Is Academic Freedom a First Amendment Right?

FREE SPEECH -- As federal courts read the First Amendment, public college and university teachers have no free speech right to talk about gay issues in the classroom and can be let go for such behavior—in Mississippi, that is.  But not in California, where the contrary is the case. Should the interpretation given to a bedrock item in the Bill of Rights depend on whether a federal court sits in a red or a blue state? New York Law School Professor Arthur S. Leonard says the U.S. Supreme Court's pointed avoidance of addressing whether academic freedom is a First Amendment right for public higher education faculty has left some serious confusion.

. . . June Sheldon . . . was teaching a class on heredity at San Jose/Evergreen Community College. A classroom discussion of genetics led to a student question about whether homosexuality was a genetically-determined trait. Ms. Sheldon and the students differ about her responses, but some students found what she had to say objectionable. One student complained to the dean that Prof. Sheldon had stated that there "aren’t any real lesbians" and that "there are hardly any gay men in the Middle East because the women are treated very nicely."

Although Sheldon, an adjunct professor on a term contract, had already been offered and accepted teaching assignments for the next semester, the dean sent her a letter stating that she had investigated the complaint and had concluded that Sheldon was "teaching misinformation as science," so the course assignments were revoked.

Judge Whyte observed that the Supreme Court in Garcetti had ruled that a public employee’s job-related speech generally does not receive First Amendment protection because the government is entitled to control what is said by its employees in their job functions when their speech will be attributed to the government. In that case, the employee in question was a government attorney who was disciplined for publicly criticizing an action of his office in the context of litigation.

Judge Whyte pointed out that the Supreme Court had refrained in Garcetti from deciding whether or how this general rule should apply in the context of higher education. "There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicated additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence," wrote the Supreme Court in Garcetti. "We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching."

In the Nichols case from Mississippi, the plaintiff was a vocal instructor who responded to a voice student’s questions about pursuing a career in the New York theater by talking about the presence of homosexuals in the New York theater world as a threat to be avoided. The student, who was gay but not previously "out" to the professor, came out to the professor, who responded with condescending remarks. The student was offended and complained to the administration, which decided not to renew the professor’s contract. Judge Starrett decided that because the professor’s comments were given in the context of counseling the student about his career goals, they were employment-related speech and thus not protected by the First Amendment.

Comments

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Being bound to work restricts freedom. Don’t you sometimes feel like running away from the hassles of work? Does marriage also restrict freedom? I think many married people feel that their freedom has been restricted.
Is it not possible to not to be bound to anyone or anything and live life on day to day basis and do whatever, whenever and wherever you feel like doing (here I am not talking about insane things). Do you feel sometimes trapped by modern forms of slavery like mortgage etc?