Law Commons^™

Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Articles

Transition Design offers a framework and employs an array of tools to engage with complexity. “Cancel culture” is a complex phenomenon that presents an opportunity for administrators in higher education to draw from the Transition Design approach in framing and responding to this trend. Faculty accused of or caught using racist, sexist, or homophobic speech are increasingly met with calls to lose their positions, titles, or other professional opportunities. Such calls for cancellation arise from discreet social networks organized around an identified lack of accountability for social transgressions carried out in the professional school environment. Much of the existing discourse …

The Legal Landscape For Frontline Student Journalists, Jonathan Peters

Scholarly Works

They have exposed campus outbreaks and questioned reopening plans. They have documented social-distancing violations at fraternity and sorority houses. They have tracked and explained fast-breaking changes to instructional modes and commencement events. They have demanded transparency from school administrators. And through it all they have boldly told the story of the human experience.

Famously, at the University of North Carolina, the Daily Tar Heel published a biting editorial under the headline “UNC has a clusterfuck on its hands,” after virus clusters were identified in campus housing. And the day that Notre Dame announced it would move only temporarily …

Rescinding Admission Offers In Higher Education: The Clash Between Free Speech And Institutional Academic Freedom When Prospective Students' Racist Posts Are Exposed, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the tension between a prospective college student's First Amendment freedom of speech and a public university's unenumerated, inchoate right of institutional academic freedom. The friction between these interests was cast in high relief in 2020 when several schools confronted dual issues: (1) whether to rescind offers of admission to individuals who later were discovered to have engaged in offensive speech, and (2) whether revoking admission offers because of odious, hateful messages would violate the constitutional right of free expression. The Article argues that the right of institutional academic freedom-albeit maddeningly amorphous-encompasses a public institution's ability to choose …

Challenging Calls For Civility, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In conjunction with her article "When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value and What We Do Not," Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes about civility codes and free speech for Academe Blog.

Public Forum 2.1: Public Higher Education Institutions And Social Media, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Public colleges and universities increasingly are using Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media communications tools. Yet public colleges and universities are government actors, and their creation and maintenance of social media sites or forums create difficult constitutional and administrative challenges. Our separate experiences, both theoretical and practical, have convinced us of the value of providing guidance for public higher education institutions wishing to engage with their constituents-including prospective, current, and former students and many others-through social media.

Together, we seek to guide public university officials through the complex body of law governing their social media use and …

Public Forum 2.1: Public Higher Education Institutions And Social Media, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

Like most of us, public colleges and universities increasingly are communicating via Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, Twitter and other social media. Unlike most of us, public colleges and universities are government actors, and their social media communications present complex administrative and First Amendment challenges. The authors of this article — one the dean of a major public university law school responsible for directing its social media strategies, the other a scholar of social media and the First Amendment — have combined their expertise to help public university officials address these challenges. To that end, this article first examines current and …

Antisemitism In The Academic Voice: Confronting Bigotry Under The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

The romanticized vision of life in the Ivory Tower - a peaceful haven where learned professors ponder higher thoughts and where students roam orderly quadrangles in quest of truth and other pleasures - has long been relegated to yesteryear. While universities like to nurture the perception that they are protectors of reasoned discourse, and indeed often perceive themselves as sacrosanct places of culture in a chaotic world, the modern campus, of course, is not quite so wonderful.

This chapter examines the relationship between antisemitic and anti-Zionist speech and conduct, how they both play out on contemporary university campuses - and …

Censorship Tsunami Spares College Media: To Protect Free Expression On Public Campuses, Lessons From The "College Hazelwood" Case, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

Since the advent of journalism schools in the college academy, student publications have taken their place as a vital component of campus life. As counterparts to the Fourth Estate in the society at large, college journalists act as watchdogs on student government, ensuring that student money is wisely spent and student justice equitably administered. As an outpost of the Fourth Estate, college journalism serves all the public by monitoring the administration of higher education. In September 1999, a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit threatened to radically distort the face of college journalism by rendering …