Ohio Win

Free speech survives in Ohio:

Judge Michael Watson (S.D. Ohio) wrote: Classroom instruction generally implicates a matter of public concern “because the essence of a teacher’s role is to prepare students for their place in society as responsible citizens.” … Sullivan’s purpose, as alleged, was not just to trigger his students. He triggered them for a separate, ultimate purpose: teaching them to converse productively despite having been triggered. The context—the general mission of the course—renders that purpose plausible…. [I]n Hardy v. Jefferson Cmty. Coll. (6th Cir. 2001) …, the Sixth Circuit held that a professor’s use of the n-word implicated matters of “overwhelming” public concern. Hardy involved a community college that declined to renew an adjunct professor’s contract after he said the n-word (among other offensive words), prompting a student complaint. The adjunct uttered the offensive words during an in-class lecture on language and social constructivism, part of a course called “Introduction to Interpersonal Communication.” The lecture examined how language (like the n-word) can marginalize and oppress. … The “academic context” here is materially on all fours with that in Hardy. As was true for the adjunct, Sullivan’s in-class use of the n-word was allegedly germane to an academic purpose. The lessons were not identical, of course. The adjunct’s lecture abstractly reflected on racially charged language, whereas Sullivan’s exercise pragmatically trained students how to respond to it. But, at bottom, both the Hardy lecture and the Sullivan exercise relate to race and power conflicts in society-matters of overwhelming public concern. By force of Hardy, Sullivan’s in-class utterance of the n-word likely implicates race relations-a quintessential matter of public concern. Beyond just race in general, Sullivan’s speech, as alleged, also addresses the specific matter of whether using the n-word in class can have worthwhile pedagogical value. This matter is undeniably one of public concern. This debate entered the zeitgeist most prominently as grade schools considered banning classic books that contain the n-word. The court noted that Sullivan was “taking a side” in the long-standing debate over the use of such language and “his whole ‘Crucial Conversations’ course was allegedly a monument to the view that hearing charged language in a classroom is pedagogically worth it.” Judge Watson found that the balancing test of Pickering “favors Sullivan” and that his language falls squarely in “the robust tradition of academic freedom in our nation’s post-secondary schools.”

Free speech favors everyone overall...