guess my job is safe… for the time being. Until they find out that I’m a Cory Doctorow fan. Then I am so screwed.

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a boingboing reader?”
Abelard Lindsay

I work for a state University in Michigan, and I didn’t have to sign a red-baiting bullshit agreement to be hired. If I had, I would likely have signed it knowing full well a “contract” signed under duress with no opportunity for negotiation is hardly binding.
Takuan

since all seem to agree the monkey-politics ritual of submission called a “loyalty oath” is a ludicrous atavism inflicted on us by baboons incapable of real trust and fidelty – what then would be true and binding?

In my own instance, failure to kill and eat you upon first meeting constitutes sufficient earnest of good faith. And you?
Tommy

“can be frequently improved with a bullet”

Hard to do with a single bullet. But if you line ‘em up and have a rail gun…
Takuan

that would be 37,39 now, DO try to keep up 007
Takuan

I said “improved”,not “perfected”
Takuan

not so fast Scottie! Aye, there’s the rub. What IS value? Ye brought it up mon! Now dree yer weird and define it!!
noen

#5 acipolone is why we are in the mess we are in these days.

Clara Potes-Fellow, a spokeswoman for the 23-campus Cal State system, said it had not changed its position by rehiring Kearney-Brown and the university was pleased by the final result.

So this was really all about saving face. Isn’t it interesting that the more power you give to people and institutions the less able they are to tolerate hearing the word “no”. Oh wait, that’s perfectly logical.
scottfree

I more or less expected this result. My favourite bit in the article was when the attorney general said the oath doesn’t require you to take up arms, and that the supreme court said so. Did someone sue all the public employees of California, saying they were contractually obligated to go to war? I like to think so. And I like to think in another universe the entire armed forces are made up of bureaucratic state employees who signed loyalty oaths.

#3: I suspect it was damage control. Notice in the first article citations of cases where these small modifications would be acceptable, which the quaker bit was more consistent with, compared to the case in which modifications were found illegal, where someone wrote that they dissented from the constitution on the point of the separation of church and state. If this had went to court, a lot of rabble would have roused. The Ag was trying no doubt to discourage a wrongful dismissal suit, which would have paid handsomely for the quaker in question.
scottfree

Actually on second reading, Jerry Brown said that the oath already said what the woman wanted it to say, so her modification was gratuitous, and therefore illegal, according to Smith vs. County Engineer of San Diego. It was worded so one could affirm rather than swear [no deletion necessary] and violent defense against the enemies of the U.S. is not implied [no specification necessary]. Of course that wasn’t what the university counsel originally said, but whatever.

Thus, paradoxically, the integrity of the law is preserved by admitting that it doesn’t really mean anything anyway.
noen

Did someone sue all the public employees of California, saying they were contractually obligated to go to war? I like to think so.

Cal State employees won’t support our troops by fulfilling their contractual obligations? Why do they hate America?

Given that there are a lot of such loyalty oaths across the country and that the US military is in dire need of fresh recruits…. Seems to me that option should be pursued.
Kyle Goetz

@#5 Acipolone:
The University of Texas at Austin does not require a loyalty oath, so presumably no uni or research facility in the entire UT System requires one.

I worked for the College of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (the /other/ IT, heh), and never heard of such a thing.
error404

It strikes me, being a Scot in the UK, that the whole notion of signing a loyalty oath is preposterous.

It performs absolutely no function.

If I was to be loyal that would be demonstrated in my actions, if disloyalty was my intention then I would have no compunction about signing a document that was as nothing to me.

If millions of Californians did wage war against the State Of California, I think whether or not they’d popped the old John Hancock to some flap doodle document would be the least of anyone’s worries.

Likie that question you have to answer to get into the USA, have you ever been a Communist or a NAzi, I think they’ve added terrorist organisation now.

If you were a terrorist, you only have to say “no, not me”, then go right ahead and hijack those planes and pilot them into the WTC

All such documents are pointless.
zuzu

It strikes me, being a Scot in the UK, that the whole notion of signing a loyalty oath is preposterous. It performs absolutely no function. If I was to be loyal that would be demonstrated in my actions, if disloyalty was my intention then I would have no compunction about signing a document that was as nothing to me.

Agreed. Isn’t this the heart of the liar paradox? Either you trust someone or you don’t; you cannot force someone to be trustworthy… but that’s government for you, thinking they can bully everything to behave as it “should” — like King Xerxes “punishing” the sea with lashings.