Recorded lectures take on new risk as blogger ‘goes after teachers’

Controversial blogger Andrew Breitbart might make college professors squeamish about recording their lectures.

Web video purporting to show a University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) lecturer advocating violence as a labor union tactic was deemed “highly distorted” by campus officials who reviewed the recording, which was posted last month by Breitbart, a conservative blogger with a track record of misleading, highly publicized videos.

Edited video of UMKC labor studies lecturers Don Giljum and Judy Ancel were posted on Breitbart’s website, Big Government, in late April, and the site’s writers followed up with several more posts about the educators’ supposed lessons of how violence can be a useful strategy for union organizers.

Ancel and Giljum taught the Introduction to Labor Studies class together, using a live video feed.

In a May 9 announcement, UMKC Chancellor Tom George said a review revealed the lecture videos “were definitely taken out of context, with their meaning highly distorted through splicing and editing from different times within a class period and across multiple class periods.”

George said Giljum had not been fired from the university in the wake of Breitbart’s videos, and that he would be allowed to finish the spring semester.

“We sincerely regret the distress to him and others that has been caused by the unauthorized copying, editing, and distribution of the course videos,” George said in his statement.

George’s statement contradicts an April 28 Big Government report that Giljum resigned from UMKC and would not be rehired by the university.

George said UMKC also would “explore ways to improve security in the use of electronic media for instruction, research, and other activities,” after the lecture video was used by Breitbart’s website.