Terminating Faculty Employment for Problematic Online Behavior—a First Amendment Issue?

The Story

In late 2019, tenured Indiana University faculty member, Eric Rasmusen (link to his twitter), put himself and IU as an institution under national speculation when several of his sexist tweets began being circulated online. The tweet which sparked the uproar was a retweet of an article from unz.com titled “Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably.” But this was just the beginning of the bigotry; without much difficulty, it was soon discovered that the professor had a history of transphobia, homophobia, and racism, as shown through likes, retweets, and original tweets displayed on his personal account. 

Many Twitter users assumed he would be fired for such intolerance; IU students called for his immediate termination. One woman tweeted that she had completed research with him the previous semester and was perplexed and offended by his stance. Another started a petition on Change.org demanding his immediate removal. The general consensus, at least online, was that he was unfit to teach at IU.

However, to the dismay of many, IU provost Lauren Robel made a public statement which announced he would remain a professor at IU; she condemned his words but affirmed his right to express whatever opinions he wished when outside of the classroom. She judged his opinions to be “Stupid,” but explained that it was his right under the first amendment to say whatever he likes, as long as he does not act upon such biases in the classroom. To ensure this could not happen, she announced that all assignments turned into him would be blindly graded—to remove possibility for biased grading—and that his courses would be evaluated for signs of bias. 

Did IU make the right decision?

I disagree with his not being fired. I fully believe IU administration should have terminated his contract; tolerating such obvious intolerance is not something which should be allowed within the university. Further, I do not think the “But the First Amendment!” argument was valid in this case, and I think Stanley Fish would agree with me.

As we read in Free Speech Follies written by Fish, the Daily Illini—a collegiate newspaper—used a similar argument when they received criticism for an anti-Semitic letter they published. Just like Provost Robel, they cited the first amendment to defend their decision to allow the bigotry to have a platform. Fish wrote in response: “this incident has nothing to do with either hate speech or free speech and everything to do with whether the editors are discharging or defaulting on their obligations when they foist them off on an inapplicable doctrine, saying in effect, ‘The First Amendment made us do it.’” In other words, just because you have power to give others a voice, does not mean you are violating the first amendment by refusing to provide a platform for harmful ideologies. He makes an important distinction between violating freedom of speech and using judgment when providing a platform to others; he writes that “judgment… is quite a different thing from silencing.” I think that in the case of IU and Eric Rasmusen, poor judgment was exercised by relying on the first amendment to excuse their cowardice in refusing to fire such a potentially harmful figure.

What does this Mean?

This is not the only instance of bigoted faculty members, but it is one of the few that comes to mind in which the professor was not fired for their online actions. Some may hail this as a win for “campus free speech,” but I think it is instead a sign of universities continuing to be complicit in societal inequality. As discussed in class, universities have a history marked by sexism, racism, and classism; however, universities have since changed their philosophy—at least on surface level—now lauding diversity as being one of the pillars higher education is built upon. They even use statistics for how “diverse” their campuses are to convince outsiders to attend and fund their institutions.

I think that if administration officials want to continue to boast about diversity on their campuses, they need to actually support the people who make the student body a diverse group. They need to value the presence of women, people of color, and the LGBT+ community enough to take a stand against those who do not want such people to have a voice. This includes removing faculty members who speak on their bigoted views in their personal time.  Otherwise, their "comittment to diversity" is a lie.

What do you think? Was IU right to allow Dr. Rasmusen to continue teaching? 

If you would like to read more, I recommend this article; I pulled a lot of the information for this post from it.