The Age of Trump is quickly becoming the era of free-speech challenges. Trump launched his presidency with a news conference in which he refused to take a question from CNN because the network promulgates "fake news."
This week, the White House is whining about leaks from the intelligence community about the late, great National Security Advisor's illegal contact with the Russian ambassador.
This constant attack on free speech and free press is spilling onto our campuses. Today it's reported that at Orange Coast College a student was suspended for video recording a professor expressing anti-Trump sentiments. According to the Orange County Register, the student caught the prof in the act of calling Trump's election an "act of terrorism." The comments were made last semester in the prof's human-sexuality class.
The case raises some interesting issues that we administrators had better be ready to confront:
1. Was the professor exercising her academic freedom? The famous 1940 AAUP statement says that faculty enjoy academic freedom in their classrooms so far as how they present their materials. In a human-sexuality class, comments about Trump --- accused of being a sexual assaulter --- could very well be pertinent to the subject matter of the class. Or maybe not.
2. If the student surreptitiously took the video, was he violating state law? Was he violating any published rule of the college? If so, this being a public entity, did the college violate his 1st and 14th amendment rights if it promulgated such a prohibition?
3. Even if the student had the legal right to take the video, did he also have the right to post the video recording?
Note that it --- of course --- went viral, resulting in so many threats that the poor prof fled the state.
At any rate, the video is available here. You might want to watch it and judge for yourself.
By the way: tomorrow at one I will present my take on the Trump administration and its likely impact on higher education.
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