Last year, we discussed the free speech case of Matthew Garrett, formerly a tenured history professor at Bakersfield College who was investigated and disciplined after he questioned the use of grant money to fund social justice initiatives. Bakersfield College has one of the worst records on free speech in higher education and has been repeatedly sued by faculty. It will now pay another $2.4 million in a settlement to subsidize the anti-free speech actions of its administration. The question is why California taxpayers continue to allow faculty and administrators to burn through millions in these efforts to punish divergent or dissenting viewpoints.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression supported his case and detailed in 2023 how his criticism of DEI programs made him a target of faculty and administrators:
Animosity toward Garrett by some faculty and administrators increased over the past couple years as Garrett and several other faculty members associated with the Renegade Institute for Liberty — a Bakersfield College think tank Garrett founded — joined the faculty diversity committee. Other committee members say that the Renegade faculty have made it difficult for the group to get anything done by stalling campus diversity initiatives. But it was Garrett’s comments regarding a proposed racial climate task force during a diversity committee meeting last fall that led Bakersfield to recommend Garrett’s termination.
At the October 2022 meeting of the Bakersfield Equal Opportunity and Diversity Advisory Committee, Garrett criticized a proposal by professor Paula Parks to create a racial climate task force he felt might usurp the jurisdiction of the diversity committee. He also contested the student survey data cited as justification for the proposed task force and questioned the survey’s objectivity and the lack of evidence connecting the data presented and the proposed solutions. Several other faculty members in the meeting also challenged the veracity of the survey data. But ultimately, the committee voted to approve the creation of the task force.
On Nov. 15, Parks published an op-ed in Kern Sol News accusing Garrett and other Renegade Institute-affiliated faculty of a “disturbing pattern of actions” that “created negativity and division in the name of free speech.”
We previously also discussed the case of History Professor Daymon Johnson who was put under investigation after he commented on the extremist comments of another professor. Professor Andrew Bond denounced the United States as a “sh*t nation” and then invited conservatives to quote him.
“Maybe Trump’s comment about sh*thole countries was a statement of projection because honestly, the US is a f**king piece of sh*t nation. Go ahead and quote me, conservatives. This country has yet to live up to the ideals of its founding documents.”
[Text changes added to profanity from the original]
Johnson proceeded to do exactly what Bond suggested and quoted him on the Facebook page for the Renegade Institute for Liberty. He asked others “Do you agree with this radical SJW from BC’s English Department? Thoughts?” He then posted on his own Facebook account the following statement according to his complaint:
“Johnson then used his personal Facebook account to comment on what he had reposted: ‘Maybe he should move to China, and post this about the PRC in general or the Chinese Communist Party and see how much mileage it gets him. I wonder, do they still send the family the bill for the spent round?’”
Johnson said that the college would not allow him to read the complaint but subjected him to months of investigation.
After the investigation was finally concluded with no action by the Kern Community College District (which oversees the college), it stated that it would “investigate any further complaints of harassment and bullying and, if applicable, [taking] appropriate remedial action including but not limited to any discipline determined to be appropriate.”
That threat took on a more menacing meaning given the controversy involving John Corkins, vice president of the Board of Trustees of the Kern Community College District Board. Corkins declared in an open meeting that critics of Critical Race Theory should be “culled” from the faculty and “taken to the slaughterhouse.”
As shown by Corkins, it remains popular in California to pledge to wipe out conservatives and dissenters from faculty. There are comparably few left. Conservatives and libertarians have been gradually purged from many institutions.
A survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.
Some sites like Above the Law have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty. Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university. So the views of roughly half of the judiciary and half of the country are treated as legitimately excluded as intellectually invalid.
We have also seen administrators and faculty treat public or private funds as a subsidy for radical policies. For example, Oberlin College abused a small family grocery store for years and racked up millions in costs and damages that it expected alumni to cover. There was no blowback for its president or administrators.
These cases continue unabated despite a long litany of losses for universities and colleges over free speech limits and faculty discipline. The reason is that it is still personally and professionally beneficial for these professors and administrators to attack those with dissenting viewpoints. While faith in higher education is at an all-time low and these schools are gushing money in litigation, there are few remaining dissenting voices on faculties and even fewer willing to resist retaliation by speaking up.
Settlements are now just a cost of doing business for the anti-free speech movement in higher education. The costs are born by taxpayers or donors who are expected to foot the bill for intellectual intolerance.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
It’s time to kick the government out of education. Statewide tax revolts, anyone?
My question in all this centers on why should the responsible individuals who did all this to the professor skate, resulting in just the college being the only liable party? If the super liberal actors were held financially, personally and individually liable, this stuff might end.
“The question is why California taxpayers continue to allow faculty and administrators to burn through millions in these efforts to punish divergent or dissenting viewpoints.”
– Professor Turley
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The question is why California was allowed to be taken over by communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs).
In 2016, two democrats and no republicans ran for U.S. Senator.
The one-party communist state of California is a direct result of one-man, one-vote “democrazy,” which is the “dictatorship of the proletariat” intended to be “led” by Marxist “intellectuals.”
One-man, one-vote “democrazy” is ripe for subjugation by the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which is what happened in California.
Democracy was of the restricted-vote republican type since inception in Greece and perpetuation in Rome.
America was designed and intended to be a severely restricted-vote republic with the power to enable or prevent voting by citizens provided to State legislatures.
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Article 1, Section. 2.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
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Unfortunately, those legislatures did not have the resolve and the courage to “keep it,” to keep the republic Ben Franklin et al. gave them.
The communists won.
It’s not the vote; it’s the Constitution that holds dominion.
Turnout in America in 1789 was 11.6%, and voter qualifications, generally by State, were male, European, age 21, 50 lbs. Sterling/50 acres.
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“the people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
– Alexander Hamilton
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“The true reason (says Blackstone) of requiring any qualification, with regard to property in voters, is to exclude such persons, as are in so mean a situation, that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.”
“If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
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“This is not a democracy. Everybody doesn’t get to do what they want to do. Everybody doesn’t get to do what they feel like doing.”
– Nick Saban
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“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
Checks and balances don’t work efficiently when the natural consequences of a perpetrator’s behavior don’t not land upon the perpetrator, but instead land on a 3rd party.
If the perpetrator had to pay the consequences, this shit would stop.
“The question is why California taxpayers continue to allow faculty and administrators to burn through millions in these efforts to punish divergent or dissenting viewpoints.” Because it is a one party State with Marxist leanings and the money it spends is not theirs, it is the taxpayers’ money. It doesn’t hut them one bit and the constituency votes for it all day and night. The voters deserve what they vote for. No wonder so many are leaving.
Is it rational to presume that lowly taxpayers have any ability to challenge the authoritarian juggernaught?
Because they can. The choice between California’s Governor Gruesom and Florida’s ”where the woke goes do die’ Governor DeSantis. becomes ever more clear as should your choice of administration in November. The clear and present danger is NOT DJT and the MAGA movement.
Zzdoc1,
I view the failed state of CA as the template leftist Democrats want to force on the rest of the nation. CA and other Blue States like IL, NY, NJ are losing in population, as those who can leave, do for Red States.
I saw where Newsome was trying to make the argument CA was not losing in population, but IRS filings show people in the middle and upper class are leaving, while those who do move to CA, are the homeless, poor and illegals.
A “starter” home in CA now costs $1 million dollars. No wonder people are leaving for more affordable states.
Businesses are leaving CA and to a degree in those other Blue States.
The “New Left” of the 60’s, having had success on the civil rights, women’s rights and Vietnam war issues, were still frustrated and vowed, paraphrasing Mao, “the long march through the institutions” and slowly took over the major foundations (Rockefeller, Ford etc.) the Democratic party, academia and thence all media and campuses. They have largely succeeded.
It’s obvious Garrett lost.
For a year, he’s been going to board meetings demanding he be reinstated and put back in the classroom. Garrett’s released statements since the settlement saying he won and he was surely going to win his employment hearing, which would have resulted in that reinstatement in addition to strengthening his lawsuit and giving him more grounds to pursue damages. Why then would he agree to settle for less money than he would have gotten if he stayed employed AND loss of all benefits (his salary was over $150k annually with full insurance and retirement, but he’s taking the equivalent of $120k annually for 20 years with zero benefits)? Why would he agree to “irrevocably resign” AND drop his lawsuit if he was about to be reinstated, according to him?
The only explanation is that he was expecting to lose and end up with nothing in the employment hearings, and then he’d have legal bills and a weakened First Amendment case to keep paying for. Garrett sold his principles, and the college district bought his resignation and hum dropping his lawsuit. They rid themselves of him entirely for less money than it would have cost them in legal fees and any potential future salary in the unlikely chance he’s be returned to the classroom.
“It’s obvious Garrett lost.”
$2.4 million settlement. I’ll take that “loss.”
“. . . then he’d have legal bills and a weakened First Amendment case to keep paying for.”
Please try to get the facts right. His case was handled by the nonprofit organization FIRE.
FIRE doesn’t pay for everything. In fact, they only cover some costs, like initial consults, and help match people to attorneys. The rest of the cost is footed by the client. And $2.4 million over 20 years is small potatoes in California, especially when compared to the $3 to $4 million plus benefits he would have made had he not resigned. And if his case was a.slam dunk, he would have gotten lawsuit money on top of keeping his career and full pay with benefits. But he settled and foreclosed any meaningful legal decision regarding free speech at former employer.
Perhaps he just wanted to get on with his life. Those with REAL lives value that. Ever consider that, troll?
FIRE paid for all of it.
“The rest of the cost is footed by the client.”
Yet again, that is false.
Care to go for the trifecta?
Another day in Turleyville with the usual hired Turley trolls upvoting each other’s inane comments while the lifelong DEMOCRAT Professor pretends to be open minded despite having voted for everything he pretends to complain about.
The academic BS that is the subject of this article has been going on for MANY years, even as Turley was voting for Obama, Hillary, and Fake President Joetard — and by extension, their assorted Secretaries of Education and various schemes — ALL of which support what’s been happening in education.
The hard truth is that one can’t vote for democrats without expecting to get democrat results. In law, the concept is known as “causation” — a close cousin to “contributory negligence.”
Who upvoted you? You?
For further news, We find out that our crackerjack DOJ has reached a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 2 others in the planning and executing 9/11. Mainly to remove the death penalty. As ununiformed and unprivileged combatants they could have been summarily shot. Not a good look when the planners of an attack on Americans (primarily civilians) which caused 3000+ deaths and they don’t end up with 45 caliber head ventilation one wonders what other anti American actions the Biden Harris duo has in the plans for us.
After the deals with Hamas, Iran and Venezuela. What else is there? Are we going to approach the Russians in Cuba and offer them better port support and liberty call in Miami.
GEB: If Harris wins, she will give them early release, citizenship, and benefits and pay them millions of dollars for their time in jail.
Seems like Professor Garett made some salient points in the Diversity Committee with respect to repetition in the tasks of the committee and the newly formed “racial climate task force”. While I don’t think the Racial Climate Task Force would seem to be warranted it is possible that it might have been useful to the Weather Channel so we could get the weather and racial climate all in one screen. Tremendous time savings would be to our benefit. I imagine that the use of the weather memes such as clouds, rain and lightning strikes could equally apply to the racial climate daily report and be quite accurate.
The main error that Professor Garrett made was criticizing a co-member of the committee. Since this person was obviously a snowflake and likely melted in her seat at the audacity of a criticism and resulted in immediate rain clouds, and lightning strikes which no doubt despoiled her chair, it forced the committee to take action.
My only other criticism of professor Garrett was that he should have demanded more like $ 83 million dollars, since his reputation much more despoiled than Jean Carroll in New York.
From the articles describing the issue regarding professor Garrett is intentionally antagonistic. Just to be the “stick it to the DEI crowd” hero of sorts.
He wasn’t in the position to demand anything. He was obviously trying to get something before his termination was about to be confirmed by the administrative law judge, otherwise he wouldn’t have settled at all and taken his cases through the courts for more money and to get back in the classroom.
” The question is why California taxpayers continue to allow faculty and administrators to burn through millions in these efforts to punish divergent or dissenting viewpoints.”
Another way to phrase this question is, why are people still voting for Democrats in California? Why are people still voting for Democrats anywhere? Why do some people think that they are “lifelong” Democrats? Nobody is a “lifelong” anything until their obituary is written.
Why?
Because it is almost impossible for Dem to admit failure.
“Why are people still voting for Democrats anywhere?”
Floyd, do you listen to Sammy?
There is nothing one can do with the braindead.
This comment is brain dead, as is its author.
You lost your ability to think many years ago. Today, your brain rolls in the dirt and your mouth’s utterances are meaningless.
Professor Turley has a nasty habit of conflating criticism as an attack. Criticism IS a consequence of exercising free speech.
Conservatives are not being “purged” from universities. They are essentially doing that to themselves by being obnoxious and just plain jerks. These individuals intentionally make things difficult or create issues so they can call attention to their persecution-because-they-are-conservative victimhood. There is a reason why there are few conservatives in universities. Because their ideas are not popular with the majority of students. Conservative ideas are always on display outside universities every day. They see what they want for society and how they treat those who don’t share their values and it’s often associated with cruelty and selfishness, those are not exactly very attractive qualities or interesting. Yesterday’s Trump interview at the NABJ was defended by conservatives gleefully. THAT is exactly why conservatives are not popular with students or in universities. Because students see for themselves the kind of values conservatives support. It’s not a widely accepted set of values that involve the denigration and attacking of others because they don’t conform to THEIR way of life or views. They always seem to be upset about something.
George-you make many false assumptions about university students. You are also blindsided by your own biases. There has been a systematic refusal to hire conservatives for decades but they keep cropping up all around the nation. You could have made that same argument in the 1960’s but even with all the demonstrations and such against the Vietnam War there were still large segments of Universities that were conservative and supportive of the war. Many of those demonstrating at the time grew up to be conservatives. “And when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, and I reasoned like a child. When I became a man I put aside childish things.”
1 Corinthians 13:11.
Not assumptions. It’s from observation. There is no systematic anything. Turley is creating a false narrative to peddle the notion that somehow conservatives are being targeted for discrimination or persecution because they are conservatives. BS. He’s enabling a victimhood mentality because conservative ideas or views are not popular with students. He’s making it out to be an “unfair” situation because their views are not being given equal attention. It’s not the schools fault. It’s just a lack of interest from students. Schools are not going to hire conservative professors or faculty if there is no interest.
Turley is using that unfortunate situation to gripe about the left and use it insinuate an ulterior motive that does not exist. He’s feeding his conservative readers something to rage and complain about. He’s enabling the thing he often complains is a problem, the age of rage problem.
He’s been plugging his book in every column, drumming up interest in his book by creating these false narratives and picking out isolated incidents as if they were commonplace when they are not.
Svelaz…complaining that others are complaining, again.
Svelaz…complaining about Turley again.
When you are sufficiently brainwashed, you will find these views popular—Svelaz the spastic complainer
Not complaining, just offering my opinion. You on the other hand seem to be complaining all the time about my….”complaining”
why are yours “opinions” but everyone else’s is a “complaint?”
(oops, hit “send” before I was done.) George, wat are the distinguishing factors/elements between the two?
lin:
Yours is a noble, but a fool’s errand.
You use evidence, logic, reason. You follow where the facts take you. As with the rest of the Left, George is dragged around by his feelings.
Their MO is: Start with a desire. In this case, to smear conservative academics (including JT). Then they just make stuff up to satisfy that desire.
Including this howler: “Most students are not interested in conservative ideas or views.”
After having spent 25 years in academia, and having done “extensive research” into higher education around the country — I can tell you that that statement is laughably false. Undergraduates are in fact yearning to learn about conservative ideas, i.e., about pro-American ideas. And that includes liberal students.
Incidentally, I can think of no social science or humanities department who hires faculty based on student interest. They hire based on *faculty* interests — which is usually: Who are other colleges hiring?
I’ve been trying, but he is too dense to even get what is being pointed out.
George was posting comments between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m., and here he is back again at 7 in the morning. Wow.
Six-hour break!
His employer-PACS, Cash for Comments (CC) and Cash for Criticizing Conservatives (CCC), are keeping tabs on him, making sure he is worth keeping.
Supporters of free speech should stop donating to these schools and should discourage students from applying to them. Failing to achieve donation goals and falling student application rates will likely result in termination of the administrators responsible and maybe reducing the number of faculty. Money talks, even to “progressives”.
That’s the problem. Most students are not interested in conservative ideas or views. They are there to study their chosen fields. Conservative professors are not exactly filling up a need. If more students wanted to learn about conservative ideas and views then schools would make hiring more conservative professors a priority. It’s a demand and supply issue more than anything. Above the Law made this obvious point by using geocentric earth theory as an example. Nobody is saying professors who believe in geocentrism shouldn’t be allowed in universities. The idea of geocentrism is no longer relevant in today’s society, it’s useless in applying it to science and therefore no longer deemed important. Turley is saying that a professor who supports geocentrism should be given the same level of credibility and as those who teach astronomy because it’s a different point of view. It’s certainly a different point of view, but one that is no longer relevant. How useful is the idea of earth being the center of the solar system when all evidence shows the theory is no longer true or useful? Some conservative ideas and views are in a similar situation and that’s why there are fewer conservative faculty in universities and conservatives are not willing to accept that or use it as an excuse to accuse others of being against their views and values. It’s a victimhood/persecution complex used to gain sympathy and attention.
Here’s George earning his daily walking around money with his moronic arguments against the sun rising in the east.
HullBobby,
Just scroll past and dont respond to the troll. That is what I do.
Hullbobby, why not offer your own take on the issue? What conservative ideas would students find interesting?
Conservatives already express and implement their ideas in the real world and students know about them. Most don’t support them or believe they are effective or relevant. Why would they need to hear about them again at a university? If they are not interested then there’s not much a university can do about it.
“Turley is saying that a professor who supports geocentrism should be given the same level of credibility and as those who teach astronomy …”
Reductio ad absurdum. NOBODY, including Turley, is suggesting that the earth is the center of anything. That’s not a “conservative” belief — it’s a belief dating back to the Pope the condemned Galileo to house arrest. Keep spouting nonsense.
Anonymous, as usual you miss the point.
One reason why there aren’t many conservative professors in universities is because most of their ideas are outdated, or not relevant to what students want or need.
Turley falsely claims conservative professors are being purged from universities because they are conservatives. It’s just BS. Under the pretext of censorship, or point of view discrimination Turley peddles a victimhood narrative which serves only one purpose, to enrage his conservative readers and maintain relevance as a credible scholar.
Svelaz George speaks for “most students” now.
He has done extensive research into this subject, conducting studies, interviewing students.
I didn’t say that. You love putting words into people’s mouths when you don’t have anything of substance to offer.
Please name the mainstream conservative view that is analogous to earth centered universe, asshat.
EVERY day you can’t resist just making shit up.
As usual, you did not read for comprehension. In your rush to respond and insult you completely missed the point. Try again.
I regret that your own “reading comprehension” was quite inadequate/unable to discern sarcasm (a legitimate and historic form of speech and retort).
It wasn’t sarcasm.
“Svelaz George speaks for “most students” now. He has done extensive research into this subject, conducting studies, interviewing students.”
That is pure sarcasm.
“A survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.””
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When I was in engineering school — then architecture school — there was NO opportunity for professors OR students to espouse views on politics because 100% of class and study time was consumed by the subject matter. I’ve literally NO clue what anyone’s politics were because we were all concentrating on engineering (mechanical) and architectural design, and there’s no such thing as democrat or republican engineering or architecture.
I don’t know why ANYONE would waste time, money, or education attending a school that gets involved in politics — especially since one doesn’t need a college education to become informed or involved in politics. So fools that attend such schools and waste time and money playing political games are only hurting themselves and have nobody to blame but themselves.
And that’s all ASIDE from the fact that college-aged kids don’t have nearly enough life experience to form mature political opinions.
Liberals, Radical Left, DEMS etc hate free speech and the best way to hit them where it hurts and cause them to scream, is thru a lawsuit and the Left has to pay out lots of $$$$$ for their actions against free speech. The more they pay out for their Left wing radical actions the louder they will scream but in the end the source for their funds will begin to cut them off or force them to limit their actions.
–Or maybe those coughing up from the schools’ coffers should be made to reimburse/replenish for the indefensible.
(The good professor states, “Settlements are now just a cost of doing business for the anti-free speech movement in higher education. The costs are born by taxpayers or donors who are expected to foot the bill for intellectual intolerance.”)
Purging not paging
It seems to me that paging conservative professors is a civil rights violation. If so, can individuals be held personally liable for damages. If that’s the case, that should slow down the purging process.