The University of Illinois Chicago recently requested rehear an appeal from the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which favors a teacher who was fined for using restricted insults on an interview.
The Seventh Circuit “denied en masse assessment of a committee’s decision to revive the Chicago law author’s retaliation suit after he was disciplined for including a edited racist slur,” according to Law360.
The latest advancement in the fight, which started in December 2020 when law Professor Jason Kilborn included a issue containing a pair of edited slurs for African Americans and women in an interview, was the May 2 decision sending the situation back to district court.
In an emailed statement to The College Fix on Wednesday, Kilborn said,” I am absolutely thrilled the law is now firmly established in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin that public school professors indeed have strong First Amendment free appearance rights in their training and fellowship, and school administrators who violate these rights face personal obligation, not shielded by qualified immunity.”
” I could not be more proud or honored to be the person who confirmed constitutional protections for all of my public university professor colleagues,” he said, “free expression has been under intense attack from administrators in these states for years.”
” The battle is, of course, not over,” Kilborn continued.
UIC has wasted$ 1.3 million on this completely unnecessary battle, having already accomplished nothing with this significant investment, and I’m interested to see how many more taxpayer dollars they’re willing to use to offset their irrational quest for more profits, he told The Fix. If UIC officials don’t behave reasonably and put this behind us,” all of this ought to be completely unnecessary, but I’m eager to keep fighting.”
As The College Fix previously reported:
The offending exam question, which Kilborn had used on earlier exams, was based on a hypothetical scenario where an employee quit her job” after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a” n__ _ _” and” b__ __.”
Kilborn participated in a discussion hosted by the Black Law Students Association via Zoom after receiving complaints from students to the law school dean. Kilborn jokingly suggested that the dean might “become homicidal” if he saw a petition praising his use of the offending question during the discussion.
After that, Kilborn was investigated for creating a racial hostile environment at UIC and placed on an indefinite administrative leave with pay.
Prior in-class comments made by Kilborn resurfaced during the investigation and were subjected to additional scrutiny. His oblique use of the terms “lynching” and” cockroaches” when comparing the media, plaintiff incentives, and frivolous litigation, as well as his reference to an affected African American accent while quoting a Jay-Z song describing a pretexual traffic stop were two examples.
Although Kilborn was eventually permitted to return to teaching, he was denied a 2 percent raise and required to go through eight weeks of diversity training.
Bobbie Harro’s” The Cycle of Socialization,” which Kilborn noted ironically contains the derogatory term for African Americans used in his exam question, and censors it in the same way:” White people who support their colleagues of color may be called ‘n—lover.'”
The case recently received an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune.
The appeals court has shown that “public university professors have remedies for legal relief when their First Amendment rights are violated in the classroom,” according to Gerry Regep, a law student at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law.
The choice extends far beyond the law school exam of one professor. If a professor risks being sanctioned for using hypothetical scenarios that reflect the messy, uncomfortable realities their students might face, can a university truly be a marketplace of ideas?
Regep continued,” This decision is a win for academic freedom and free speech supporters, and it may have implications for other pending cases involving university faculty. Although Kilborn’s claim may still fail on the merits.”
MORE: Appeals court upholds law professor’s sentence for censored slurs on test results
A photo of law professor Jason Kilborn on the FIRE YouTube channel is captured for IMAGE CAPTURE AND CREDIT.
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