For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/30/13

Thomas Sullivan and Lawrence White, Chronicle of Higher Education; For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning: "Those and other cases prompted the AAUP in 2009 to issue a report observing that "the lower federal courts have so far largely ignored the Garcetti majority's reservation, posing the danger that, as First Amendment rights for public employees are narrowed, so too may be the constitutional protection for academic freedom at public institutions, perhaps fatally." In the past two years, however, the tide appears to have turned. Two recent decisions by federal appellate courts explicitly hold that the Garcetti standard does not apply in faculty-free-speech cases... The trend is encouraging. As a legal principle and sound postulate of institutional governance, academic freedom should be deemed to protect the expression of faculty views even when they are deemed by some to be unhelpful or provocatively stated. This is especially compelling given the uniqueness of our universities as marketplaces of ideas where we seek to discover new knowledge and understanding and make it available to others."