This college free speech case reminds why we must defend rights of those we disagree with

If you have paid any attention to what is happening on college campuses in recent years, you know that many are not what they used to be.

Once bastions of free thought, places where people of good will could debate and disagree openly, many colleges and universities are now characterized by their prohibitions on speech.

Guest speakers are shouted down and even physically threatened by student protesters who disagree with them.

Professors are disciplined and sometimes forced to resign when they express points of view that run counter to the current prevailing narrative.

The incidents are frequent and too numerous to count, although the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, has done its best to catalog many of them over the years.

Unsurprisingly, the victims of such free speech violations are most often conservatives or individuals who challenge current progressive thinking. They include well-known names such as Charles Murray, Bret Weinstein and Nicholas Kristakis.

But free speech violations run both ways.

Conservative college administrations — to the extent that they still exist — are just as susceptible to committing First Amendment violations, which is what makes one professor’s lawsuit against Collin College in McKinney so interesting and important, especially for ideological conservatives.

According to a complaint filed by FIRE on behalf of former professor Michael Phillips, Collin College disciplined and ultimately failed to renew Phillips’ contract for a series of purported “speech” crimes.

Those infractions included speaking to the media in what he believed was his personal capacity, criticizing the college’s handling of COVID-19 and teaching his students “pedagogically relevant materials on the history of masking.”

Phillips, an unabashed progressive with an expertise in race relations, first attracted the school’s ire in 2017 when he co-authored an open letter, published in The Dallas Morning News, calling for the removal of Confederate monuments in Dallas.

Phillips, one of several dozen academics who signed the letter, was credited as a history professor at the college.

His participation allegedly didn’t sit well with college administrators. They cited school policy that requires faculty and staff to “exercise appropriate restraint, exhibit tolerance for differing opinions, and indicate clearly that they are not an official spokesperson for the College District” when they speak or act as private citizens.

Phillips ruffled the administration’s feathers two years later when he spoke with The Washington Post about the racially motivated 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, in which a former Collin College student is charged. While Phillips had no relationship with the student and spoke as a race relations expert and not in his capacity as a Collin College professor, his interview followed a directive from college administration to refer all press inquiries to the college’s media relations office.

But Phillips believes his fate was sealed when he spoke out against his employer’s decision to re-open in person during the COVID pandemic. He posted a flippant comment on his personal Facebook page, which he was told violated the college’s “core values.”

Shortly thereafter, Phillips received a negative performance review and learned his contract was not renewed.

Collin College’s associate vice president of communications, Marisela Cadena-Smith, explained in an email that “the college has every right to determine who it employs, especially when no immediate supervisors recommend an employee for continued employment,” as was the case with Phillips.

She isn’t wrong about that. Employers should retain broad latitude in developing such policies.

But the college is a public institution, so any policy that limits an employee’s private speech on public matters or punishes them for exercising their rights is arguably crossing a constitutional line.

Apparently, some of Phillips former colleagues think so, too.

As his complaint alleges, several other former college employees have made similar assertions about college administration. One has already prevailed in her lawsuit.

I’ll be the first to strongly disagree with Phillips’ position on many things — specifically the COVID policies, which seem perfectly reasonable to me.

But his opinion, freely expressed, should not put his position — at a public college, no less — at risk.

Another former Collin College professor, Kim Nyman, who defends Phillips in a recent FIRE ad campaign, aptly summarizes it.

Nyman, who describes herself as “mostly conservative” and a Christian, said that the college’s “response to those who expressed progressive viewpoints in their private social media seemed gauged to please those who agreed with them politically rather than to maintain an academic environment that fostered critical thinking and civil discourse.”

Viewpoint discrimination has been a serious and warranted concern for conservatives, who have been targeted, canceled, kicked off social media and censored by fundraising platforms. So, it isn’t any wonder that right-leaning people would be more sensitive to free speech threats.

But principles matter, and defending them on behalf of our ideological enemies is as important as defending those of like minds. Or as Nyman explained to me: “Defending [Phillips] is not only a matter of basic fairness,” but “the only way I can protect my own rights to express myself.”

That’s worth keeping in mind as we enter this brave new world of censorship.