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The ongoing faculty strike at Wellesley College reveals, in stark terms, the reality of the two-tier faculty system that has come to define much of American higher education. Despite its reputation as a progressive liberal arts institution, Wellesley—like many of its peers—relies heavily on contingent faculty to carry out the core educational mission, while systematically denying them the security and respect afforded to their tenured counterparts.
At Wellesley, non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty make up about 30 percent of the teaching staff but are responsible for teaching 40 percent of the college’s classes. These educators are essential to the functioning of the institution, yet they are paid less, enjoy fewer benefits, and live with little to no job security. Only in January 2024 did they formally unionize, and since May, they have been negotiating what would be their first collective bargaining agreement. The protracted nature of these negotiations—and the college administration’s sluggish response—led to the strike, now stretching into its fourth week.
The strike has exposed the deep fissures between NTT and tenure-track faculty. In response to the disruption, the administration asked tenured professors to take on additional students, offer independent studies, or otherwise fill in for their striking colleagues. No additional compensation was offered. Faculty were given less than 48 hours to decide whether to participate. The move created a moral and professional dilemma: Should tenured faculty support their striking colleagues by refusing to cross the picket line, or should they prioritize the needs of students—particularly those whose immigration status or financial aid depended on maintaining full-time academic standing?
In many ways, this is the real function of the two-tier system. It doesn’t just allow institutions to save money by underpaying a significant portion of their teaching workforce. It also creates structural divisions that can be exploited in times of labor unrest. The privileged position of tenured faculty makes them natural pressure points for the administration, able to be guilted or coerced into mitigating the effects of a strike without fundamentally changing the system that caused it.
Driving this system are university presidents and senior administrators who increasingly adopt corporate, anti-labor management styles. These leaders often frame themselves as neutral actors mediating between stakeholders, but their actions tell a different story. In their refusal to negotiate in good faith, their last-minute crisis planning, and their strategic deployment of fear—around students’ financial aid, immigration status, and graduation timelines—they reveal a deep alignment with union-busting tactics more often seen in the private sector. These administrative strategies not only weaken labor solidarity, but also erode the educational environment they claim to protect.
What’s happening at Wellesley is not unique. It mirrors a broader pattern across higher education, where elite institutions rely on the labor of contingent faculty while denying them the protections and prestige of tenure. This isn’t a bug in the system—it is the system. The two-tier model is not about flexibility or innovation, as administrators often claim. It’s about control and cost containment, and when challenged, colleges will invoke crisis—whether financial, academic, or humanitarian—to maintain that control.
In this moment, Wellesley’s administration has positioned tenured faculty as potential strikebreakers, students as bargaining chips, and contingent faculty as expendable. The strike, and the response to it, underscores the urgent need to dismantle the exploitative structures that underpin so many American colleges. Until that happens—and until college presidents are held accountable for anti-labor tactics—students and faculty alike will continue to suffer, not only from instability, but from the erosion of trust and shared purpose in the academic community.
Two weeks ago Chris Buonocore, Alex Humphreys, Martin Kurzweil and Emily Tichenor (all of the nonprofit organization Ithaka, and part of the Articulation of Credit Transfer Project) posted in this blog the happy news that Transfer Explorer (a website, modeled after CUNY T-Rex, that shows everyone how prior learning experiences will count toward a college’s academic requirements) has been launched containing information from three South Carolina colleges. Information from dozens of additional colleges in Connecticut, New York, South Carolina and Washington will be added in the coming months.
Because this information is now public and usable, students and advisers will be able to make better plans for transfer, students will discover and choose transfer destinations that are a good fit for them, and institutions will be better able to align their programs and equivalencies to facilitate transfer. Transfer Explorer will also reduce the burden on students, advisers and admissions staff to locate and make sense of relevant information across disparate sources, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks. The evidence from CUNY T-Rex suggests these benefits are already being realized in that context.
The advent of Transfer Explorer and other similar efforts to make transparent the rules on credit transfer and degree applicability raises an important question: Which policies and practices are desirable for institutions to have in place to make their credit mobility information public?
Let’s assume that a public website, such as Transfer Explorer, is available for displaying credit mobility information, and that an institution has the appropriate financial and staff resources to put its information on the website. Now what course credit and program requirement policies and practices must be in place, and which additional ones would be useful to have? This post describes some of these policies and practices.
Absolutely essential is that transfer credit rules stating how an institution will treat all types of prior learning experiences (e.g., course A at Institution X will count as equivalent to course B at Institution Y), as well as the program and degree requirements (for majors, concentrations, general education, etc.), must be systematically and consistently stored, recorded and updated in the institution’s software system(s), with the credit mobility website reflecting any changes in any of these rules and requirements in a timely manner. These practices are essential for the website to function as a trusted source of information.
There should be policies regarding who can change the transfer credit rules and degree requirements recorded in this software and under what conditions. This will reduce the likelihood of erratic, capricious or frequent changes, while ensuring that all students are subject to the same rules and requirements, without prejudice.
Any additional rules, requirements, restrictions or qualifications related to the conditions for granting credit for prior learning (such as a minimum grade in a prior course or a residency requirement at the destination college) should apply equally to all students and be explicitly and publicly stated. This ensures that all students have access to the same information, again promoting equitable treatment.
There should be administrative oversight of the above policies and practices, and that oversight should ideally be provided by people who would be unaffected by the rules’ consequences (i.e., conflicts of interest should be minimized). Oversight by people not acting in their own interest is necessary to ensure that policies and practices are appropriately instituted and maintained.
It will be helpful to have policies regarding how course equivalencies for prior learning are decided in the first place—who decides and based on what information. This will promote efficient and effective decision-making regarding prior learning assessments.
There should also be specific, agreed-upon criteria for giving credit for prior learning. It has been effectively argued that transfer credit should be based entirely on learning outcomes, and not on, e.g., a course’s prerequisites, textbook or modality (in-person, online or hybrid); the degree the student may or may not have; the student’s major; etc. AACRAO’s recommended criterion for course equivalency is 70 percent “matching of content.” Such a policy ensures that credit for prior learning is based on only that—prior learning.
Any characteristics of prior learning, in addition to credits, that would satisfy an institution’s requirements, characteristics such as a course being writing intensive or including material on information literacy, should be recorded and considered for transfer. Students and those who support them need this information to be able to plan students’ complete academic trajectories.
An explicit appeals procedure that allows students to challenge transfer credit decisions can help in identifying errors and inadequacies in what is shown on the website, as well as promoting equitable treatment of all students (an example of the CUNY appeals procedure is here). Students can more effectively use such a procedure if the website keeps a record of when transfer credit rules and program and degree requirements have changed and how.
All courses from institutions accredited by what were formerly referred to as regional accreditors (along with, upon review, some other forms of prior learning) should be given at least elective credit. In addition to providing transfer students with predictable transfer credit, such a policy within the CUNY system greatly facilitated the establishment of CUNY T-Rex. For the courses of the 20 CUNY undergraduate colleges, developers had only to reflect on the website existing transfer credit rules (all 1.6 million of them); they did not have to determine what to do with courses that would receive no transfer credit.
Also highly desirable is that a student should be allowed to use any credit transfer rule in place at College B between when the student first matriculated in College A and subsequently transferred to College B (perhaps within a specified number of years since matriculation at College A). Such a policy is particularly useful for students who first matriculate at a community college and later transfer to a bachelor’s college within the same system. This policy would enable students and those who support them to plan a student’s entire academic trajectory.
Finally, in developing Transfer Explorer as well as CUNY T-Rex, the engineers had to first parse and deconstruct the colleges’ major and other requirements before programming them for the website. Many of the majors’ diagrams look like a tangled ball of yarn or a Super Bowl football play (diagrams that go way beyond just a sequence of major courses). Faculty and others may not realize how complex they are making requirements until they see them diagrammed. Such requirements can be very difficult to program and so should be simplified, if possible, as well as recorded in systematic, consistent ways.
Each of the preceding items is useful for constructing an excellent website that will show how an institution will treat a student’s prior learning. However, there are many additional benefits from these policies and practices. For example, concerning the last bullet, keeping the requirements of majors simple and straightforward will not only help the website’s programmers, but will make it easier for students and those who support them to understand and conform to a major’s requirements.
A basic principle of ACT, Transfer Explorer and CUNY T-Rex is that all of us in higher education benefit by obtaining good information and making it public. We hope that this blog post helps institutions do just that.
“Global law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles.” — Executive Order (3-14-25)
“Law firms refuse to represent Trump opponents in the wake of his attacks” — The Washington Post (3-25-25)
The wolf is at the door.
Those who do not yet realize this may be forgiven for perhaps two reasons: They do not know the wolf is ravenous, and they do not know the door is ajar.
To get but a whiff of this, just read Brad Karp’s March 23 memo to his colleagues at the Paul Weiss firm, from which the title of this edition of FAN gets its title.
Also this, from MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin:
[The attacks on law firms] began with Trump issuing executive actions punishing three firms — Covington & Burling, which did not react; Perkins Coie, which fought back and won a partial temporary restraining order; and Paul Weiss, which ultimately capitulated to a deal announced last Thursday, the terms of which are still a matter of some debate. But the president has now directed Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a memo issued Friday night, to seek sanctions “against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.”
Now back to the Paul, Weiss controversy.
A little background at the outset to help set the retributive stage: According to Wikipedia, Karp “is a bundler for Democratic Party presidential candidates . . . having raised sums for the presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and others.”
In other words, if Trump was out for political retribution, Karp was a perfect target. And then consider this: One of Karp’s former partners was Mark Pomerantz, author of “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” which details the attempt to prosecute former president Donald Trump, written by one of the lawyers who worked on the case and who resigned in protest when Manhattan’s district attorney refused to act.
And now on to the Executive Order from March 14, “Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss.” Excerpts below:
In 2022, Paul Weiss hired unethical attorney Mark Pomerantz, who had previously left Paul Weiss to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s office solely to manufacture a prosecution against me and who, according to his co-workers, unethically led witnesses in ways designed to implicate me. After being unable to convince even Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that a fraud case was feasible, Pomerantz engaged in a media campaign to gin up support for this unwarranted prosecution.
Additionally, Paul Weiss discriminates against its own employees on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws. Paul Weiss, along with nearly every other large, influential, or industry leading law firm, makes decisions around ‘targets’ based on race and sex.
My Administration is committed to ending such unlawful discrimination perpetrated in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies and ensuring that Federal benefits support the laws and policies of the United States, including those laws and policies promoting our national security and respecting the democratic process.
Now, the Weiss law firm’s memo in response, from Brad Karp:
Only several days ago, our firm faced an existential crisis. The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people, and our clients. In particular, it threatened our clients with the loss of their government contracts, and the loss of access to the government, if they continued to use the firm as their lawyers. And in an obvious effort to target all of you as well as the firm, it raised the specter that the government would not hire our employees.
We were hopeful that the legal industry would rally to our side, even though it had not done so in response to executive orders targeting other firms. We had tried to persuade other firms to come out in public support of Covington and Perkins Coie. And we waited for firms to support us in the wake of the President’s executive order targeting Paul, Weiss. Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.
We initially prepared to challenge the executive order in court, and a team of Paul, Weiss attorneys prepared a lawsuit in the finest traditions of the firm. But it became clear that, even if we were successful in initially enjoining the executive order in litigation, it would not solve the fundamental problem, which was that clients perceived our firm as being persona non grata with the Administration. We could prevent the executive order from taking effect, but we couldn’t erase it. Clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us, even though they wanted to. It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.
Commentary:
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on lawyers is having a chilling effect on his opponents’ ability to defend themselves or challenge his actions in court, according to people who say they are struggling to find legal representation as a result of his challenges.
[Such executive orders and pressured settlements set] an ominous precedent for future presidents to exploit. . . . [H]ow can a lawyer who is considering representing a politically controversial client know that she will not be targeted the next time control of the White House changes hands? The safest course of action will be to avoid representing clients of any political salience, right or left, even if their cause is just.
Related
We write as constitutional scholars — some liberal and some conservative — who seek to defend academic freedom and the First Amendment in the wake of the federal government’s recent treatment of Columbia University.
The First Amendment protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy. The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints. This is especially so for universities, which should be committed to respecting free speech.
At the same time, the First Amendment of course doesn’t protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled ‘harassment.’ Title VI rightly requires universities to protect their students and other community members from such behavior. But the lines between legally unprotected harassment on the one hand and protected speech on the other are notoriously difficult to draw and are often fact-specific. In part because of that, any sanctions imposed on universities for Title VI violations must follow that statute’s well-established procedural rules, which help make clear what speech is sanctionable and what speech is constitutionally protected.
Yet the administration’s March 7 cancellation of $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University did not adhere to such procedural safeguards. Neither did its March 13 ultimatum stipulating that Columbia make numerous changes to its academic policies — including the demand that, within one week, it “provide a full plan” to place an entire “department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years” — as “a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.”
Signatories
- Steven G. Calabresi
Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern Law School- Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, Berkeley Law School- David Cole
Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown University Law Center- Michael C. Dorf
Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell Law School- Richard Epstein
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, NYU School of Law- Owen Fiss
Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law, Yale Law School- Aziz Huq
Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School- Pamela Karlan
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, Stanford Law School- Randall Kennedy
Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School- Genevieve Lakier
Professor of Law, Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar, University of Chicago Law School- Michael McConnell
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law, Stanford Law School- Michael Paulsen
Distinguished University Chair and Professor, St. Thomas Law School- Robert Post
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School- David Rabban
Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair in Law, University of Texas Law School- Geoffrey R. Stone
Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School- Nadine Strossen
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School- Eugene Volokh
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University- Keith Whittington
David Boies Professor of Law, Yale Law School
The United States is home to the best collection of research universities in the world. Those universities have contributed tremendously to America’s prosperity, health, and security. They are magnets for outstanding talent from throughout the country and around the world. The Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia University puts all of that at risk, presenting the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.
Until recently, it was a little-known program to help Black and Latino students pursue business degrees.
But in January, conservative strategist Christopher Rufo flagged the program known as The PhD Project in social media posts that caught the attention of Republican politicians. The program is now at the center of a Trump administration campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education.
The U.S. Education Department last week said it was investigating dozens of universities for alleged racial discrimination, citing ties to the nonprofit organization. That followed a warning a month earlier that schools could lose federal money over “race-based preferences” in admissions, scholarships or any aspect of student life.
The investigations left some school leaders startled and confused, wondering what prompted the inquiries. Many scrambled to distance themselves from The PhD Project, which has aimed to help diversify the business world and higher education faculty.
Thursday, March 27, 2025, 1:00 – 2:00 PM ET
As efforts to silence dissent grow more aggressive, the immediate and long-term threats to our constitutional freedoms — especially in educational institutions — cannot be ignored.
This virtual panel will bring together top legal minds and policy experts to examine how these actions affect student activists, journalists, and marginalized communities. Together, we’ll explore the legal strategies needed to safeguard First Amendment rights and resist the erosion of civil liberties.
Featured Panelists: Maria Kari, Human Rights Attorney Rep. Delia Ramirez (IL-03) Jenna Leventoff, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Stephen F. Rohde, MPAC Special Advisor on Free Speech and the First Amendment Whether you’re a student, educator, advocate, or supporter of civil rights, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Register today and join us in defending the values that define our democracy.
The University of California is the godfather of the use of so-called diversity statements in faculty hiring. I have a piece forthcoming at the Nebraska Law Review arguing that such diversity statement requirements for general faculty hiring at state universities violate the First Amendment and violate academic freedom principles everywhere. It seems quite likely that in practice such diversity statement requirements are also used to facilitate illegal racial discrimination in faculty hiring.
The University of California system’s board of regents has now put an end to the use of such diversity statements at those schools. This is a truly remarkable development. Not unreasonably, this decision is being put in the context of the Trump administration’s extraordinary attack on Columbia University, a move that I think is both lawless and itself a threat to academic freedom. But there’s no question that it got the attention of university leaders across the country, and if it encourages some of them to rededicate themselves to their core institutional mission and its central values then at least some good will come of it. So silver linings and all that.
The case is Sullivan v. Texas Ethics Commission. The issue in the case is whether — and if so, under what circumstances — the First Amendment permits the government to require ordinary citizens to register and pay a fee to communicate with their government representatives.
The president of Princeton, a constitutional scholar, reveals how colleges are getting free speech on campuses right and how they can do better to nurture civil discourse and foster mutual respect
Conversations about higher education teem with accusations that American colleges and universities are betraying free speech, indoctrinating students with left-wing dogma, and censoring civil discussions. But these complaints are badly misguided.
In Terms of Respect, constitutional scholar and Princeton University president Christopher L. Eisgruber argues that colleges and universities are largely getting free speech right. Today’s students engage in vigorous discussions on sensitive topics and embrace both the opportunity to learn and the right to protest. Like past generations, they value free speech, but, like all of us, they sometimes misunderstand what it requires. Ultimately, the polarization and turmoil visible on many campuses reflect an American civic crisis that affects universities along with the rest of society. But colleges, Eisgruber argues, can help to promote civil discussion in this raucous, angry world — and they can show us how to embrace free speech without sacrificing ideals of equality, diversity, and respect.
Urgent and original, Terms of Respect is an ardent defense of our universities, and a hopeful vision for navigating the challenges that free speech provokes for us all.
This paper challenges the assumption that courts should grant outputs from large generative AI models, such as GPT-4 and Gemini, First Amendment protections. We argue that because these models lack intentionality, their outputs do not constitute speech as understood in the context of established legal precedent, so there can be no speech to protect. Furthermore, if the model outputs are not speech, users cannot claim a First Amendment right to receive the outputs.
We also argue that extending First Amendment rights to AI models would not serve the fundamental purposes of free speech, such as promoting a marketplace of ideas, facilitating self-governance, or fostering self-expression. In fact, granting First Amendment protections to AI models would be detrimental to society because it would hinder the government’s ability to regulate these powerful technologies effectively, potentially leading to the unchecked spread of misinformation and other harms.
Cases decided
Review granted
Pending petitions
Petitions denied
Free speech related
Last scheduled FAN
FAN 462: “Executive Watch: Trump’s weaponization of civil lawsuits”
This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.
Legacy preferences in college admissions have plummeted to their lowest recorded level, with just 24% of four-year colleges still considering family alumni status in
The report, authored by James Murphy, director of Career Pathways and Postsecondary Policy, found that 420 institutions continue to provide admissions advantages to children of alumni, marking a sharp decline from previous years. The practice has seen particularly steep drops since 2015, when nearly half of all four-year colleges considered legacy status. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, 92 colleges abandoned legacy preferences, representing an 18% decrease that coincided with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to ban race-conscious admissions.
This decline stems from both voluntary institutional decisions and new state legislation. In 2024, California, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia joined Colorado in restricting legacy admissions through state laws. The report indicates that 86% of colleges that ended legacy consideration did so voluntarily, while 14% were required by state legislation. Several more states are expected to introduce similar legislation in 2025.
Legacy preferences remain most entrenched at selective private institutions, particularly in the Northeast. More than half of colleges that admit 25% or fewer applicants still provide advantages to alumni children. The practice is now rare at public institutions, with just 11% still considering legacy status. In 24 states, no public colleges provide legacy preferences at all. New York stands out as having the highest concentration of colleges maintaining legacy admissions, with one in seven U.S. institutions still using the practice located in the Empire State.
The report challenges several common defenses of legacy admissions, including arguments that they help build campus community or are necessary for fundraising. It cites evidence that 76% of colleges successfully foster campus communities without legacy preferences, and questions whether wealthy institutions with multi-billion dollar endowments truly need to “trade admissions advantages for money.”
The analysis also addresses claims that ending legacy admissions could hurt diversity, particularly following the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling. The report argues that legacy preferences disproportionately benefit white and wealthy applicants, citing research showing that Asian American applicants face significantly lower odds of admission compared to white applicants with similar qualifications at selective institutions. According to one study, Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of attending elite schools than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications.
The report suggests that Congress could potentially impose additional endowment taxes on universities that maintain legacy preferences while offering reduced penalties to institutions that increase enrollment of Pell Grant recipients, community college transfers, and veterans. This approach would create financial incentives for institutions to abandon the practice.
“The shame of belonging to this group of colleges that think children of alumni have somehow earned an extra advantage in admissions is likely to push more colleges to drop the practice,” Murphy writes. “This is not a club that most colleges belong to or will want to belong to.”
The report also criticizes the Common Application for potentially enabling legacy admissions by requiring all applicants to identify where their parents earned bachelor’s degrees, even though this information is irrelevant for more than three-quarters of colleges. The report suggests that removing this question would be a significant step toward making college admissions more equitable.
“Ultimately, the reason to eliminate legacy preferences is not to achieve some other goal,” the report concludes. “The reason to get rid of them is that they are profoundly unfair and make a mockery of merit. Legacy preferences award some of the most advantaged students an additional advantage in the college admissions process on the basis of ancestry alone.”
Language can be complicated. According to Merriam-Webster, the verb “blast” has as many as 15 different meanings — “to play loudly,” “to hit a golf ball out of a sand trap with explosive force,” “to injure by or as if by the action of wind.”
Recently, the word has added another definition to the list. Namely, “to attack vigorously” with criticism, as in, “to blast someone online” or “to put someone on blast.” This usage has become a common expression.
That’s what Leigha Lemoine, a student at Horry-Georgetown Technical College, meant when she posted in a private Snapchat group that a non-student who had insulted her needed to get “blasted.”
But HGTC’s administration didn’t see it that way. When some students claimed they felt uncomfortable with Lemoine’s post, the college summoned her to a meeting. Lemoine explained that the post was not a threat of physical harm, but rather a simple expression of her belief that the person who had insulted her should be criticized for doing so. The school’s administrators agreed and concluded there was nothing threatening in her words.
But two days later, things took a turn. Administrators discovered a video on social media of Lemoine firing a handgun at a target. The video was recorded off campus a year prior to the discovery, and had no connection to the “blasted” comment, but because she had not disclosed the video’s existence (why would she be required to?), the college decided to suspend her until the 2025 fall semester. Adding insult to injury, HGTC indicated she Lemoine would be on disciplinary probation when she returned.
HGTC administrators claim Lemoine’s post caused “a significant amount of apprehension related to the presence and use of guns.”
“In today’s climate, your failure to disclose the existence of the video, in conjunction with group [sic] text message on Snapchat where you used the term ‘blasted,’ causes concern about your ability to remain in the current Cosmetology cohort,” the college added.
Never mind the context of the gun video, which had nothing to do with campus or the person she said needed to get “blasted.” HGTC was determined to jeopardize Lemoine’s future over one Snapchat message and an unrelated video.
Colleges and universities would do well to take Lemoine’s case as a reminder to safeguard the expressive freedoms associated with humor and hyperbolic statements. Because make no mistake, FIRE will continue to blast the ones that don’t.
FIRE wrote to HGTC on Lemoine’s behalf on Oct. 7, 2024, urging the college to reverse its disciplinary action against Lemoine. We pointed out the absurdity of taking Lemoine’s “blasted” comment as an unprotected “true threat” and urged the college to rescind her suspension. Lemoine showed no serious intent to commit unlawful violence with her comment urging others to criticize an individual, and tying the gun video to the comment was both nonsensical and deeply unjust.
But HGTC attempted to blow FIRE off and plowed forward with its discipline. So we brought in the big guns — FIRE Legal Network member David Ashley at Le Clercq Law Firm took on the case, filing an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. On Dec. 17, a South Carolina federal district court ordered HGTC to allow her to return to classes immediately while the case works its way through the courts.
Colleges and universities must take genuine threats of violence on campus seriously. That sometimes requires investigations and quick institutional action to ensure campus safety. But HGTC’s treatment of Lemoine is the latest in a long line of colleges misusing the “true threats” standard to punish clearly protected speech — remarks or commentary that are meant as jokes, hyperbole, or otherwise unreasonable to treat as though they are sincere.
Take over-excited rhetoric about sports. In 2022, Meredith Miller, a student at the University of Utah, posted on social media that she would detonate the nuclear reactor on campus (a low-power educational model with a microwave-sized core that one professor said “can’t possibly melt down or pose any risk”) if the football team lost its game. Campus police arrested her, and the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office charged her with making a terroristic threat.
The office eventually dropped the charge, but the university tried doubling down by suspending her for two years. It was only after intervention from FIRE and an outside attorney that the university relented. But that it took such significant outside pressure — especially over a harmless joke that was entirely in line with the kind of hyperbolic rhetoric one expects in sports commentary — reveals how dramatically the university overreacted.
Political rhetoric is often targeted as well. In 2020, Babson College professor Asheen Phansey found himself in hot water after posting a satirical remark on Facebook. After President Trump tweeted a threat that he might bomb 52 Iranian cultural sites, Phansey jokingly suggested that Iran’s leadership should publicly identify a list of American cultural heritage sites it wanted to bomb, including the “Mall of America” and the “Kardashian residence.” Despite FIRE’s intervention, Babson College’s leadership suspended Phansey and then fired him less than a day later.
Or consider an incident in which Louisiana State University fired a graduate instructor who left a heated, profanity-laced voicemail for a state senator in which he criticized the senator’s voting record on trans rights. The senator reported the voicemail to the police, who investigated and ultimately identified the instructor. The police closed the case after concluding that the instructor had not broken the law. You’re supposed to be allowed to be rude to elected officials. LSU nevertheless fired him.
More examples of universities misusing the true threats standard run the political gamut: A Fordham student was suspended for a post commemorating the anniversary of the Tianneman Square massacre; a professor posted on social media in support of a police officer who attacked a journalist and was placed on leave; an adjunct instructor wished for President Trump’s assassination and had his hiring revoked; another professor posted on Facebook supporting Antifa, was placed on leave, and then sued his college. Too often, the university discipline is made more egregious by the fact that administrators continue to use the idea of “threatening” speech to punish clearly protected expression even after local police departments conclude that the statements in question were not actually threatening.
Under the First Amendment, a true threat is defined as a statement where “the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”
That eliminates the vast majority of threatening speech you hear each day, and for good reason. One of the foundational cases for the true threat standard is Watts v. U.S., in which the Supreme Court ruled that a man’s remark about his potential draft into the military — “If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ” — constituted political hyperbole, not a true threat. The Court held that such statements are protected by the First Amendment. And rightfully so: Political speech is where the protection of the First Amendment is “at its zenith.” An overbroad definition of threatening statements would lead to the punishment of political advocacy. Look no further than controversies in the last year and a half over calls for genocide to see how wide swathes of speech would become punishable if the standard for true threats was lower.
Colleges and universities would do well to take Lemoine’s case as a reminder to safeguard the expressive freedoms associated with humor and hyperbolic statements. Because make no mistake, FIRE will continue to blast the ones that don’t.
by Julie Burrell | September 24, 2024
Like many HR professionals, Colorado Community College System’s Jennifer Parker was grappling with an increase in incivility on campus. She set about creating a civility training program that would be convenient and interactive. However, she faced a considerable hurdle: the challenges of creating a virtual training program from scratch, solo. Parker’s creative answer to one of these challenges — writing scripts for her under-10-minute videos — was to put ChatGPT to work for her.
How did she do it? This excerpt from her article, A Kinder Campus: Building an AI-Powered, Repeatable and Fun Civility Training Program, offers several tips.
I love using ChatGPT. It is such a great tool. Let me say that again: it’s such a great tool. I look at ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner. I don’t use it to write my scripts, but I do use it to get me started or to fix what I’ve written. I ask questions that I already know the answer to. I’m not using it for technical guidance in any way.
What should you consider when you use ChatGPT for scriptwriting and training sessions?
What you’ll see here is an example of how I used ChatGPT to help me write the scripts for the micro-session on conflict. It’s an iterative but replicable process. I knew what the session would cover, but I wanted to brainstorm with ChatGPT.
Once I’ve had multiple conversations with the chatbot, I go back through the entire script and pick out what I want to use. I make sure it’s in my own voice and then I’m ready to record. I also used ChatGPT to help with creating the activities and discussion questions in the rest of the micro-session.
I know using ChatGPT can feel overwhelming but rest assured that you can’t really make a mistake. (And if you’re worried the machines are going to take over, throw in a “Thank you!” or “You’re awesome!” occasionally for appeasement’s sake.)
About the author: Jennifer Parker is assistant director of HR operations at the Colorado Community College System.
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