Three civil liberties groups sent a letter to the University of Kansas demanding that the school reinstate a piece of artwork, a blackened American flag collage, meant to represent political polarization in the United States, after the Kansas governor ordered its removal last week.
“Censorship won last week, but today, we’re fighting back for the First Amendment,” said Will Creeley, senior vice president for legal and public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, according to a press release Monday. “The law is clear: The government can’t censor artistic expression just because powerful people don’t like it. Artistic freedom is especially important at our public colleges and universities, and we’re proud to stand with the ACLU of Kansas and the National Coalition Against Censorship in its defense.”
Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer and congressional candidate Steve Watkins called for the flag’s removal, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod initially refused, but later issued a statement saying the university was preparing to relocate the flag to the university’s Spencer Museum of Art, due to “public safety concerns.” But FIRE, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and the National Coalition Against Censorship, accused the university of “acquiescing to politicians’ calls for censorship.”
The piece of artwork was set up earlier this month on the university’s campus. German artist Josephine Meckseper, who was commissioned by Creative Time, a New York City-based public arts nonprofit, said she composed the piece as “a collage of an American flag and one of my dripped paintings which resembles the contours of the United States,” according to Creative Time’s website. The flag features an image of the United States split down the middle in order to represent a “deeply polarized country in which a president has openly bragged about harassing women and is withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol and UN Human Rights Council.” It also features a sock, which Meckseper said “takes on a new symbolic meaning in light of the recent imprisonment of immigrant children at the border.”
In the press release, FIRE noted a 1989 Supreme Court case, Texas v. Johnson, where the court struck down a Texas prohibition against desecration of the American flag, stating that we “do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.”
The University of Kansas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
