Tag: Professor

  • VICTORY! 9th Circuit rules in favor of professor punished for criticizing college for lowering academic standards

    VICTORY! 9th Circuit rules in favor of professor punished for criticizing college for lowering academic standards

    SAN FRANCISCO, March 10, 2025 — Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Lars Jensen, a math professor unconstitutionally punished for criticizing what he believed was his college’s decision to water down its math standards.

    Reversing a federal district court, the Ninth Circuit held Jensen suffered wrongful dismissal of his claims against Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and that he should have his day in court to prove college administrators violated his First Amendment rights. The court also held Jensen’s right to speak out about the math standards was so clearly established that the administrators were not entitled to dismissal on qualified immunity grounds.

    “This decision is a major victory for the free speech rights of academics,” said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression attorney Daniel Ortner, who argued the case before a Ninth Circuit panel in November 2024. “This decision will protect professors from investigation or threats of termination for their speech, and promote accountability for administrators who violate the First Amendment.”

    The dispute began in 2020, when Jensen planned to comment at a TMCC conference about what he perceived to be diminishing academic standards at the college. After administrators prohibited Jensen from sharing his views at a Q&A session, he printed out his planned comments critiquing the college for allowing for “a student graduating from college” while only being “ready for middle school math,” and handed them out to his colleagues during the break. TMCC Dean Julie Ellsworth told Jensen not to circulate his fliers during the break, but he continued to do so without interrupting the session.

    Ellsworth then accused Jensen of “disobeying” her and warned him he had “made an error” defying her. Following through on her veiled threats, Ellsworth sent Jensen an official reprimand. Over the next two performance reviews, Jensen’s department chair suggested he receive an “excellent” rating, but Ellsworth retaliated by giving him “unsatisfactory” ratings for “insubordination.” As a result, Jensen automatically had to undergo review for possible termination.

    “The college’s actions tarnished my reputation and chilled my speech,” said Jensen. “The Ninth Circuit’s decision vindicates my First Amendment rights and allows me to have my day in court.” 

    COURTESY PHOTOS OF PROFESSOR JENSEN AND HIS ATTORNEYS

    TMCC might have fired Jensen if not for the speedy intervention of FIRE, which wrote a letter objecting that the administrators were violating the First Amendment, which protects faculty at public colleges in commenting as citizens on matters of public concern. TMCC announced that Jensen would not be fired, but the damage to his First Amendment rights was already done, especially with the negative performance evaluations remaining on his file.

    Jensen sued Ellsworth and other TMCC administrators in 2022, arguing the college’s retaliatory actions violated his First Amendment rights as well as his right to due process and equal protection. A district court dismissed the case in 2023. 

    The Ninth Circuit ruled today that the district court erred in dismissing Jensen’s First Amendment claim, because his speech about the college’s academic standards involved a matter of public concern related to scholarship or teaching, and thus receives First Amendment protection. 

    The Court also held the university’s retaliatory actions were likely to chill Jensen’s speech, and that a university’s “interest in punishing a disobedient employee for speaking in violation of their supervisor’s orders cannot automatically trump the employee’s interest in speaking.” The Court warned, in fact, that if an employer could fire an employee solely for refusing to obey an order to stop speaking, a university could unconstitutionally enjoy “carte blanche to stifle legitimate speech.”

    The Court further held the district court erred when it held that claims against the college administrators were barred by qualified immunity, a doctrine that requires plaintiffs to show a government official violated their “clearly established right” before they can hold those officials accountable for damages. The Ninth Circuit held that at the time Jensen spoke out, “it was clearly established that a professor has a right to speak about a school’s curriculum without being reprimanded, given negative performance reviews, and put through an investigation and termination hearing.”

    The ruling remands the case back to the District Court of Nevada, where Jensen’s First Amendment claims can proceed. He may also choose to amend his other claims as necessary to proceed alongside them. Jensen is also represented by Nevada attorney John Nolan, who brought the lawsuit and wrote the briefs filed with the Ninth Circuit. 

     

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

    CONTACT:

    Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]

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  • University of Hawai‘i dean sues law professor who criticized diversity event

    University of Hawai‘i dean sues law professor who criticized diversity event

    When the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa planned a Black History Month event in February 2023 that lacked any black facilitators, law professor Kenneth Lawson publicly challenged a dean about it at a faculty meeting. Nearly two years later, and shortly after clashing with administrators over their decision to doctor one of his class presentations,  Lawson suddenly must defend himself against a defamation lawsuit over his remarks — one filed by that same dean. 

    On Feb. 20, Lawson’s legal team filed an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the dean’s lawsuit, in which she alleged that Lawson’s heated arguments with her concerning the Black History Month event, as well as Lawson’s call to boycott the event, were defamatory. Lawson’s legal team argues that the defamation suit is “an attempt to chill and silence Professor Lawson’s constitutionally protected speech.” And the fact that it came fast on the heels of a curriculum dispute raises further questions of retaliation.

    2023: Lawson files First Amendment lawsuit against university following imbroglio over Black History Month event 

    The threats to Lawson’s expressive freedoms date to a faculty meeting back in February 2023, where he voiced vehement objections to a scheduled Black History Month event that was to feature a panel with no black facilitators. (Lawson is black.) 

    At the meeting, UH Dean Camille Nelson clashed with Lawson over the issue. Lawson claimed Nelson (who is also black) didn’t have sufficient experience in or understanding of the Civil Rights Movement. Nelson retorted that her experience as a black woman gave her perspective to understand racism, but that she did not want to litigate that issue during the meeting. In a follow-up email, Lawson accused Nelson of being “highly dismissive” of his objections, and a few days later, he called for a boycott of the panel via a university listserv. 

    Law professor challenges university after campus ‘shooting’ hypothetical changed in lesson plan

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    The University of Hawai’i violated academic freedom and set a dangerous precedent with unilateral revisions to a law professor’s presentation on a legal concept.


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    UH banned Lawson from campus and launched an investigation to determine whether he had created a “hostile work environment” for his colleagues. The university also issued no-contact orders barring Lawson from contacting certain administrators and restricting his use of university listservs. 

    Lawson, in turn, sued UH for violating his First Amendment rights to speak on a matter of public concern: racism and inclusion at the university. 

    The university eventually sanctioned Lawson for the February 2023 incident, requiring him to complete mandatory training and serve a one-month suspension without pay. Lawson returned to teaching in August of 2024, after completing the university’s sanctions under protest as his legal case proceeded.

    2025: Lawson becomes locked in conflict over academic freedom violations

    Last month, we told readers about Lawson’s clash with the university over an in-class PowerPoint presentation. Last September, Lawson used a hypothetical involving himself and two deans — one of whom shoots at the other, misses, and hits Lawson accidentally — to teach his law students the legal concept of transferred intent. The accompanying slide included website portraits of himself and the two deans to illustrate the example. 

    When an anonymous student filed a complaint about the example, the university’s response to the complaint presented a master class in how to violate academic freedom. The university ordered Lawson to change the hypothetical because it could be “disturbing and harmful,” despite the fact that he had not violated any policy. When Lawson rightfully demurred, the university unilaterally changed Lawson’s slides, removing images of the two deans—but leaving Lawson as the victim of the shooting. (Why students would be less disturbed by a hypothetical that still depicted their professor as a shooting victim was not explained.)

    Slide with an image of law professor Ken Lawson alongside generic man/woman icons

    FIRE sent two letters to the university urging it to restore the hypothetical to its original state. We argued that unilaterally changing a faculty member’s teaching materials raised serious concerns about the university’s fealty to the basic tenets of academic freedom. Those tenets protect the right of faculty members to determine how best to teach their subjects. This freedom is even more important when those topics are complicated, difficult, or potentially upsetting to students. Going over Lawson’s head to change the hypothetical without his consent also raises serious concerns for future academic freedom issues. Would UH consistently bypass faculty rights to change instruction until the teaching satisfied administrators?

    UH dean files defamation lawsuit

    Shortly after Lawson filed his censorship grievance, and nearly two years after the case’s original filing, Nelson hit Lawson with a lawsuit of her own: She alleged that Lawson’s behavior at the meeting nearly two years earlier, and his subsequent email to the university listserv, had defamed her. 

    She suffered significant emotional distress and reputational harm, she says, because of Lawson’s alleged accusations of her of being a silent “Intellectual Negro.” 

    Yet defamation claims require proof that the targeted person made false statements of fact, not just heated statements of opinion. There is no way to read Lawson’s remarks as anything but opinion. Furthermore, the First Amendment offers a “wide latitude” for faculty members to express themselves “on political issues in vigorous, argumentative, unmeasured, and even distinctly unpleasant terms.” 

    Baseless SLAPP suits threaten the speech rights of all Americans

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    FIRE President Greg Lukianoff explains why we are defending Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer against Donald Trump.


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    SLAPP lawsuits — strategic lawsuits against public participation — are often used to silence expression by bringing legal claims about others’ speech. Lawson’s legal team filed his anti-SLAPP motion seeking the dean’s suit’s dismissal on Feb. 20. 

    We hope this motion will give UH the sharp reminder it needs that faculty members have a right to speak on matters of public concern. Faculty members also have the right to determine how to approach their courses. And faculty members shouldn’t have to fear retaliation — in the university setting or in the court of law — for exercising their First Amendment rights.

    We’ll continue to keep readers apprised of Lawson’s battle against his university.

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  • The Dangerous Rise of Anti-Intellectualism (Professor Dave Explains)

    The Dangerous Rise of Anti-Intellectualism (Professor Dave Explains)







    Higher Education Inquirer : The Dangerous Rise of Anti-Intellectualism (Professor Dave Explains)




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  • James Madison psychology professor cleared of wrongdoing after extensive probe into classroom comments

    James Madison psychology professor cleared of wrongdoing after extensive probe into classroom comments

    As anyone who has taken a psychology course likely knows, discussing parts of human psychology can inevitably lead to some uncomfortable places. Whether it’s discussing sensitive topics like the psychology of psychopathic violence, the ethics of human experimentation, or the sex-based roots of the concept of “hysteria,” psychology courses are often unavoidably provocative. That is especially so for doctoral courses. 

    For Gregg Henriques, a faculty member in James Madison University’s Clinical and School Psychology Doctoral program, these sorts of uncomfortable topics were a fundamental part of understanding the full range of human psychology. Henriques had taught in the program for more than 20 years, where he established his bona fides as a passionate, if colorful, professor.

    That career longevity is part of the reason why Henriques was shocked to learn that a Title IX complaint had been filed against him by an anonymous student in April 2023. The complaint alleged that over the course of three classes and four months in early 2022, Henriques made two dozen harassing comments that created a hostile environment in his doctoral courses. 

    Among the objectionable comments were phrases like “emotions are like orgasms,” which was meant to analogize the experience of human emotion to the sexual response cycle, and “pinky dick” as a way of referring to inferiority complexes and overcompensation in a class on psychodynamic theory. Henriques also landed in hot water  for acknowledging his own fundamental human desire to have sex during a lecture on Sigmund Freud. 

    Yes, Henriques often had a colorful way of describing psychological concepts. But he only used such phrases to convey concepts to his students in memorable ways. Faculty members enjoy wide protections regarding their pedagogical speech in the classroom because the First Amendment protects speech “related to scholarship or teaching.” That’s especially so when they approach difficult or controversial issues in the classroom, since even offensive speech that is “germane to the classroom subject matter” — including Henriques’s provocative descriptions of psychological concepts here — is protected.

    We live in an age where heterodoxy is often called ‘harm’ and where every word out of a professor’s mouth is uttered beneath the brooding and Orwellian omnipresence of the Title IX Office. 

    Despite Henriques’ stellar reputation established over decades of teaching, James Madison plowed forward with the investigation. Henriques reached out to FIRE’s Faculty Legal Defense Fund, which provides faculty members at public universities with experienced First Amendment attorneys, free of charge. FLDF quickly set Henriques up with Justin Dillon, an accomplished attorney who helped Henriques navigate the investigatory process. 

    Over the course of nearly a year, JMU called Henriques into several meetings with investigators about the complaint. With the help of his FLDF attorney, Henriques was eventually cleared of all wrongdoing in January 2024, as the university determined that his comments were pedagogically relevant and did not constitute sexual harassment. 

    James Madison University

    Harrisonburg, VA

    More Info

    “I owe Justin and FIRE a tremendous debt of gratitude,” Henriques said. “As soon as he took the case, he homed in on the key issues, grasped the logic of why I taught the way I did and saw its value and legitimacy, and started to effectively game plan our approach. He was a tremendous help in navigating the system, understanding the procedures, and ensuring my rights were protected.”

    “It’s hard to overstate the difference that I have seen the FLDF make in the lives of terrific professors like Gregg Henriques,” Dillon said. “We live in an age where heterodoxy is often called ‘harm’ and where every word out of a professor’s mouth is uttered beneath the brooding and Orwellian omnipresence of the Title IX Office. The FLDF helps keep the world safe for ideas, and I am so honored to be a part of it.”

    With his pedagogical rights vindicated, Henriques is now back in the classroom, able to teach knowing that FLDF and FIRE have his back. But he is just one of the hundreds of scholars punished for their speech. 

    If you are a public university or college professor facing investigations or punishment for your speech, contact the Faculty Legal Defense Fund: Submit a case or call the 24-hour hotline at 254-500-FLDF (3533).

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  • Ohio Northern sues professor for having the audacity to defend his rights in court

    Ohio Northern sues professor for having the audacity to defend his rights in court

    Following Professor Scott Gerber’s vocal opposition to his school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, Ohio Northern University ordered campus police to yank him out of class and march him to the dean, who demanded Gerber’s immediate resignation. A judge decried the school’s apparent “callous disregard for due process,” but because Gerber had the courage to fight back in court, ONU took things even further — filing a federal lawsuit to shut him up.

    But Gerber is not having it. A longtime critic of ONU’s initiatives around DEI, Gerber’s objections made him a target of administrators, who launched an investigation into him in January 2023. From then until his sudden termination, ONU outright refused to disclose the specific accusations against him. When the school finally told Gerber he lacked “collegiality,” FIRE explained to ONU that this charge looked a lot like retaliation for his views on DEI, which would be a stark violation of the university’s commitment to academic freedom. We called on ONU in March, and again in May, to provide Gerber with the specifics of its collegiality concerns, to no avail. 

    Out of work and still wondering what he did wrong, Gerber took ONU to court. His complaint centered on the university’s failure to provide him with the specific grounds for dismissal. This fundamental principle of due process protects the right of the accused to defend themselves. After all, if you don’t know what you’re accused of doing, it’s impossible to prove your innocence. Universities provide due process to ensure accurate disciplinary determinations, especially when a tenured professor’s livelihood hangs in the balance. That’s why an Ohio state court allowed Gerber’s breach of contract claim to proceed, criticizing ONU’s “troubling . . . lack of any detailed determination” of how its allegations “affected his fitness as a faculty member.” 

    That case is now headed to trial. 

    Professor suspended for reasons unknown — even to him 

    News

    Why did Ohio Northern University suspend professor Scott Gerber? We have no idea, and neither does he.


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    But for defending his rights in state court, ONU sued Gerber in federal court on Jan. 20, claiming Gerber’s “perverted” lawsuit is apparently an “attempt to accomplish . . . personal vendettas” and “unleashing political retribution” against ONU — notwithstanding the state court holding Gerber’s claims warranted proceeding to a jury. ONU’s suit claims Gerber’s “true goal is to manufacture outrage, to influence political retribution, and to extract vengeance against” ONU. According to the lawsuit, Gerber’s attempt to hold the university to its own policies is an unlawful “abuse of process.” 

    Disturbingly, the crux of ONU’s complaint rests on Gerber’s protected speech. The university faults Gerber for expressing accurate information about his ordeal in the Wall Street Journal and through a press release published by his attorneys at America First Legal, maligned by ONU as a “manufactured narrative” designed to “manufacture outrage.” Yet Gerber and America First Legal cite the university’s own words and policies to make his case, which a state court has allowed to proceed by rejecting ONU’s efforts to dismiss his claims.

    The irony of ONU refusing to provide Gerber with the bare minimum of process before summarily terminating him, then launching a whole federal lawsuit instead to get him to stop fighting, is palpable.

    ONU’s suit is a classic example of abusing the legal system to silence your critics. Such a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP, is a tactic that seeks solely to impose punishing litigation costs on their targets. The lawsuit is the punishment. Gerber must now bear the burden of defending this meritless suit while he prepares for trial in state court.

    Why ‘SLAPP’ lawsuits chill free speech and threaten the First Amendment

    Issue Pages

    You can’t use the legal system to punish people for speech you don’t like.


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    On a larger note, if nonprofits like FIRE cannot convey truthful information about the cases we litigate without incurring a separate lawsuit, that will imperil a wide array of civil rights advocacy. Defending against an onerous SLAPP puts further strain on the already limited resources dedicated to protecting civil liberties.

    Terminated professors must turn to courts to vindicate their rights as the option of last resort, and the First Amendment protects their right to do so. When universities seek in turn to use courts to bully professors into submission, judges must firmly reject these thinly veiled attempts to achieve censorship by lawsuit. 

    We’ll keep our readers updated. 

    FIRE defends the rights of students and faculty members — no matter their views — at public and private universities and colleges in the United States. If you are a student or a faculty member facing investigation or punishment for your speech, submit your case to FIRE today. If you’re a faculty member at a public college or university, call the Faculty Legal Defense Fund 24-hour hotline at 254-500-FLDF (3533). If you’re a college journalist facing censorship or a media law question, call the Student Press Freedom Initiative 24-hour hotline at 717-734-SPFI (7734).

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  • WEEKEND READING: Change is our ally by Professor Sir Chris Husbands

    WEEKEND READING: Change is our ally by Professor Sir Chris Husbands

    This blog has been kindly written for HEPI by Professor Sir Chris Husbands, who was Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University between 2016 and 2023, and is now a Director of  Higher Futures, working with university leaders to lead sustainable solutions to institutional challenges.

    The scale of the funding challenge in higher education is widely known, though almost every week brings news of fresh challenges and responses. Real term funding for undergraduate teaching in 2025 is close to 1997 levels – levels which led the Blair government to introduce £1,000 top-up fees. Some commentators have argued that the scale of the challenge now is as great as the 1981 cuts in government funding for universities, which reduced spending on universities by 15%, and saw Salford University lose 44% of its income.

    As contemporary funding challenges have intensified, growth options have become more difficult:

    • international student numbers have either stalled or declined;
    • undergraduate growth, although evident, has not tracked demographic trends;
    • the Office for Students has identified persistent optimism bias in the sector’s funding projections; and
    • competitive pressures are multiplying.

    In many countries, flexible for-profit providers are growing fast, especially in professional and post-graduate education. Many of these are backed by funds with deep investment pockets; some UK for-profit providers are growing very quickly and the expansion of private provision in Germany, France and Canada has been remarkable. In summary, the funding challenge is not only real but increasingly profound.

    Institutional responses to these challenges have been extensive. Almost all universities are now undertaking significant change programmes. There have been major strides in revising operating models, especially for professional and support services, and the impact has been significant. On the other hand, although portfolio reviews are widespread, there have been fewer developments in reshaping business models for teaching and research, though some do exist. Core delivery arrangements largely remain based on a two-semester or three-term model. Staff-student ratios which, as the King’s College Vice-Chancellor Shitij Kapur has repeatedly emphasised are low by international standards, have not been significantly shifted. Undergraduate study remains relatively inflexible. Module sharing and simplified credit transfer arrangements remain small scale. Estate use has not been significantly intensified. All this suggests that individual institutions are finding it difficult to look at the challenge strategically with an eye to the longer term shape, size, structure and nature of the university. There is a lot happening in individual change plans, but probably not enough. Without a secure and sustainable core academic model, institutions will be forced into repeated restructurings, which will not be comfortable for them or for the sector more generally.  

    This is the background to the important Jisc-KPMG report Collaboration for a sustainable future, which was the subject of a this week’s HEPI / Jisc webinar. For all the evidence of individual institutional change, the report argues that a collaborative approach is needed to secure sustainability and reshape the sector. Institutions need to find ways to work together, in back-office functions, in professional services and perhaps in academic delivery. The report acknowledges that there are technical difficulties to overcome, including the requirement to pay VAT on shared services and the need to navigate competition law, though these need to be genuinely tested in practice, but it also argues that the deeper barriers to effective collaboration are cultural. 

    The ingrained habit of individual autonomy, even and perhaps especially in non-competitive services (as Nick Hillman reinforced, no one chooses their undergraduate degree based on the university’s finance system) is a major barrier to significant change.  Moreover, the report acknowledges that collaboration and shared service arrangements are unlikely to deliver cost savings in the short-term – and just now a good deal of thinking in the sector seems to be shaped by Keynes’ dictum that ‘in the long-run we are all dead’. Institutions are caught between the economic realities of the funding challenge and the cultural challenges of collaboration.

    In Four Futures, my HEPI paper published in June last year, I argued that the financial and funding circumstances which produced the sector we have no longer exist. Government is unwilling or unable to pay for the sector most university leaders would like. I argued that there were some policy choices for higher education, and that the sector will almost certainly be different in the future. There are public policy questions here, but there are also questions and challenges for institutions. That means strategic choices for leaders, with universities being much clearer about the things they can do well, and do well sustainably, and building different relationships with other institutions. Leadership matters. As the Jisc / KPMG report observes:

    Given the current trajectory, there is a window of opportunity for institutions to act now and help drive this forward before they are compelled into action by necessity.

    Competition over the past decade has undoubtedly delivered benefits, and we should not understate those, especially in estate investment, student experience, teaching quality and research performance. But competition has also delivered homogeneity, duplication and overlap, and that needs to change.   And for that, as the Jisc / KPMG report identifies, the leadership culture needs to change. Hyper-competitiveness has driven institutionally focused leadership behaviours and associated performance indicators, targets and rewards. But there have been different leadership assumptions in higher education in the past, and other sectors have grappled with the challenge of changing leadership culture. The most successful school improvement initiative of the past generation was London Challenge, in which the performance of schools across the capital was significantly raised. One of the most important shifts was a cultural one, persuading headteachers to think not about ‘my school’ but about ‘[all] our children’: success across the system was a leadership challenge for all.

    The Jisc / KPMG Report is strong on the potential for collaboration to shape the future of the system, though it also makes painful reading on the challenges which have bedevilled this in the past. In the current context, government is unlikely to provide additional funding. The private sector could no doubt provide standardised sector-wide services, but the risks of a single supplier for key services are enormous. If government is not the solution, if the private sector is not the solution, if the status quo is not sustainable, the answer must be imaginative and engaged leadership which is not simply about ‘my institution’ but also about ‘our future’.

    This week’s HEPI / Jisc webinar on ‘Competition or collaboration? Opportunities for the future of the higher education sector’ can be watched back here.

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  • Judge reinstates professor LSU suspended after Trump remarks

    Judge reinstates professor LSU suspended after Trump remarks

    A judge has ordered Louisiana State University to return to the classroom a tenured law professor who says the institution suspended him from teaching after he made comments about Donald Trump and Louisiana governor Jeff Landry in a lecture.

    Donald R. Johnson, a state district court judge, signed a one-page order Thursday putting Ken Levy back in the classroom. The return might be short-lived; Johnson set a hearing for Feb. 10, during or after which he could decide that Levy should again be barred from teaching. The Louisiana Illuminator reported the ruling earlier.

    On Jan. 14, Levy was explaining his course rules to students—including a ban on recording the class. A recording was made nevertheless.

    Levy referenced Landry’s public calls in November for LSU to punish Nicholas Bryner, one of Levy’s fellow law professors, for Bryner’s alleged in-class comments about students who support Trump. Levy said he himself “would love to become a national celebrity [student laughter drowns out a moment of the recording] based on what I said in this class, like, ‘Fuck the governor!’”

    Levy also referenced Trump. “You probably heard I’m a big lefty, I’m a big Democrat, I was devastated by— I couldn’t believe that fucker won, and those of you who like him, I don’t give a shit, you’re already getting ready to say in your evaluations, ‘I don’t need his political commentary,’” Levy said. “No, you need my political commentary, you above all others.”

    Levy’s attorney, Jill Craft, said the university suspended Levy from teaching pending an investigation, though it hasn’t specified which comments allegedly generated student complaints.

    “When people try and censor academic freedom and free speech because they may not like the opinion or the thought, then we no longer have those freedoms,” Craft said.

    LSU spokespeople didn’t return requests for comment Thursday.

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  • HEDx Podcast: Professor Genevieve Bell on AI – Episode 151

    HEDx Podcast: Professor Genevieve Bell on AI – Episode 151

    Professor Genevieve Bell is vice-chancellor and president of the Australian National University.

    In this episode, she reflects on her journey as a scientist, engineer and humanist in the United States and Australia. The professor shares lessons learned in Silicon Valley and leading Australia’s national university.

    Professor Bell also identifies short term challenges and the long term trajectory of higher education, specifically in relation to technology and AI.

    Do you have an idea for a story?
    Email [email protected]

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  • Law professor challenges university after campus ‘shooting’ hypothetical changed in lesson plan

    Law professor challenges university after campus ‘shooting’ hypothetical changed in lesson plan

    Those concerned that law schools are shying away from teaching some areas of law to avoid controversy just got more reasons to worry, this time courtesy of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and its absurd treatment of law professor Kenneth Lawson.

    Lawson, an accomplished faculty member at UH, used a simple hypothetical to teach the idea of “transferred intent,” a legal concept invoked when a defendant intends to harm one person, but ends up harming a second person instead. As is common in law school, Lawson offered a hypothetical to convey this idea: Imagine if a dean at his institution tried to shoot another dean, missed, and hit Lawson instead.

    Here’s a screenshot from part of his lesson:

    Those who have been to law school will understand that using campus figures to illustrate hypotheticals is not at all unusual, and is intended to add a bit of levity and grounding to what can be pretty esoteric topics.

    But when an anonymous student filed a complaint, calling the hypothetical “extremely disturbing” and citing the context of some shootings near the university’s campus, administrators summoned Lawson to a meeting near the end of last semester. Though they acknowledged he had not violated any university policy, they nevertheless mandated that he remove the thought experiment from a posted video of the class — or they would change it for him. 

    The ability of administrators to forcibly alter course materials is positively ripe for abuse.

    Lawson hadn’t thought twice about including the example, and had been using the example for years, not simply because it wasn’t unusual but because the protections of academic freedom give faculty wide latitude in determining how to approach controversial or potentially difficult material. When Lawson refused to alter the video of his presentation, given that he had not violated any policy, and using the hypothetical was well within his academic freedom rights, administrators just went on the school’s online curriculum system, where faculty submit presentations, to make the changes themselves.

    Remember: these changes were being made because, supposedly, some found a hypothetical of campus figures being shot to be disturbing. So this is what the administration came up with.

    Slide with an image of law professor Ken Lawson alongside generic man/woman icons

    You will note that there is still a campus figure on that slide, and it’s the person who was (hypothetically) shot: Professor Lawson. Only the deans have been removed. It seems that at UH, some hypothetical victims are more equal than others.

    There’s no denying that this is silly, and many will be tempted to chalk it up as just more campus craziness. But there’s a disturbing wrinkle here, which is that the ability of administrators to forcibly alter course materials is positively ripe for abuse. The university’s administrators have granted themselves unilateral authority to interfere with faculty teaching decisions, despite the fact that UH is a public institution bound by the First Amendment, which views academic freedom, which protects that right, as a “special concern.” If administrators can “memory hole” bits and pieces of curricula they don’t like, even when it violates no rule, where does it stop?

    UH still has an opportunity to do the right thing. It’s easy, too — all it has to do is step back and let faculty teach, and save the video editing for film class.

    FIRE wrote the university on Dec. 13, urging it to reverse course and restore Lawson’s original hypothetical. The university responded in early January, declining to substantively engage with our concerns or detail specific issues with our argument. Lawson, and all UH students, deserve better. As our second letter states: 

    FIRE’s concerns are only amplified by the fact that this alleged capitulation to sensitivity is occurring in a law school. To receive a proper education in the law, students will inevitably encounter difficult topics like sexual assault, homicide, physical assault, domestic violence, and may be faced in school and in their careers with descriptions of personal injuries far more graphic than those in Lawson’s hypothetical. Where do UH administrators draw the line regarding their interference in faculty instruction if they feel free to operate under a nebulous standard of protecting students from “disturbing and harmful” material? 

    Lawson has submitted a grievance about the situation, so UH still has an opportunity to do the right thing. It’s easy, too — all it has to do is step back and let faculty teach, and save the video editing for film class.

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