SMC Professor Jim Keeshen's Hate Speech Against the Disabled

Here is a recent email I sent to Jim Keeshen. I copied this email to those individuals who are in charge of handling this kind of abuse at SMC, who have been hired to deal with the rights of students, as well as to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. It was inevitable that Jim Keeshen would now stoop to character assassination against me in a feeble attempt to discredit my endless efforts to both protect and save SMC as well as to educate the SMC community and general taxpaying public of vital public interest issues that pertain to the school. It remains to be seen whether Professor Keeshen admits or denies the statements he made to his students on March 1, 2006. In any event, he has now been given the opportunity by me to respond to such.

Will the school support his unlawful discrimination and retaliation against its disabled student populace or will they defend their rights? Only time will tell. So far, I have received many emails of support from various autism advocacy groups regarding his misinformed comments that autism is a "mental disease." One such response stated that SMC's professor needs an education! I would have to agree with this statement given the fact that I had dedicated myself prior to coming to SMC in 2003 to working with autistic children and, as such, I am very knowledgeable about autism.

In fact, one of my areas of interest was to integrate video games as therapy for autistic children. I found that it helps autistic children with limited speech to improve their language skills. I shared my information at past E3 Expos with various companies included Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, and Sucker Punch. Favorite games of autistic children included Ratchet and Clank, Crash Bandicoot, Sly Cooper, Rayman, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Since autistic children are very thorough in game play and very innovative, they would often find solutions or bugs in the games that other players and game designers would overlook, even myself. In this sense, many autistic individuals would, in my opinion, make fantastic game testers if the video game industry would utilize their unique skills. Working with autistic children in this video game therapy improved my skills as both an avid game player and as a future game designer.

In high school, I worked as a teacher's aid with mentally handicapped high school students. During my first years in college, I also worked with mentally handicapped adults in a group home setting. Many of my closest friends at Santa Monica College have either physical visible disabilities or invisible disabilities. As such, I find Professor Keeshen's hateful comments, segregation, and retaliation of the disabled very disturbing and inappropriate. It is apparent that I am not alone in my opinion. With any individual, we can either focus on a person's negative character defects and watch him or her wilt or we can focus on a person's positive assets and watch him or her bloom. I personally choose the latter approach to dealing with people.

What if Helen Keller was never given a chance to succeed in life? How much would be lost to humanity in the process? Or what about Temple Grandin, the most famous high functioning autistic adult, who has gone on to champion rights for the autistic as well as to change the face of the beef industry by instilling more humane treatment of cattle. Eric Weinmayer, who is blind, not only climbed Mount Everest, but each of the highest peaks in every continent of the world. He was once told that he was incapable of working as a dishwasher due to his visual impairments.

People with disabilities are in a protected class that is not to be discriminated against. Imagine, for a moment, if Professor Keeshen had made the same announcement, but this time, he stated that a certain student was a "cripple" or a "homosexual" or a "Jew" to his students and that he described that student as "mentally diseased" because of this category. It is not so much the content of his words, but also the manner and tone of how he made his remarks as well as the setting and audience to which they were addressed. Hate crimes begin with hate speech. Before any Jewish person stepped inside the gas chambers of Auschwitz, each was first slandered, denied rights to an education, and isolated as a plague from the German populace. The Nazis employed a well-propagandized smear campaign against them in an attempt to convince the German people that they were inferior and racially impure. The inevitable physical violence was a result of the mindset first created in non-Jews. Please refer to my blog article "A Dangerous Falsifier of Holocaust History" for more information. Let us all unite to fight against any type of discrimination and hate speech and continue to be mutually respectful and tolerant of each other. We all thrive and learn as a result.

-- Des Manttari,
Editor in Chief
Phoenix Genesis

(c) 2006 Phoenix Genesis/MBS LP

------------------MY EMAIL TO SMC PROFESSOR JAMES KEESHEN--------------

TO: Animatics@aol.com
SUBJECT: Your Alleged Derogatory Comments and Hate Speech at SMC
DATE: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 04:00:57 -0800

ATTENTION:
PROFESSOR JIM KEESHEN, SANTA MONICA COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT

FROM: DES MANTTARI, STUDENT, ACADEMY OF ENTERTAINMENT & TECHNOLOGY

March 3, 2006

Jim,

It has recently come to my attention that you may have made several derogatory, discriminatory, malicious and false comments about me to students at Santa Monica College's Academy of Entertainment and Technology in an official "announcement" to your students during your ET 18 Storyboarding class on Wednesday, March 1, 2006. I am further informed and believe that at the time you made these alleged comments, you did so in your official capacity as a spokesperson for the school as a matter of fact rather than opinion. I am informed and believe that some of the students who heard these statements are concurrently enrolled in your ET 2 Storytelling course.

Specifically, I am informed and believe and thereon allege that you described me to your students as a person with a "slight problem." You allegedly explained to your students as a matter of fact, without any documentation or proof, that my problem was "autism." You went on to explain that autism is a "mental disease" that makes a person "destructive." You further made general allegations, without explanation or proof, that I was "against the school" and "suing the school." You failed to inform the students that my SAVE SMC Blog and Website are not against the school, but are undertaken by me in order to bring public awareness of certain issues to the SMC community and general public in the sincere hope, in relevant part, of saving the failing AET program at SMC.

Furthermore, you failed to inform the students that the current lawsuit I am involved in is for the express and genuine interest of obtaining vital public records under the California Public Records Act, including but not limited to, documents pertaining to a federal grant obtained recently by Santa Monica College to insure quality education for the disabled by and through the U.S. Department of Education. I, and other members of the SMC community and general public, have a Constitutional right to request these documents that I feel should be disclosed. I further have a Constitutional right to redress any grievances I have at SMC, to speak and write freely about topics of general interest to the school and its diverse community without the fear of retaliation, disciplinary sanctions, slander, or threat of force or violence by you or anyone else who is entrusted to uphold the public's best interests or the interests of the students and SMC community at large. As you are well aware, you have been given endless and open opportunities to comment on anything I write to the public and that my blog is open to responsible and constructive public comment.

At the time you made these derogatory, insulting, malicious and retaliatory statements, you did so in front of at least one disabled student who I believe is enrolled in your course. Furthermore, I am informed and believe and thereon allege that the time you made these statements, you made them in front of at least one student who has high functioning autism who found these statements insulting, in poor taste, and against SMC's policy and mission statement that fosters a community of mutual respect. Furthermore, at the time you made these statements, you made them with conscious disregard for the truth, for my reputation, or for any sensitivity whatsoever for disabled students with either visible or invisible disabilities. In fact, you made these statements with the conscious disregard of the rights of disabled students, or my rights, and with the intent to segregate disabled students as second-class citizens at Santa Monica College.

Additionally, at the time you made these statements, you knew them to be false. You knew that I have worked prior to coming to SMC as a recreational therapist for autistic children and I have wrote about this experience, in part, in at least one assignment at the Academy. At the time you made this statement, you knew that Stu Seldon, the lab tech at SMC's Academy, is the parent of an autistic child and to make this kind of statement that autism is a “mental disease” would be construed as an insult to anyone on the autistic spectrum or who has a child with autism in a public school that receives federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education. Additionally, based on the fact that you have contributed to at least one multimedia project at SMC for the purpose of ADA compliance, you knew or should have known, that your statements would cause humiliation to me or to any disabled student who heard them or would hear them from another student second-hand.

In fact, you allegedly threatened your students should they make these comments known to me or anyone else at SMC. Specifically, I am informed and believe and thereon allege that you instructed your students that they were to be construed as "spies" if they quoted anything you said, that you would "come after" them. You allegedly made specific threats that you would have them "kicked out" of Santa Monica College, that you would "get" them to the "letter of the law," and that they could and would suffer other "consequences." At the time you allegedly made these statements, or statements to this effect, you informed your students that this was "school policy." When you were allegedly done with your mandate to your students, you did not open your announcement to intellectual debate, but stated very threateningly to your students "Got it?" as if to imply that if these same students did not follow your instructions, that they would be retaliated against by both you, as an official representative of the school, and by SMC itself as an institution of public learning.

Given the fact that these statements allegedly were made by you within days of your unsuccessful and false arrest attempt against me and another disabled student at Santa Monica College and that another disabled student was a witness to these events, a reasonable person would construe that these actions and words were done in violation of hate crimes statutes which protect students. In fact, when a disabled student from your ET 2 Storytelling class was asked by me and the campus police to be a witness Monday night, you informed her repeatedly to "stay out of this." This false arrest attempt transpired right after SMC's attorneys received a faxed letter seeking a constitutionally protected redress of grievances for your alleged denial of equal access education for the disabled.

As you are additionally aware from this letter faxed to SMC's attorneys, I am a student who has a hearing impairment. Since I worked with you as your teaching assistant for over a year and you have had me in two courses at SMC and we have known each other for three years, you are aware of my hearing problems. Having a hearing impairment does not make a person mentally diseased as you implied to your students in your announcement last Wednesday.

I further wrote to you a few months ago, after you approached me seeking clarification if I was on SSI, I informed you that I was never on SSI. I further indicated to you, both orally and in writing, that I would appreciate that any rumors of such would not be spread around the SMC campus and that I would not like to be seen as someone with a "mental disorder." Despite this written request and clarification from me, and your knowledge of such, you disregarded my wishes and students rights as encapsulated in SMC's Board Policy and the Student Bill of Rights, and now made these derogatory statements to your students that I suffer from a "mental disease." If you did any research whatsoever on autism, you would see that many autism advocacy websites specifically state that autism is emphatically not a mental disease or illness. Additionally, regardless of whatever disability others may perceive I have, I am not mentally ill and have never sought treatment or counseling or services as such.

By copy of this email, I ask you to please refrain forthwith now and in the future from speaking about disabled students, autistic or otherwise, in a negative light, from providing your students with misinformation about the disabled, from discussing me in any capacity with any students at SMC without my informed consent and written permission, and to further refrain from any and all retaliatory actions against me, including but not limited to hate speech, false imprisonment, interrogation by campus police, written or oral fabricated or otherwise malicious statements, alienation from my peers, or harassment of my friends or other professors at SMC with whom I have to have a mutually respectful relationship with and with whom I am seeking to receive a quality education.

By copy of this email, I further request that a formal written apology be made to me and to your students in both your ET 2 and ET 18 courses at SMC's Academy of Entertainment and Technology and that you retract any and all statements you made against me either Monday or Wednesday of last week. If you feel that I have been misinformed about anything you said to your students or that I have misquoted you in any way, please feel free to email me and clarify or defend yourself accordingly. Absent a response from you in the near future, I will assume that you agree with my comments and interpretation of this matter and that it is to be generally accepted as true and accurate.

Additionally, you had received a faxed letter requesting that my name or any material by me placed there by you be removed from your ET 2 course as you had allegedly placed it there without my permission or authorization in postings you made on or about January 25, 2006 to your eCollege eCompanion online supplement to said course. To the best of my knowledge, my name remains. I remind you again that I am a current stockholder of eCollege and a student at SMC and, in both capacities, have the right to request that this misinformation be removed forthwith.

Lastly, I remind you that The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforces several federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance from the Department of Education. These laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age. These laws extend to state education agencies, elementary and secondary school systems, colleges and universities, vocational schools, proprietary schools, state vocational rehabilitation agencies, libraries, and museums that receive U.S. Department of Education funds.

Very Truly Yours,
Des


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