As the controversy swirled, Crystall's fellow faculty radicals lionized her for acting not just appropriately, but heroically against a student under her authority. He was inflicting "violence" on the classroom, they said. Therefore, by singling him out and denouncing him by his name, race, sexual preference, religious creed, and gender, she was protecting her students from violence.
To Crystall and her fellow travelers, Edwards' former colleagues, it was a travesty that she was under investigation when a violent, privilege-rid, straight, white, Christian male was still speaking freely on campus without feeling "marked or threatened or vulnerable." A report in The Chronicle of Higher Education Daily News of March 29, 2004, noted that Crystall was upset "that while the government could investigate her remarks as racist or sexist, it would not investigate the student's as homophobic."
The Office of Civil Rights found that Crystall had racially and sexually harassed and discriminated against her student. Her university escaped reprimand because school officials made all the appropriate remarks about protecting free speech on campus. They also renewed Crystall's contract; she is still teaching at UNC-CH. Her victim, after all, was just one of those "white, heterosexual [C]hristian males."
Nevertheless, what Crystall's beleaguered student had done then is nothing more than what the Edwards have done. He recounted his and his friend's discomfort with respect to homosexuals. So did John and Elizabeth Edwards. What's the difference?
Why do faculty radicals decry the former as a "violent, heterosexist hate speaker" but say nothing about the Edwards? Have they not, in their parlance, inflicted violence on the entire nation, not just a classroom?
Could it be that they've finally awoken to the grand absurdity of inferring violence and hate from someone merely saying that something made them feel uncomfortable?
Or is just another example of the Left's willingness to waive their standards for politicians who support their political goals?