Professors fear erosion of the freedom of speech

PROVO — The First Amendment is designed to protect you when you speak, but what if it didn't anymore?

That's the concern of the American Association of University Professors, which issued a report last week, "Speak Up, Speak Out: Protect the Faculty Voice," an in-depth look at a Supreme Court decision that has permanently changed the way public employees speak and could potentially affect university professors in the same damaging ways.

"Real education is impossible without academic freedom for faculty and students," said Utah Valley University philosophy professor Scott Abbott, chairman of the university's AAUP chapter. "It's all interwoven. If you start restraining academic freedom in one area, it would trickle down. I could imagine a whole culture where people are afraid to say what they think."

The potential fear comes from the 2006 Supreme Court decision in the case Garcetti v. Ceballos.

Richard Ceballos was a deputy Los Angeles district attorney who claimed he had been denied a promotion because he challenged his superiors on the validity of a search warrant.

The high court upheld the district court's ruling that Ceballos' First Amendment rights had not been violated because they said he commented as a public employee, not a private citizen.

That means if a public employee speaks out against his employer and gets fired or demoted, he or she may not have legal recourse under the First Amendment.

The high court's ruling didn't specifically address professors as public employees, but since then, several lower courts have applied the ruling to the academic world, siding against professors who claimed they were punished for speaking out.

The ruling makes sense for a district attorney's office, where employees speaking out against superiors could damage the goals of the office, said Christopher Peterson, University of Utah law professor and the college of law's associate dean for academic affairs.

However, at a research university, the primary obligation is to speak up about new ideas, which can often be provocative and controversial, Peterson said.

"So for university professors, when we see currents in society that might tend to undermine our ability to have free exchange and intellectual discussion, that's very troubling," Peterson said.

Abbott said he believes there is a healthy academic environment in Utah, but he and the AAUP are still worried about the potential ramifications of the ruling.