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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 …