Among the many curious and confounding aspects of the current Mizzou race protests, the case of media professor Melissa Click has attracted some of the greatest attention. Her “courtesy appointment” at the university allows her to guide young minds who will some day embark on careers involving journalistic endeavors, which made it all the more curious when we saw her calling in some muscle to chase reporters off the taxpayer funded public spaces of the school grounds. Just yesterday, Allahpundit posted a prediction that she would sue if she lost her job over this bizarre spectacle, followed by coverage of her eventual “let me keep my job” apology.
It didn’t take all that long for the worm to turn on this story. Apparently there are levels of embarrassment which even Ms. Click can’t tolerate because she has now tendered her resignation from her administrative duties.
An assistant communications professor at the Missouri School of Journalism resigned from her courtesy appointment Tuesday after she was caught on video confronting a student journalist and attempting to block him from shooting photos on a public quad.
While the J-School faculty were meeting, Dr. Melissa Click resigned her courtesy appointment with the School. #Mizzou @mojonews
— Kurp (@Kurp) November 11, 2015
“From this experience I have learned about humanity and humility. When I apologized to one of the reporters in a phone call this afternoon, he accepted my apology,” Click said. “I believe he is doing a difficult job, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with him.”
The details of the “resignation” are not exactly clear at this point because she’s being described as resigning from her “courtesy appointment.” That’s apparently different from her office as mass media professor in the Communication Department, the status of which the local media is describing as, “unclear.” I’m honestly stymied by this if Click actually plans on sticking around. Yesterday afternoon while all of these stories were boiling over I was doing a talk radio hit with a station in Connecticut and the show host, Jim Vicevich, was asking me about Professor Click. I expressed extreme doubt about her future there because it simply seems beyond the pale that any journalism professor could be aware of that video existing forever on the internet and still manage to show up for work the next morning and instruct aspiring journalists. How does someone do that? Even if it was a moment of passion and poor judgement, that will now be the defining moment of her professional career. It’s much the same as Sabrina Erdely. She may have a lengthy catalog of published articles, but the only one anyone will ever remember is her Rolling Stone rape story. You just don’t shove something like that under the rug and “move on” as if nothing ever happened.
Perhaps she will try, though, and it’s Mizzou that will have to answer for her presence if she’s allowed to stay. In closing, let’s revisit some of the video goodness depicting what “journalism” looks like at one of the oldest and formerly most respected journalism schools in the nation.
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