Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and First Amendment Rights of College Faculty

David Moshman
Professor of Educational Psychology
04/18/11

College faculty and First Amendment advocates are heralding a recent legal decision supporting the First Amendment rights of college faculty. Many see it as a major victory for freedom of speech and academic freedom in higher education.

A careful reading of the decision, however, shows that it does not protect academic freedom. The decision does protect faculty speech but only when that speech falls outside the scope of the faculty member's academic duties.

The decision (Adams v. Trustees of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington) is thus fully consistent with many others indicating that, as I explained in an earlier post, the First Amendment no longer protects academic freedom. The decision may be the best that fans of the First Amendment could have hoped for, given the dismal state of First Amendment law in this area, but we must recognize its severe limitations.

Michael S. Adams is a tenured associate professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (UNCW) who was denied promotion to full professor. He brought suit in federal court arguing, among other things, that the denial violated his First Amendment right to free speech because it was based on objections to the views expressed in his writings and appearances as a conservative Christian columnist and commentator. the rest