Immediately after Charlie Kirk’s assassination at the hands of a deranged LGBTQ cult member, college professors across the country came out of the woodwork to mock Kirk’s death, accuse him of “hate speech,” and suggest he had it coming. Many were fired for their social media posts and public rants.
Now dozens of those fired professors are suing to get their jobs back and/or be compensated by their institutions—and, if legal precedent holds, at least some are likely to succeed. Schadenfreude aside, for conservative academics, that’s a good thing.
To understand why, you have to know about Mike Adams, a tenured criminology professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington (UNCW), and bona fide right-wing firebrand. Adams, who sadly committed suicide in 2020, was one of my favorite conservative writers, perhaps because we’re in the same business. I can’t actually claim him as a personal friend, since we never met in person, but I corresponded with him occasionally, and he was one of the people who encouraged me after I “came out” as a conservative academic.
In his often witty and always incisive columns for Townhall.com, Adams spared no effort in taking on left-wing shibboleths and skewering academic sacred cows. He often aimed his poison pen at specific individuals, calling out by name professors and administrators whom he regarded as frauds or charlatans or who were, in his view, polluting young people’s minds.
Nor did he spare individuals on his own campus, engaging on several occasions in months-long running feuds with woke UNCW faculty members or administrators. In those wars of words, Adams almost always gained the upper hand, to the consternation, humiliation, and fury of his opponents.
[RELATED: UPDATE: Judge Ordered Texas State to Reinstate Fired Professor Thomas Alter]
So, it was no surprise when he was denied a promotion to full professor that, based on his university’s policies, he had rightly earned. His mistake, if we might call it that, was listing his Townhall columns on his curriculum vitae, which, according to the administration, made them fair game. They were evaluated as part of his overall promotion packet and, shockingly, found lacking.
Not one to take this lying down, Adams sued the university, “alleging retaliation and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.” That began a nearly ten-year legal ordeal in which he was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) also filing an amicus brief on his behalf.
The district court ruled in favor of the university, citing the Supreme Court decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) that a government employee does not have First Amendment protection for communication pursuant to his or her official duties. Even though the Justices explicitly declined to say whether this applied to tenured university faculty, Garcetti was cited in a number of subsequent cases that involved faculty members, including Adams’s. The consensus was that professors, in their official capacity, did not have the right to say things administrators found objectionable. Since Adams included his Townhall columns in his application for promotion, the court ruled they were “pursuant to his duties,” and the university was justified in denying his application.
Adams appealed, and in 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a landmark decision in Adams v. University of North Carolina, holding that Garcetti did not apply in this case. They reversed the lower court’s ruling and ordered the university to grant Adams his promotion with back pay. The university ultimately settled, agreeing to pay Adams a large lump sum if he would simply retire, which he did.
But the precedent was set. By law, public institutions of higher education—which are, after all, government agencies—cannot discipline tenured faculty members for protected speech.
I wrote about this case for the Chronicle of Higher Education when it happened. My message to my overwhelmingly left-of-center audience was simple: However you may feel about Mike Adams personally, this ruling is one to celebrate. If a conservative professor can’t be disciplined for saying things the administration doesn’t like, neither can you.
Which brings us back to the professors who were fired for mocking Kirk. Their speech was certainly offensive to those who loved and admired Kirk. No doubt, in many cases, it brought a lot of heat down on the administration, as angry conservatives, including donors, lit up their phone lines and inboxes with demands to fire the miscreants.
But the question is whether or not the First Amendment protects such speech—and in most cases, the answer is “yes.” There are really only three types of unprotected speech: defamation, terroristic threats, and incitement to violence. In all three cases, the bar is extremely high. Calling someone a Nazi, saying you’re glad they’re dead, even wishing more like them were dead, reprehensible as those sentiments may be, does not qualify.
I’ve heard the argument that those professors should have been fired because they might discriminate against conservative students. And they might. However, in this case, the free market already provides the perfect remedy: Don’t take classes with them. Don’t send your kids to those schools. Ultimately, that will send a stronger message than angry phone calls or emails. And if professors actually discriminate, they can rightly be disciplined for doing so.
Whether or not the fired professors get their jobs back or receive other compensation might depend on whether they taught at public or private universities—private schools are not covered under the Adams ruling—and whether or not they had tenure. Non-tenured faculty, such as adjuncts and lecturers, are often classified as “at-will employees,” meaning their contracts can simply be “non-renewed” at the institution’s discretion.
But the professors who had tenure or were at least on the tenure track? My bet is that they will either get their jobs back or walk away with a nice settlement, or both. And that is something we as conservatives should be celebrating, just as leftists should have celebrated Mike Adams’s victory. Because now that the shoe is on the other foot, if leftists can say offensive things with impunity—well, so can we.
Image: “United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, James R. Browning United States Courthouse, San Francisco, California” by Ken Lund on Flickr
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