UMKC Budget Cut Because Of Controversial Professor

The Legislature has cut the budget for the University of Missouri-Kansas City because it doesn’t like a professor’s writings on the politics of sex. Professor Harris Mirkin has been criticized for his writings aboutpedophelia – sexual relationships between adults and children. He says he’s not advocating it. But lawmakers don’t think he’s objecting to it either. Suggestions that Mirkin’s writings are protected by the Bill of Rights’protection of free speech have been brushed aside by critics. They say the First Amendment doesn’t apply to people working at state universities, unless the Legislature agrees with what they say.