What if you were a college professor who was browsing an online site and you saw that one of your colleagues had posted “The US is a f***ing piece of s*** nation. Go ahead and quote me, conservatives.” If you found that offensive, you might reply that the poster was a “Social Justice Warrior” who “should move to China to post about the Communist party and see how much mileage it gets him.”
This slightly immature exchange might be just another clashing moment on X or some other social media site, the kind of thing that happens thousands of times a day. Instead, the incident has led to a Federal Court decision that upholds the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech—a decision that could well upset DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) goals promoted by the State of California in all of its colleges and universities.
The case concerns a professor of history at Bakersfield College (BC), Daymon Johnson. The “f***ing piece of s*** nation” post he replied to was by another BC professor, Andrew Bond. Bond then filed a complaint with BC against Johnson for “harassment and bullying.”
Johnson’s defense lawyer cited an earlier case where BC had fired a professor for criticizing BC’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a seeming threat to Johnson’s continued employment. “The First Amendment,” Johnson’s counter lawsuit said, “guarantees Professor Johnson's right to express himself, and it forbids the state from mandating that he subscribe to or promote any official ideology.”
At issue is BC’s DEIA initiative which the college claims is part of a “civility” requirement that seeks to promote an “anti-racism” ideology. Such initiatives are common on college campuses throughout America in these post-George Floyd/BLM days. Johnson has been highly critical of that ideology, and now his defense case is testing the limits of how far a more conservative professor can go in his public speech. Johnson’s defense counsel argues that Johnson has the First Amendment right to criticize whatever he wants to and that “The courts should end Bakersfield College’s repressive behavior, and ensure that no member of the school community faces official discipline for offering political views, no matter who dislikes it.” The suit seeks to “enjoin” the college and its administrators “from investigating or disciplining Professor Johnson for offering his viewpoints, and seeks to strike down the state’s adoption of an official ideology for its community college system.”
The Court this past Monday reached a decision in the lawsuit: it ruled in Johnson’s favor, holding that “California’s goal of promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in public universities does not give it the authority to invalidate protected expressions of speech.” The ruling further strikes at the heart of so many of today’s culture and political wars: “[C]ompelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable, like the government’s preferred message, violates the ‘cardinal constitutional command (that) no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox.’” That language itself was lifted from a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which held that workers do not have to contribute to unions that represent them in collective bargaining.
I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t welcome this court ruling, which in effect upholds the right to free speech for all Americans. We’ve reached a point in this country wherein nearly all of our mighty institutions—corporations, schools, philanthropies, non-profits, government bureaucracies, the media—have adopted DEIA policies that many employees are uncomfortable with. Yet criticizing these policies, much less resisting them, can be grounds for ostracism and even termination. Let there be free speech, not cancel culture, and let us have a robust discussion about these DEIA policies that can be so damaging, arbitrary and divisive.
Steve Heimoff