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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 …
Institutional Academic Freedom Or Autonomy Grounded Upon The First Amendment: A Jurisprudential Mirage, Richard H. Hiers
Institutional Academic Freedom Or Autonomy Grounded Upon The First Amendment: A Jurisprudential Mirage, Richard H. Hiers
UF Law Faculty Publications
In recent decades, several federal judges and Supreme Court Justices have stated that, at some time or another in the past, the Court determined that public universities or their professional schools are entitled to institutional academic freedom (or institutional autonomy) under the First Amendment. Notwithstanding the views of many learned commentators, the Court has never so held. Concurring opinions and dicta do not constitute Constitutional law. This article traces the series of misattributions, misreadings and other errors that have contributed to the present peculiar state of confusion in regard to these matters.