Closed minds at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis:
"Keith John Sampson never thought he could get in trouble for reading a book, especially not on a college campus. But that's what happened. Sampson is a man in his early 50s. He does janitorial work for the campus facility services at IUPUI, where he's been gradually accumulating credits for a degree in communications studies.
At the time, Sampson was reading a book he had checked out from the public library: Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. The book is about how for two days in May 1924, a group of Notre Dame students got into a street fight with members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Sampson recalls that his AFSCME shop steward told him that reading a book about the Klan was like bringing pornography to work. The shop steward wasn't interested in hearing what the book was actually about.
A few weeks passed. Then Sampson got a message ordering him to report to Marguerite Watkins at the IUPUI Affirmative Action Office. He was told a coworker had filed a racial harassment complaint against him for reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan in the break room. Sampson says he tried to explain to Watkins what the book was about. He says he tried to show her the book, but that Watkins showed no interest in seeing it.
Then Sampson received a letter, dated Nov. 25, 2007, from Lillian Charleston, also of IUPUI's Affirmative Action Office. The letter begins by saying that the AAO has completed its investigation of a coworker's allegation that Sampson "racially harassed her by repeatedly reading the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan by Todd Tucker in the presence of Black employees."
It goes on to say, "You demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your coworkers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence . you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black coworkers." Charleston went on to say that according to "the legal `reasonable person standard,' a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African-Americans ."
Sampson was ordered to stop reading the book in the immediate presence of his coworkers and, when reading the book, to sit apart from them. "I feel like I've been caught up in a 21st century version of catch-22," says Sampson, who has never been given the opportunity to officially face any of his accusers.
When I tried calling the Affirmative Action Office, I was told their policy is to never speak to the media.
Source
Maybe they are afraid that somebody will find out that the KKK were Democrats.
