Professors Face Long Odds in Court Battles Over Speech Rights

By: Peter Schmidt

Team 3: Samantha Malmfelt, Harrison Dehart, Jessica Kharnas, Loriann Bobbins

Authors Profile:
The author, Peter Schmidt, is a third party, who is not directly involved in the issue. His
occupation is not clearly stated, but based on the article, I would guess that he is a
journalist of some sort. He did an analysis of this 50 year study and was reporting news
on this particular study, done by Michael H. LeRoy. He also talks about personal
accounts of court cases and issues of freedom of speech in colleges from a professor
stance.

Authors Claim and Reasons:

The author claims that instructors typically lose first amendment lawsuit battles against
campuses and employers. The author states clearly that even though there are appeals
to academic freedom teachers need to be selective when using that as a basis for a
lawsuit. Little has been done to make college campuses feel threatened by first
amendment lawsuits. Even standards set by the American Association of University
Professors has hardly had a positive outcome for professors. Mr. Leroy, the author for
the 50 year study stated, The instructors low success rate in courts, he said, might be
less a reflection of the weakness of their First Amendment protections than the
willingness of many to claim such protections in situations where they do not apply. Mr.
Leroy was saying that the reason teachers were being ruled against in court is because
they are using the protection of the first amendment when it is not relevant to their case.
The problem does not lie within the rights of the first amendment, but instead it's the
understanding of when the correct time to use it is. For example the cases weren't
typically based off controversial ideas, but instead it was mainly harassment accusations
and confrontational behavior. Another reason why teachers tend to lose the cases is
because not that many actually get far enough to get to court, campuses like to settle the
case outside of court as much as possible.

Audience for the Article:

This article is published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The title of this journal
alone is enough to see who would be interested in reading it. The intended audience of
this article would be those who are interested in issues involving higher education, just
as this article discusses a case involving issues within higher education. Another
intended audience could be those in the world of higher education, such as those who
have power than in that world.

Genre and Conventions:

This article discusses a long term study which was run by Michael LeRoy. SInce its a
policy review article, it includes conventions such as specific court cases, statistics,
visuals (specifically graphs), quotes from the studys author, and the mentioning of
 various factors which couldve swayed the results of the research. It also includes typical
conventions which can be found in all articles such as, formal tone, bold font,
subheadings, and captions. The article is broken down into sections which make it easier
for readers to follow, and each section is accompanied by a graph. The style of the
article is persuasive and the author is extremely biased.

Other Existing Perspectives:

The author mentions that the amount of faculty wins could be higher, if professors didnt
settle with colleges outside of court. He backs this up with a quote from a member of the
AAUP. He also made note of a specific court case (Waters V. Churchill), which he
believes has led to the increase of colleges chances of winning an appeal. However, for
the most part, the author fails to properly address possible perspectives, other than the
one which he supports.

Key Words:
Court rulings
AAUP-American Association of University Professors
Professors Speech Rights
Tenured
(University) First Amendment Lawsuit
Michael H. Leroy (study)
Controversy over Academic Speech
Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise