Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Neal H. Hutchens, University Research Professor of Education, University of Kentucky

American colleges and universities are increasingly firing or punishing professors and other employees for what they say, whether it’s on social media or in the classroom.

After the Sept. 10, 2025, killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, several universities, including Iowa State University, Clemson University, Ball State University and others, fired or suspended employees for making negative online comments about Kirk.

Some of these dismissed professors compared Kirk to a Nazi, described his views as hateful, or said there was no reason to be sorry about his death.

Some professors are now suing their employers for taking disciplinary action against them, claiming they are violating their First Amendment rights.

In one case, the University of South Dakota fired Phillip Michael Cook, a tenured art professor, after he posted on Facebook in September that Kirk was a “hate spreading Nazi.” Cook, who took down his post within a few hours and apologized for it, then sued the school, saying it was violating his First Amendment rights.

A federal judge stated in a Sept. 23 preliminary order that the First Amendment likely protected what Cook posted. The judge ordered the University of South Dakota to reinstate Cook, and the university announced on Oct. 4 that it would reverse Cook’s firing.

Cook’s lawsuit, as well as other lawsuits filed by dismissed professors, is testing how much legal authority colleges have over their employees’ speech – both when they are on the job and when they are not.

For decades, American colleges and universities have traditionally encouraged free speech and open debate as a core part of their academic mission.

As scholars who study college free speech and academic freedom, we recognize that these events raise an important question: When, if ever, can a college legally discipline an employee for what they say?

Limits of public employees’ speech rights

The First Amendment limits the government’s power to censor people’s free speech. People in the United States can, for instance, join protests, criticize the government and say things that others find offensive.

But the First Amendment only applies to the government – which includes public colleges and universities – and not private institutions or companies, including private colleges and universities.

This means private colleges typically have wide authority to discipline employees for their speech.

In contrast, public colleges are considered part of the government. The First Amendment limits the legal authority they have over their employees’ speech. This is especially true when an employee is speaking as a private citizen – such as participating in a political rally outside of work hours, for example.

The Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 1968 case that public employees’ speech rights as private citizens can extend to criticizing their employer, like if they write a letter critical of their employer to a newspaper.

The Supreme Court also ruled in 2006 that
the First Amendment does not protect public employees from being disciplined by their employers when they say or write something as part of their official job duties.

Even when a public college employee is speaking outside of their job duties as a private citizen, they might not be guaranteed First Amendment protection. To reach this legal threshold, what they say must be about something of importance to the public, or what courts call a “matter of public concern.”

Talking or writing about news, politics or social matters – Kirk’s murder – often meets the legal test for when speech is about a matter of public concern.

In contrast, courts have ruled that personal workplace complaints or gossip typically does not guarantee freedom of speech protection.

And in some cases, even when a public employee speaks as a private citizen on a topic that a court considers a matter of public concern, their speech may still be unprotected.

A public employer can still convince a court that its reasons for prohibiting an employee’s speech – like preventing conflict among co-workers – are important enough to deny this employee First Amendment protection.

Lawsuits brought by the employees of public colleges and universities who have been fired for their comments about Kirk may likely be decided based on whether what they said or wrote amounts to a matter of public concern. Another important factor is whether a court is convinced that an employee’s speech about Kirk was serious enough to disrupt a college’s operations, thus justifying the employee’s firing.

Academic freedom and professors’ speech

There are also questions over whether professors at public universities, in particular, can cite other legal rights to protect their speech.

Academic freedom refers to a faculty member’s rights connected to their teaching and research expertise.

At both private and public colleges, professors’ work contracts – like the ones typically signed after receiving tenure – potentially provide legal protections for faculty speech connected to academic freedom, such as in the classroom.

However, the First Amendment does not apply to how a private college regulates its professors’ speech or academic freedom.

Professors at public colleges have at least the same First Amendment free speech rights as their fellow employees, like when speaking in a private citizen capacity.

Additionally, the First Amendment might protect a public college professor’s work-related speech when academic freedom concerns arise, like in their teaching and research.

In 2006, the Supreme Court left open the question of whether the First Amendment covers academic freedom, in a case where it found the First Amendment did not cover what public employees say when carrying out their official work.

Since then, the Supreme Court has not dealt with this complicated issue. And lower federal courts have reached conflicting decisions about First Amendment protection for public college professors’ speech in their teaching and research.

Future of free speech for university employees

Some colleges, especially public ones, are testing the legal limits of their authority over their employees’ speech.

These incidents demonstrate a culture of extreme political polarization in higher education.

Beyond legal questions, colleges are also grappling with how to define their commitments to free speech and academic freedom.

In particular, we believe campus leaders should consider the purpose of higher education. Even if legally permitted, restricting employees’ speech could run counter to colleges’ traditional role as places for the open exchange of ideas.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What the First Amendment doesn’t protect when it comes to professors speaking out on politics – https://theconversation.com/what-the-first-amendment-doesnt-protect-when-it-comes-to-professors-speaking-out-on-politics-266128

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Alexandra A Phillips, Assistant Teaching Professor in Environmental Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara

As the planet warms, it risks crossing catastrophic tipping points: thresholds where Earth systems, such as ice sheets and rain forests, change irreversibly over human lifetimes.

Scientists have long warned that if global temperatures warmed more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with before the Industrial Revolution, and stayed high, they would increase the risk of passing multiple tipping points. For each of these elements, like the Amazon rain forest or the Greenland ice sheet, hotter temperatures lead to melting ice or drier forests that leave the system more vulnerable to further changes.

Worse, these systems can interact. Freshwater melting from the Greenland ice sheet can weaken ocean currents in the North Atlantic, disrupting air and ocean temperature patterns and marine food chains.

With these warnings in mind, 194 countries a decade ago set 1.5 C as a goal they would try not to cross. Yet in 2024, the planet temporarily breached that threshold.

The term “tipping point” is often used to illustrate these problems, but apocalyptic messages can leave people feeling helpless, wondering if it’s pointless to slam the brakes. As a geoscientist who has studied the ocean and climate for over a decade and recently spent a year on Capitol Hill working on bipartisan climate policy, I still see room for optimism.

It helps to understand what a tipping point is – and what’s known about when each might be reached.

Tipping points are not precise

A tipping point is a metaphor for runaway change. Small changes can push a system out of balance. Once past a threshold, the changes reinforce themselves, amplifying until the system transforms into something new.

Almost as soon as “tipping points” entered the climate science lexicon — following Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” — scientists warned the public not to confuse global warming policy benchmarks with precise thresholds.

The scientific reality of tipping points is more complicated than crossing a temperature line. Instead, different elements in the climate system have risks of tipping that increase with each fraction of a degree of warming.

For example, the beginning of a slow collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, which could raise global sea level by about 24 feet (7.4 meters), is one of the most likely tipping elements in a world more than 1.5 C warmer than preindustrial times. Some models place the critical threshold at 1.6 C (2.9 F). More recent simulations estimate runaway conditions at 2.7 C (4.9 F) of warming. Both simulations consider when summer melt will outpace winter snow, but predicting the future is not an exact science.

Forecasts like these are generated using powerful climate models that simulate how air, oceans, land and ice interact. These virtual laboratories allow scientists to run experiments, increasing the temperature bit by bit to see when each element might tip.

Climate scientist Timothy Lenton first identified climate tipping points in 2008. In 2022, he and his team revisited temperature collapse ranges, integrating over a decade of additional data and more sophisticated computer models.

Their nine core tipping elements include large-scale components of Earth’s climate, such as ice sheets, rain forests and ocean currents. They also simulated thresholds for smaller tipping elements that pack a large punch, including die-offs of coral reefs and widespread thawing of permafrost.

Some tipping elements, such as the East Antarctic ice sheet, aren’t in immediate danger. The ice sheet’s stability is due to its massive size – nearly six times that of the Greenland ice sheet – making it much harder to push out of equilibrium. Model results vary, but they generally place its tipping threshold between 5 C (9 F) and 10 C (18 F) of warming.

Other elements, however, are closer to the edge.

Alarm bells sounding in forests and oceans

In the Amazon, self-perpetuating feedback loops threaten the stability of the Earth’s largest rain forest, an ecosystem that influences global climate. As temperatures rise, drought and wildfire activity increase, killing trees and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn makes the forest hotter and drier still.

By 2050, scientists warn, nearly half of the Amazon rain forest could face multiple stressors. That pressure may trigger a tipping point with mass tree die-offs. The once-damp rainforest canopy could shift to a dry savanna for at least several centuries.

Rising temperatures also threaten biodiversity underwater.

The second Global Tipping Points Report, released Oct. 12, 2025, by a team of 160 scientists including Lenton, suggests tropical reefs may have passed a tipping point that will wipe out all but isolated patches.

Corals rely on algae called zooxanthellae to thrive. Under heat stress, the algae leave their coral homes, draining reefs of nutrition and color. These mass bleaching events can kill corals, stripping the ecosystem of vital biodiversity that millions of people rely on for food and tourism.

Low-latitude reefs have the highest risk of tipping, with the upper threshold at just 1.5 C, the report found. Above this amount of warming, there is a 99% chance that these coral reefs tip past their breaking point.

Similar alarms are ringing for ocean currents, where freshwater ice melt is slowing down a major marine highway that circulates heat, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC.

The AMOC carries warm water northward from the tropics. In the North Atlantic, as sea ice forms, the surface gets colder and saltier, and this dense water sinks. The sinking action drives the return flow of cold, salty water southward, completing the circulation’s loop. But melting land ice from Greenland threatens the density-driven motor of this ocean conveyor belt by dilution: Fresher water doesn’t sink as easily.

A weaker current could create a feedback loop, slowing the circulation further and leading to a shutdown within a century once it begins, according to one estimate. Like a domino, the climate changes that would accompany an AMOC collapse could worsen drought in the Amazon and accelerate ice loss in the Antarctic.

There is still room for hope

Not all scientists agree that an AMOC collapse is close. For the Amazon rain forest and the North Atlantic, some cite a lack of evidence to declare the forest is collapsing or currents are weakening.

In the Amazon, researchers have questioned whether modeled vegetation data that underpins tipping point concerns is accurate. In the North Atlantic, there are similar concerns about data showing a long-term trend.

Climate models that predict collapses are also less accurate when forecasting interactions between multiple tipping points. Some interactions can push systems out of balance, while others pull an ecosystem closer to equilibrium.

Other changes driven by rising global temperatures, like melting permafrost, likely don’t meet the criteria for tipping points because they aren’t self-sustaining. Permafrost could refreeze if temperatures drop again.

Risks are too high to ignore

Despite the uncertainty, tipping points are too risky to ignore. Rising temperatures put people and economies around the world at greater risk of dangerous conditions.

But there is still room for preventive actions – every fraction of a degree in warming that humans prevent reduces the risk of runaway climate conditions. For example, a full reversal of coral bleaching may no longer be possible, but reducing emissions and pollution can allow reefs that still support life to survive.

Tipping points highlight the stakes, but they also underscore the climate choices humanity can still make to stop the damage.

Alexandra A Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What are climate tipping points? They sound scary, especially for ice sheets and oceans, but there’s still room for optimism – https://theconversation.com/what-are-climate-tipping-points-they-sound-scary-especially-for-ice-sheets-and-oceans-but-theres-still-room-for-optimism-265183

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is displeased with a broadcast network. He makes his displeasure clear in public speeches, interviews and congressional testimony.

The network, afraid of the regulatory agency’s power to license their owned-and-operated stations, responds quickly. They change the content of their broadcasts. Network executives understand the FCC’s criticism is supported by the White House, and the chairman implicitly represents the president.

I’m not just referring to the recent controversy between FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, ABC and Jimmy Kimmel. The same chain of events has happened repeatedly in U.S. history.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s FCC chairman, James Lawrence Fly, warned the networks about censoring news commentators.

Then there was John F. Kennedy’s FCC chairman, Newton Minow, who criticized the networks for not airing more news and public affairs programming to support American democracy during the Cold War.

And there was George W. Bush’s FCC chairman, Michael Powell. He decided that a fleeting “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show – when Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed – was sufficient to punish CBS with a fine.

In each of those cases, the FCC represented the views of the White House. And in each case, the regulatory agency was employed to pressure the networks into airing content more aligned with the administration’s ideology.

But what’s interesting in those four examples is that two of the FCC chairmen were Democrats – Fly and Minow – and two were Republicans – Powell and Carr.

As a media historian, I’m aware of the long-existing bipartisan enthusiasm for exploiting the fact that no First Amendment exists in American broadcasting. Pressuring broadcasters by leveraging FCC power occurs regardless of which party controls the White House. And when the agency is used in partisan fashion, the rival party will criticize such politicization of regulation as a threat to free speech.

This recurring cycle is made possible by the fact that broadcasting is licensed by the government. Since a Supreme Court decision in 1943, the supremacy of the FCC in broadcast regulation has been unquestioned.

Such strong governmental oversight separates broadcasting from any other medium of mass communication in the United States. And it’s the reason why there’s no “free speech” when it comes to Kimmel, or any other performer, on U.S. airwaves.

The FCC’s empowerment

Since its establishment in 1934, the FCC’s primary role in broadcasting has been to authorize local station licenses “in the public interest, convenience, or necessity.”

In 1938, the FCC began its first investigation into network practices and policies, which resulted in new regulations. One of the new rules stated that no network could own and operate more than one licensed station in any single market. This forced NBC, which owned two networks that operated stations in several markets, to divest itself of one of its networks. NBC sued.

In the first serious constitutional test of the FCC’s full authority, in 1943, the Supreme Court vindicated the FCC’s expansive power over all U.S. broadcasting in its 5–4 verdict in National Broadcasting Co. v. United States. The ruling has stood since.

That’s why there’s no First Amendment in broadcasting. The Supreme Court ruled that, due to spectrum scarcity – the idea that the airwaves are a limited public resource and therefore not every American can operate a broadcast station – the FCC’s power over broadcasting must be expansive.

The 1934 act, the 1943 Supreme Court decision read, “gave the Commission … expansive powers … and a comprehensive mandate to ‘encourage the larger and more effective use of radio in the public interest,’ if need be, by making ‘special regulations applicable to radio stations engaged in chain (network) broadcasting.’”

The ruling also explains why the FCC can be credited with having created the American Broadcasting Company. Yes, the same ABC that suspended Kimmel in the face of FCC threats was the network that emerged from NBC’s forced divestiture of its Blue Network as a result of the 1943 Supreme Court decision.

The empowerment of the FCC by NBC v. U.S. led to such content restrictions as the Fairness Doctrine, which intended to ensure balanced political broadcasting, instituted in 1949, and later, additional FCC rules against obscenity and indecency on the airwaves. The Supreme Court decision also encouraged FCC chairmen to flex their regulatory muscles in public more often.

For example, when CBS suspended news commentator Cecil Brown in 1943 for truthful but critical news commentary about the U.S. World War II effort, FCC Chairman Fly expressed his displeasure with the network’s decision.

“It is a little strange,” Fly told the press, “that all Americans are to enjoy free speech except radio commentators.”

When FCC Chairman Minow complained about television in the U.S. devolving into a “vast wasteland” in 1961, the networks responded both defensively and productively. They invested far more money into news and public affairs programming. That led to significantly more news reporting and documentary production throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

A ‘hands-off’ FCC

In the early 2000s, FCC Chairman Powell promised to “refashion the FCC into an outfit that is fast, decisive and, above all, hands-off.”

Yet his promise to be “hands-off” did not apply to content regulation. In 2004, his FCC concluded a contentious legal battle with Clear Channel Communications over comments ruled “indecent” by shock jock Howard Stern. The settlement resulted in a US$1.75 million payment by Clear Channel Communications – the largest fine ever collected by the FCC for speech on the airwaves.

Powell apparently enjoyed policing content, as evidenced by the $550,000 fine his FCC levied against CBS for the fleeting exposure of singer Janet Jackson’s breast during the Super Bowl. The fine was eventually overturned. But Powell did successfully lobby Congress to significantly hike the amount of money the FCC could fine broadcasters for indecency. The fine for a single incident increased from $32,000 to $325,000, and up to $3 million if a network broadcasts it on multiple stations.

Powell’s regulatory activism, done mostly to curb the outrageous antics of radio shock jocks, resulted in some of the most significant and long-lasting restrictions on broadcast freedom in U.S. history. Thus, Carr’s 2025 threats toward ABC can be viewed in a historical context as an extension of established FCC activism.

But Carr’s threat also appeared to contradict his previously espoused values.

As the author of the FCC section in Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for federal government policies, Carr wrote: “The FCC should promote freedom of speech … and pro-growth reforms that support a diversity of viewpoints.” In exploiting the FCC’s licensing power to threaten to penalize speech he found offensive, Carr failed to promote either freedom of speech or diversity of viewpoints.

If there’s one thing the Carr-Kimmel episode teaches us, it’s that more Americans should know the structural constraints in the U.S. system of broadcasting. Media literacy has proved essential as curbs to free expression – both official and unofficial – have become more popular.

When the FCC threatens a broadcaster, it does so in Americans’ name.

If Americans applaud regulatory activism when it supports their partisan beliefs, consistency demands they accept the same regulatory activism in the hands of their political opponents. If Americans prefer their political opposition show restraint in the regulation of broadcasting, then they need to promote restraint when their preferred administration is in power.

Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The limits of free speech protections in American broadcasting – https://theconversation.com/the-limits-of-free-speech-protections-in-american-broadcasting-266206

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Mahelet G Fikru, Professor of Economics, Missouri University of Science and Technology

How much pollution a facility engaged in production or resource extraction emits isn’t just based on its location, its industry or the type of work it does. That’s what our team of environmental and financial economists found when we examined how corporate characteristics shape pollution emissions.

Pollution emissions rates also vary with specific characteristics of the company that owns the facility – such as how many patents it holds, how profitable it is and how many employees it has, according to an analysis we have conducted of corporate pollution data.

We found that industrial and mining facilities owned by profitable companies with relatively few patents and fewer employees tend to release higher proportions of their toxic waste into the environment – into the air, into water or onto soil.

By contrast, industrial sites owned by unprofitable companies with higher levels of innovation and more personnel tend to handle higher proportions of their toxic waste in more environmentally responsible ways, such as processing them into nontoxic forms or recycling them, or burning them to generate energy.

Corporations publish their pollution data

A 1986 federal law requires companies that are in certain industries, employ more than 10 people and make, use or process significant amounts of certain toxic or dangerous chemicals to tell the government where those chemicals go after the company is done with them.

That data is collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a database called the Toxics Release Inventory. That data includes information about the companies, their facilities and locations, and what they do with their waste chemicals.

The goal is not only to inform the public about which dangerous chemicals are being used in their communities, but also to encourage companies to use cleaner methods and handle their waste in ways that are more environmentally responsible.

Overall, U.S. companies reported releasing to the environment 3.3 billion pounds of toxic chemicals (1.5 billion kg) in 2023, a 21% decrease from 2014. The decline reflects increased waste management, adoption of pollution prevention and cleaner technologies, in addition to the fact that disclosure requirements motivate companies to reduce releases.

The 2023 releases came from over 21,600 industrial facilities in all 50 states and various U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa. One-fifth of the facilities reporting toxic releases in 2023 were in Texas, Ohio and California.

What kinds of businesses release toxic pollution?

Metal mining, chemical manufacturing, primary metals, natural gas processing and electric utilities represent the top five polluting industrial sectors in the U.S. Combined, businesses in those sectors accounted for 78% of the toxic chemicals released in 2023.

Research has found that, often, higher levels of toxic chemical releases come from industrial facilities in less populated, economically disadvantaged, rural or minority communities.

But geography and population are not the whole story. Even within the same area, some facilities pollute a lot less than others. Our inquiry into the differences between those facilities has found that corporate characteristics matter a lot – such as operational size, innovative capacity and financial strength.

In our analysis, we combined the data companies reported to the EPA about toxic chemical releases with financial information on those companies and ZIP-code level geographic and demographic data. We found that corporate characteristics like profitability, employment size and number of patents are more strongly connected with toxic chemical releases than a community’s population density, minority-group percentage or household income.

We looked at what percentage of its toxic chemical waste a facility or mine released to the environment versus how much it treated, recycled or incinerated.

The average facility in our sample, which included 1,976 facilities owned by companies for which financial data is available, released about 39% of its toxic chemical waste to the environment, whether to air, water or land – with the remaining 61% of it managed through recycling, treatment or energy recovery either on-site or off-site.

But facilities in different industries have different release rates. For example, about 99% of toxic chemicals from coal mines are released to the environment, compared with 81% for natural gas extraction, recovery and processing; 25% for power-generating electric utilities; and less than 3% for electrical equipment manufacturers.

The role of innovation

One corporate attribute we examined was innovation, which we measured by counting corporations’ patent families, which are groups of patent documents related to the same invention, even if they are filed in different countries. We found that companies with more patent families tend to release less of their toxic waste to the environment.

Specifically, facilities owned by the top 25% of companies, when rated by innovation, released an average of 32.5% of their toxic waste to the environment, which is 8 percentage points lower than the average of facilities owned by the remaining companies in the sample.

We hypothesize that innovation may give firms a competitive advantage that also enables them to adopt cleaner production technologies or invest in more environmentally conscious methods of handling waste containing toxic chemicals, thereby preventing toxic chemicals from being directly released to the environment.

Size and profitability matter, too

We also looked at companies’ size – in terms of number of employees – and their profitability, to see how those connected with pollution rates at the facilities the company owns.

We found that larger companies, those with more than 19,000 employees, own facilities that release an average of 31% of their toxic chemical waste to the environment. By contrast, facilities owned by midsized companies, from 1,000 to 19,000 workers, release 45%, on average. Those owned by smaller companies, with less than 1,000 employees, release an average of 42% of their toxic chemical waste to the environment.

An important note is that those larger companies, which are more likely to have multiple locations, often own facilities that handle larger volumes of chemicals. So even if they release smaller proportions of their toxic waste to the environment, that may still add up to larger quantities.

We also found that industrial facilities owned by profitable firms have higher average rates of releasing toxic chemicals to the environment than those owned by unprofitable companies.

Facilities owned by companies with positive net income, according to their income statements obtained from PitchBook, a company that collects data on corporations, released an average of 40% of their toxic-chemical-containing wastes to the environment. Facilities owned by companies with negative net income released an average of 31% of their toxic chemical waste to the environment. To us, that indicates that financially strong companies are not necessarily more environmentally responsible. That may be evidence that profitable firms make money in part by contaminating the environment rather than paying for pollution prevention or cleanup.

Our analysis shows that geography and demographics alone do not fully account for industries’ and facilities’ differing levels of pollution. Corporate characteristics are also key factors in how toxic waste is handled and disposed of.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Industrial facilities owned by profitable companies release more of their toxic waste into the environment – https://theconversation.com/industrial-facilities-owned-by-profitable-companies-release-more-of-their-toxic-waste-into-the-environment-265227

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Neal H. Hutchens, University Research Professor of Education, University of Kentucky

American colleges and universities are increasingly firing or punishing professors and other employees for what they say, whether it’s on social media or in the classroom.

After the Sept. 10, 2025, killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, several universities, including Iowa State University, Clemson University, Ball State University and others, fired or suspended employees for making negative online comments about Kirk.

Some of these dismissed professors compared Kirk to a Nazi, described his views as hateful, or said there was no reason to be sorry about his death.

Some professors are now suing their employers for taking disciplinary action against them, claiming they are violating their First Amendment rights.

In one case, the University of South Dakota fired Phillip Michael Cook, a tenured art professor, after he posted on Facebook in September that Kirk was a “hate spreading Nazi.” Cook, who took down his post within a few hours and apologized for it, then sued the school, saying it was violating his First Amendment rights.

A federal judge stated in a Sept. 23 preliminary order that the First Amendment likely protected what Cook posted. The judge ordered the University of South Dakota to reinstate Cook, and the university announced on Oct. 4 that it would reverse Cook’s firing.

Cook’s lawsuit, as well as other lawsuits filed by dismissed professors, is testing how much legal authority colleges have over their employees’ speech – both when they are on the job and when they are not.

For decades, American colleges and universities have traditionally encouraged free speech and open debate as a core part of their academic mission.

As scholars who study college free speech and academic freedom, we recognize that these events raise an important question: When, if ever, can a college legally discipline an employee for what they say?

Limits of public employees’ speech rights

The First Amendment limits the government’s power to censor people’s free speech. People in the United States can, for instance, join protests, criticize the government and say things that others find offensive.

But the First Amendment only applies to the government – which includes public colleges and universities – and not private institutions or companies, including private colleges and universities.

This means private colleges typically have wide authority to discipline employees for their speech.

In contrast, public colleges are considered part of the government. The First Amendment limits the legal authority they have over their employees’ speech. This is especially true when an employee is speaking as a private citizen – such as participating in a political rally outside of work hours, for example.

The Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 1968 case that public employees’ speech rights as private citizens can extend to criticizing their employer, like if they write a letter critical of their employer to a newspaper.

The Supreme Court also ruled in 2006 that
the First Amendment does not protect public employees from being disciplined by their employers when they say or write something as part of their official job duties.

Even when a public college employee is speaking outside of their job duties as a private citizen, they might not be guaranteed First Amendment protection. To reach this legal threshold, what they say must be about something of importance to the public, or what courts call a “matter of public concern.”

Talking or writing about news, politics or social matters – Kirk’s murder – often meets the legal test for when speech is about a matter of public concern.

In contrast, courts have ruled that personal workplace complaints or gossip typically does not guarantee freedom of speech protection.

And in some cases, even when a public employee speaks as a private citizen on a topic that a court considers a matter of public concern, their speech may still be unprotected.

A public employer can still convince a court that its reasons for prohibiting an employee’s speech – like preventing conflict among co-workers – are important enough to deny this employee First Amendment protection.

Lawsuits brought by the employees of public colleges and universities who have been fired for their comments about Kirk may likely be decided based on whether what they said or wrote amounts to a matter of public concern. Another important factor is whether a court is convinced that an employee’s speech about Kirk was serious enough to disrupt a college’s operations, thus justifying the employee’s firing.

Academic freedom and professors’ speech

There are also questions over whether professors at public universities, in particular, can cite other legal rights to protect their speech.

Academic freedom refers to a faculty member’s rights connected to their teaching and research expertise.

At both private and public colleges, professors’ work contracts – like the ones typically signed after receiving tenure – potentially provide legal protections for faculty speech connected to academic freedom, such as in the classroom.

However, the First Amendment does not apply to how a private college regulates its professors’ speech or academic freedom.

Professors at public colleges have at least the same First Amendment free speech rights as their fellow employees, like when speaking in a private citizen capacity.

Additionally, the First Amendment might protect a public college professor’s work-related speech when academic freedom concerns arise, like in their teaching and research.

In 2006, the Supreme Court left open the question of whether the First Amendment covers academic freedom, in a case where it found the First Amendment did not cover what public employees say when carrying out their official work.

Since then, the Supreme Court has not dealt with this complicated issue. And lower federal courts have reached conflicting decisions about First Amendment protection for public college professors’ speech in their teaching and research.

Future of free speech for university employees

Some colleges, especially public ones, are testing the legal limits of their authority over their employees’ speech.

These incidents demonstrate a culture of extreme political polarization in higher education.

Beyond legal questions, colleges are also grappling with how to define their commitments to free speech and academic freedom.

In particular, we believe campus leaders should consider the purpose of higher education. Even if legally permitted, restricting employees’ speech could run counter to colleges’ traditional role as places for the open exchange of ideas.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Does the First Amendment protect professors being fired over what they say? It depends – https://theconversation.com/does-the-first-amendment-protect-professors-being-fired-over-what-they-say-it-depends-266128