A Modest Proposal (Actually Two)

Universities should wait 30 days before firing faculty and staff for speech

Joshua Bregy is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Clemson who was suspended and then fired by the University for a post that he shared on his facebook page soon after the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley State University. Bregy is suing the University, and he would seem to have a strong case. Clemson is a public university, and therefore bound by the prohibitions of the First Amendment. Speech protections outside of true threats or libel, are broad.

The offending post (Prof. Bregy was passing on another person’s post, whose name I have obscured) is screenshotted below from a reddit thread. According to this news story Bregy and two other faculty were fired after a social media campaign began by the college Republicans at Clemson:

Even though Bregy’s Facebook account only allowed confirmed friends to view posts, the post, along with posts that appeared to mock or celebrate Kirk’s death from two other Clemson staff members, was flagged by the Clemson College Republicans. It eventually led to social media backlash from Republican elected officials who called for the ousting of the three employees. Clemson also received a letter from the legislative budget chairmen, the House speaker and Senate president calling on the school to take immediate and appropriate action.

Read more at: https://www.heraldonline.com/news/state/south-carolina/article312369947.html#storylink=cpy

Modest Proposal One (for the Corporate Entity of the University)

• Universities (private as well as public) should adopt a policy of waiting 30 days before a faculty or staff member can be fired due to their speech. A bit of time between initiation of political firestorm, consideration of any discipline, and action will help Universities to (a) explicitly preference speech and speakers as deserving of protection in a University; (b) prevent and protect them from acting hastily and in cowardly fashion in response to political pressure; (c) continue to allow safety/security checks to be done immediately to determine if law enforcement should be engaged to address true threats and risk of imminent harm to the community; and (d) allow them to continue policies related to immediate suspension when employees are charged with a violent felony.

Modest Proposal Two (for me and my Faculty brethren)

• All the things that can be said, ought not necessarily be said. My Granddaddy told me this a lot, and even though he only had an eight grade education, he is the wisest person I have ever known. We faculty have so many ways to speak from our positions of expertise and scholarship (papers, books, substack/blogs/interviews on our topics of expertise). Let’s have our say there and neither inflame, nor be victimized by the cesspool that is social media (I quit twitter almost two years ago, bluesky recently, and am thinking about quitting facebook).