Let speech be free: At OSU, a call for compassion deserves airing

Online petition-signers are demanding that Ohio State University fire an administrator over a Facebook post seeking compassion for the student who attacked students on campus late last month. That would be wrong. Perhaps especially in dark times, we need free thought and speech. Stephanie Clemons Thompson should not be fired for her comments.

Abdul Razak Ali Artan injured 11 people with a car and a knife on Nov. 29 before a heroic police officer stopped his attack on OSU’s Columbus campus — fatally shooting him. The first-year student at OSU was likely inspired by Islamist terrorists.

Thompson reportedly took down her Facebook page, and the post being circulated could not be verified as authentic. But it apparently came after people began sharing images of Artan’s corpse.

The post, which begins and ends with an all-caps request not to share it, urges people not to share those images or “celebrate” the death of Artan, a Muslim Somali refugee who came to the U.S. in 2014 with his family. “I pray you find compassion for his life, as troubled as it clearly was,” it says. “Think of the pain he must have been in to feel that his actions were the only solution.”

Thompson is an assistant director of residence life at OSU. A university spokesman said the post was “clearly … her own personal viewpoint.” Nevertheless, a Change.org petition asking OSU to fire Thompson got more than 1,000 signatures.

Under the First Amendment, government institutions, including public universities, must not fire employees for speaking their minds. And college students aren’t there to have their minds passively molded; they are there to participate in an educational process built upon free inquiry. That inquiry extends beyond the classroom and the curriculum. A student’s time at a university is supposed to be devoted to it.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette