Two professors at Florida Atlantic University are back at work after the university placed them on administrative leave for making comments related to Charlie Kirk’s death, The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported Wednesday.
After the right-wing activist was shot and killed Sept. 10 during an event at Utah Valley University, President Donald Trump and his allies sought to punish anyone who made public comments about Kirk that could be perceived as critical. Numerous universities fired or suspended professors, including three at FAU: Karen Leader, an associate professor of art history; Kate Polak, an English professor; and Rebel Cole, a finance professor.
While Leader’s and Polak’s comments criticized Kirk, Cole’s comments were directed at Kirk’s opponents. “We are going to hunt you down. We are going to identify you,” he wrote on social media, according to the Sun Sentinel. “Then we are going to make you radioactive to polite society. And we will make you both unemployed and unemployable.”
While the three professors were on administrative leave, the university hired Alan Lawson, a former Florida Supreme Court justice, to investigate their comments. Lawson has since concluded that Cole’s and Leader’s comments were protected by the First Amendment and recommended they both be reinstated.
“The findings reflect that each professor’s social-media statements, though provocative to varying degrees, were authored in a personal capacity on matters of public concern,” Lawson wrote. Although both the FAU Faculty Senate and Cole himself objected to the investigation—Cole sued the university over an alleged First Amendment violation—Lawson’s report said the university “preserved constitutional rights while upholding its responsibility to ensure professionalism, civility, and safety within its academic community.”
Polak remains on leave while Lawson continues to investigate her comments.
Hook is one of dozens of faculty members who have been punished for their comments about Kirk’s death.
Photo illustration by Inside Higher Ed | LeoPatrizi/E+/Getty Images
A South Dakota district court judge ordered the University of South Dakota on Wednesday to reinstate Michael Hook, a tenured professor of art who was put on leave with an “intent to terminate” after he posted comments on his personal Facebook page about Charlie Kirk.
“The court concludes that Hook spoke as a citizen and his speech was on a matter of public concern,” district court judge Karen Schreier wrote. “Defendants note that Hook’s Facebook page identified himself as a professor at the University of South Dakota … but this alone does not show that a post made on his personal Facebook account is speech that arises from Hook’s duties as a professor.”
Hook is one of dozens of faculty and staff members who have been punished for their comments about Kirk’s death. He was put on leave two days after posting, “Okay. I don’t give a flying fuck about this Kirk person,” on his Facebook page on Sept. 10, the day Kirk was shot and killed in Utah.
“Apparently he was a hate spreading Nazi. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the idiotic right fringe to even know who he was,” Hook continued. “I’m sorry for his family that he was a hate spreading Nazi and got killed. I’m sure they deserved better. Maybe good people could now enter their lives. But geez, where was all this concern when the politicians in Minnesota were shot? And the school shootings? And Capitol Police? I have no thoughts or prayers for this hate spreading Nazi. A shrug, maybe.”
Hook later deleted the post and posted an apology.
Hook was informed in a letter from Bruce Kelley, dean of the University of South Dakota College of Fine Arts, that in posting the comment on Facebook he’d violated two university policies. The first dealt with “neglect of duty, misconduct, incompetence and abuse of power,” and the second detailed that when employees speak publicly “they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence, they should at all times be accurate, show respect for the opinions of others and make every effort to indicate when they are not speaking for the institution.”
As part of the temporary restraining order, Schreier ordered that the university may not proceed with a disciplinary meeting between Hook and university officials scheduled for Sept. 29. The temporary restraining order will remain in effect until a preliminary injunction hearing on Oct. 8.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has repeatedly said that the February and March cancellations and firings at her department cut not only the “fat” but also into some of the “muscle” of the federal role in education. So, even as she promises to dismantle her department, she is also bringing back some people and restarting some activities. Court filings and her own congressional testimony illuminate what this means for the agency as a whole, and for education research in particular.
McMahon told a U.S. House committee last month she rehired 74 employees out of the roughly 2,000 who were laid off or agreed to separation packages. A court filing earlier this month says the agency will revive about a fifth of research and statistics contracts killed earlier this year, at least for now, though that doesn’t mean the work will look exactly as it did before.
The Trump administration disclosed in a June 5 federal court filing in Maryland that it either has or is planning to reinstate 20 of 101 terminated contracts to comply with congressional statutes. More than half of the reversals will restart 10 regional education laboratories that the Trump administration had said were engaged in “wasteful and ideologically driven spending,” but had been very popular with state education leaders. The reinstatements also include an international assessment, a study of how to help struggling readers, and Datalab, a web-based data analysis tool for the public.
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Even some of the promised reinstatements are uncertain because the Education Department plans to put some of them up for new bids (see table below). That process could take months and potentially result in smaller contracts with fewer studies or hours of technical assistance.
These research activities were terminated by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) before McMahon was confirmed by the Senate. The Education Department’s disclosure of the reinstatements occurred a week after President Donald Trump bid farewell to Musk in the Oval Office and on the same day that the Trump-Musk feud exploded on social media.
See which IES contracts have been or are slated to be restarted, or under consideration for reinstatement
Description
Status
1
Regional Education Laboratory – Mid Atlantic
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
2
Regional Education Laboratory – Southwest
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
3
Regional Education Laboratory – Northwest
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
4
Regional Education Laboratory – West
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
5
Regional Education Laboratory – Appalachia
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
6
Regional Education Laboratory – Pacific
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
7
Regional Education Laboratory – Central
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
8
Regional Education Laboratory – Midwest
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
9
Regional Education Laboratory – Southeast
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
10
Regional Education Laboratory – Northeast and Islands
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
11
Regional Education Laboratory – umbrella support contract
Intends to seek new bids and restart contract
12
What Works Clearinghouse (website, training reviewers, but no reviewing of education research)
Approved for reinstatement
13
Statistical standards and data confidentiality technical assistance for the National Center for Education Statistics
Reinstated
14.
Statistical and confidentiality review of electronic data files and technical reports
Approved for reinstatement
15
Datalab, a web-based data analysis tool for the public
Approved for reinstatement
16
U.S. participation in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international test overseen by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Reinstated
17
Data quality and statistical methodology assistance
Reinstated
18
EDFacts, a collection of administrative data from school districts around the country
Reinstated
19
Demographic and geospatial estimates (e.g. school poverty and school locations) used for academic research and federal program administration
Approved for reinstatement
20
Evaluation of the Multi-tiered System of Supports in reading, an approach to help struggling students
Approved for reinstatement
21
Implementation of the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program and feasibility of conducting an impact evaluation of it.
Evaluating whether to restart
22
Policy-relevant findings for the National Evaluation of Career and Technical Education
Evaluating whether to restart
23
The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (how students finance college, college graduation rates and workforce outcomes)
Evaluating whether to restart
24
Additional higher ed studies
Evaluating whether to restart
25
Publication assistance on educational topics and the annual report
Evaluating whether to restart
26
Conducting peer review of applications, manuscripts and grant competitions at the Institute of Education Sciences
Evaluating whether to restart
The Education Department press office said it had no comment beyond what was disclosed in the legal brief.
Education researchers, who are suing the Trump administration to restore all of its previous research and statistical activities, were not satisfied.
Elizabeth Tipton, president of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) said the limited reinstatement is “upsetting.” “They’re trying to make IES as small as they possibly can,” she said, referring to the Institute of Education Sciences, the department’s research and data arm.
SREE and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) are suing McMahon and the Education Department in the Maryland case. The suit asks for a temporary reinstatement of all the contracts and the rehiring of IES employees while the courts adjudicate the broader constitutional issue of whether the Trump administration violated congressional statutes and exceeded its executive authority.
The 20 reinstatements were not ordered by the court, and in some instances, the Education Department is voluntarily restarting only a small slice of a research activity, making it impossible to produce anything meaningful for the public. For example, the department said it is reinstating a contract for operating the What Works Clearinghouse, a website that informs schools about evidence-based teaching practices. But, in the legal brief, the department disclosed that it is not planning to reinstate any of the contracts to produce new content for the site.
In the brief, the administration admitted that congressional statues mention a range of research and data collection activities. But the lawyers argued that the legislative language often uses the word may instead of must, or notes that evaluations of education programs should be done “as time and resources allow.”
“Read together, the Department has wide discretion in whether and which evaluations to undertake,” the administration lawyers wrote.
The Trump administration argued that as long as it has at least one contract in place, it is technically fulfilling a congressional mandate. For example, Congress requires that the Education Department participate in international assessments. That is why it is now restarting the contract to administer the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), but not other international assessments that the country has participated in, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
The administration argued that researchers didn’t make a compelling case that they would be irreparably harmed if many contracts were not restarted. “There is no harm alleged from not having access to as-yet uncreated data,” the lawyers wrote.
One of the terminated contracts was supposed to help state education agencies create longitudinal data systems for tracking students from pre-K to the workforce. The department’s brief says that states, not professional associations of researchers, should sue to restore those contracts.
In six instances, the administration said it was evaluating whether to restart a study. For example, the legal brief says that because Congress requires the evaluation of literacy programs, the department is considering a reinstatement of a study of the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program. But lawyers said there was no urgency to restart it because there is no deadline for evaluations in the legislative language.
In four other instances, the Trump administration said it wasn’t feasible to restart a study, despite congressional requirements. For example, Congress mandates that the Education Department identify and evaluate promising adult education strategies. But after terminating such a study in February, the Education Department admitted that it is now too difficult to restart it. The department also said it could not easily restart two studies of math curricula in low-performing schools. One of the studies called for the math program to be implemented in the first year and studied in the second year, which made it especially difficult to restart. A fourth study the department said it could not restart would have evaluated the effectiveness of extra services to help teens with disabilities transition from high school to college or work. When DOGE pulled the plug on that study, those teens lost those services too.
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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.
On December 17, the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the 5th Circuit Court’s emergency motion to stay the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)’s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), paving the way for OSHA to continue implementing and enforcing the vaccination and testing requirements for covered employers with 100 or more employees.
The ETS requires covered employers and employees to be fully vaccinated or in compliance with testing requirements by January 4, 2022. The stay, which was granted in November, temporarily halted OSHA from implementing and enforcing the vaccination and testing requirements. While the stay was in place, it was unclear whether or not OSHA would be able to fully implement the ETS by January 4 or any time after.
With the recent decision from the 6th Circuit Court, OSHA now plans to implement the ETS as quickly as possible. To account for the timing uncertainty created by the stay, however, OSHA also has announced that it will not issue non-compliance citations for any of the requirements of the ETS before January 10, 2022, and it will not issue non-compliance citations specifically for the ETS’s testing requirements until February 9, 2022, “so long as an employer is exercising reasonable, good faith efforts to come into compliance with the standard.” OSHA has also vowed to provide compliance assistance to help employers navigate these new requirements and timelines.
Shortly after the 6th Circuit’s order, a number of groups challenging the ETS filed emergency applications with the Supreme Court seeking to reinstate the stay. Meanwhile, the federal contractor vaccine mandate and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) healthcare worker vaccine mandate remain stayed as litigation continues in several federal courts.
CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of any future legal challenges and decisions made on the OSHA ETS, federal contractor vaccine mandate, and healthcare worker vaccine mandate.
