Everybody loves free speech…until it is speech they disagree with. But if you really care about free speech, then you will live by what the French philosopher Voltaire said: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Free speech is about upholding neutral principles—the idea that principles of free speech apply equally to everyone, even if you disagree with the contents of the speech.
“[As the] the lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan…we represented the Klan, but I’m the lawyer for the First Amendment, and the First Amendment is for everybody,” former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) Norman Siegel said, when discussing free speech.
It is the principle that Eleanor Holmes Norton, then-Assistant Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), stood on in 1968 when she defended the right for the segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace to give a speech at Shea Stadium in Queens, N.Y. Siegel, a Jewish man, and Norton, a Black woman, were not in favor of racist speech, but they believed in the idea that free speech was for everyone, and that meant defending all forms of protected speech.
In that same spirit, I must call out a recent worrying trend: violations of academic freedom and the free speech rights of college and university professors. According to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), professors are afforded many academic freedoms.
“[They have the freedom] to investigate and discuss the issues in [their] academic field, and to teach or publish findings without interference from political figures, boards of trustees, donors, or other entities,” the AAUP wrote in a FAQ. “Academic freedom also protects the right of a faculty member to speak freely when participating in institutional governance, as well as to speak freely as a citizen.”
It is the embodiment of the First Amendment for professors. Related to academic freedom is the concept of tenure for professors, which according to the AAUP, is an appointment which is permanent with only a few exceptions. Yet academic freedom, including for tenured professors, has come under attack recently. Nationwide, we have worryingly seen at least four professors fired or disciplined for activities covered under academic freedom within the past month, a trend that concerns me deeply and which should perhaps worry you as well.
In September, Maura Finkelstein, a tenured professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Penn., was fired. Why? She shared a post on her Instagram story.
“Do not cower to Zionists,” it read.“Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable.”
In the past, Finkelstein has also made a number of anti-Zionist comments, including an attempt to glorify Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, a viewpoint that is offensive to many people. However, firing a tenured professor for out-of-the-classroom commentary on a highly-contested major geopolitical topic flies in the face of the purpose of academic tenure. Had Finkelstein actually carried out what her Instagram posts encouraged, and had she discriminated against Zionist students in her classroom, that would be grounds for firing, but nothing in the record suggests that was the case. Of eight complaints filed against Finkelstein, only one was related to classroom conduct, in which a student alleged they were “uncomfortable” because she used “her classroom as a political platform for spreading personal bias.”
Perhaps it would have been wise for Finkelstein to spend more classroom time teaching anthropology, but this behavior does not fit the Supreme Court’s test for discriminatory harassment under civil rights law. The Supreme Court has a standard for this.
“[The behavior must be] so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive…that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities,” the Supreme Court’s standard reads.
A group of Muhlenberg alumni gathered thousands of signatures in an effort to fire Finkelstein, and it seems that effort worked. If Muhlenberg truly cared about academic freedom and tenure, then the college would have ignored the social mob and stood on their values. But they did not.
That same month, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse fired Joe Gow, a tenured professor of communications, for posting vegan-themed pornography to websites including OnlyFans. Being a public university, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse must not only abide by the rules of academic freedom, but also the Constitution’s First Amendment. The Supreme Court has determined that the First Amendment protects pornography if it contains literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. While the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse may allege that Gow’s conduct caused harm, that is not grounds for violating the First Amendment. Gow spoke as a private citizen about matters of public concern—vegan living and sex positivity. You may find Gow’s behavior strange and odd (I do), but that is the point of the First Amendment and academic freedom: to protect individuals who share unpopular views, including in a controversial fashion!
Perhaps the most notable professor to be disciplined lately is Amy Wax, a tenured Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. Wax has made many racist and sexist statements in interviews.
“Women, on average, are less knowledgeable than men,” Wax has said in the past, according to a New York Times article on her. “Our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.”
Repugnant is not a strong enough word to condemn Wax’s comments. After a two-year investigation, the University of Pennsylvania announced that Wax had been suspended for a year with half-pay and would lose her entire summer salary. While Wax’s statements are disgraceful, academic freedom says that she should not be punished. Academic freedom protects Wax’s right to speak on matters of public concern, and she engaged in activity which, although despicable, is protected by the First Amendment.
“Upholding the ideals of free speech means living with the discomfort—or even anger and injury—that offensive ideas can cause,” Columbia University professor John McWhorter said about Wax.
You may think that Wax’s punishment is just, but I fear that Wax’s punishment will create a hate speech exception that could be used to punish any speech that people disagree with. It could be used to punish professors who make comments in support of the Palestinians, or as Princeton professor Keith Whittington has said, it could be used to punish professors who teach critical race theory.
If you thought the attacks on academic freedom would end after the start of the school year, you would be mistaken. This week, a University of Kansas professor was suspended and “left” the school after making a bad joke. In a video, Phillip Lowcock, a health sport and exercise science lecturer, referenced men who “don’t think females are smart enough to be president.”
“We can line all those guys up and shoot them,” he says in the video. “They clearly don’t understand the way the world works.”
While Lowcock should not pursue a comedic career, simply making an off-handed remark should not be grounds for discipline of this sort. The University of Kansas said that academic freedom does not protect “suggestions of violence,” but Lowock did not do that, according to Supreme Court definitions. The Supreme Court has said that for speech to be considered a true threat, the speaker must have expressed a serious intent to commit an unlawful act. Lowcock’s speech did not rise to that level. Perhaps Lowcock could have had a stern talking to by the university for engaging in speech that was not germane to the class, but to remove him from the class for an off-hand comment seems like quite a draconian decision. Like in the case of Finkelstein, it seems that the University of Kansas has abdicated their responsibility to academic freedom out of fear of the social media mob. The video of Lowcock was posted to social media by the conservative X account Libs of TikTok, and it garnered nearly ten million views and initiated calls for his firing.
In the past decade, we have seen nearly twice the number of professors fired than the amount estimated to have been fired during the Second Red Scare. During that period, in 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), who was notorious for falsely accusing individuals of being Communists, was confronted at a hearing by Joseph Welch, an attorney, who questioned McCarthy’s decency. When we look back on history, McCarthy is rightfully viewed as a nefarious character, but it was not that way until Welch finally stood up to him.
“We don’t look back on the efforts to ban comic books or censor the radio or censor the printing press as worthwhile endeavors,” Executive Vice President of the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Nico Perrino said in 2023.“In fact, we look back at them [as] silly…The censor never wins in the long run.”
History will judge harshly those who attacked academic freedom. In these times, don’t be a McCarthy. Be a Welch. We must defend the idea of academic freedom and work to build a better society centered around respecting civil liberties.
Blake Fox is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at bfox@wesleyan.edu.