A Professor Challenges Wokeness

For John, BLUF:  Without the freedom to think and exchange ideas, and to challenge the ideas of others, one cannot claim to have a University.  God Bless fair Judges.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Pushback:  Judge rules university officials can be held personally responsible for firing a professor for his political opinions

From the Blog Behind the Black, by Author Robert Zimmerman, 21 March 2022 12:36 pm.

Here is the lede plus three:

A major victory for free speech: A federal judge ruled on March 11th that officials at the University of North Texas can be held personally responsible for firing a professor because they did not like his political opinions.

In his 69-page order of March 11, Judge Sean Jordan, of the United States District Court for Eastern Texas, found that university officials should have known that math professor Nathaniel Hiers’ speech “touched on a matter of public concern and that discontinuing his employment because of his speech violated the First Amendment,” before they fired him for going public with his disagreement with the left-wing concept of “microaggressions.”

The university was claiming qualified immunity for school officials in the case, meaning that the school wanted its officials to be excluded from being held responsible for their actions merely because they were acting in their position as state employees.  Jordan denied the claim of qualified immunity and also denied the school’s demand to have the case dismissed outright.

You can read the judge’s order here [pdf].

And Professor Hiers is not the only one.  From January we have a Professor Jackson being cleared to sue the same institution.

Should we use the term "university" to describe this North Texas institution?  Without "Academic Freedom' can the institution be a Univeristy?  Or is it just another institution, unworthy of the name University?.

I celebrate this judicial decision.

Regards  —  Cliff