Barbara Bush: Professor celebrates her death.

Lawsplainer: Can A State University Fire a Professor For Being An Ass On Twitter?

Popehat usually has very good and digestible legal analysis.

If tenure isn't for allowing professors to say provocative and potentially offensive things without being fired, what is it for? But it's kind of like a lot of legal rights that people have but (if they're not idiots) try not to abuse, because there's an unspoken understanding that if you taunt people with "What are you gonna do about it?", they will find a way. (For example, the morons who decide to celebrate the fact that technically, carrying a loaded rifle in public is legal in most places by marching through shopping malls with AR-15s. This is how you lose the right to carry rifles in public.)

So, Jarrar is an idiot who didn't just tweet something offensive from her protected tenured position, but then decided to taunt everyone, including her own university, about how untouchable she was. Besides being profoundly unprofessional, I'm struck by just how immature she is. She's a tenured college professor and she acts like a mean girl at the middle school cafeteria table. How did this creature get a PhD, and a professorship?

In the comments in that Popehat article are some interesting discussions about the ways Jarrar's department chair can make her life miserable (and whether or not that's likely).

Oh, and as for Barbara Bush - quite frankly, I've read enough about her to believe that, while she might have been a gracious society lady, she definitely had a mean streak (like her son), and I suspect her classy "graciousness" was a mask that she let slip from time to time. But I still wouldn't celebrate her death, and I think with very few exceptions, cheering anyone's death is pretty vile.

Come on, rob, you know better than to make this about the "First Amendment." (Although in the case of a professor at a state school, the First Amendment is actually potentially relevant, as Popehat points out.)

There is a big difference between being a tenured professor and being an at-will employee. Tenure exists for a reason. It's there to protect professors from being fired when they teach things that offend politicians or other important people - that it also protects them when they tweet offensive drivel is a necessary corollary.

I mean, in this particular instance, she might have exceeded her tenured shielding with the nature of her tweets. Just like threatening to kill your department chair wouldn't be protected by tenure. I didn't say it is (or should be) a bulletproof defense against firing no matter what you say.

But in general, I would say a tenured professor should be able to tweet offensive things (like celebrating the death of a public figure) and not be fired.

You compared her to James Damore, and said "If he could be fired, then she should be." That's stupid, because a Google employee is an at-will employee. Just like government employees, for good reason, cannot be casually fired because their boss doesn't like something they tweeted.

You're wrongly assuming tenure afforded her special privileges in this instance, imo.

And you can't generalize to all possible tweets by all possible professors, regardless. "Tenure" is--legally--specific to a given contract, no? The general concept of "tenure" is not akin to some sort of constitutional right that needs to be interpreted and possibly expanded.

The point of the Damore comparison is that people--again, read the articles I linked to--are proclaiming that Jarrar's actions shouldn't be fireable offensives as a matter of course because they are exercises in free speech. From The Atlantic piece:



Sorry, but imo that's total hogwash (note that tenure isn't even mentioned in this "analysis"). Fresno State should be under no such limitations simply because it's a public university. It's still a business. And it still has employees. And when employees willfully make the university look bad, when they bring down a shitstorm of controversy on it simple because they're running off at the mouth on twitter, the school should have every right to take action. Does tenure add another hurdle to overcome in this regard, one not in place for, say, a school janitor? Absolutely. But again--as your article notes--that hurdle is easily overcome in this case, since Jarrar wasn't acting as a professor, wasn't engaged in teaching. If in a lecture, Jarrar explained to students how Che Guevara was a positive force for good in the world, how he was noble and pure, tenure would protect her, regardless of the complaints she might receive (though I think of she told students how it was a fact that the Jews secretly carried out 9/11 and framed the Muslims, that protection might me tested). But that's not what is going on here. And that analysis is simple, imo.

Nash, I think understand it just fine. As I noted--and as you reiterated, even while you explained how I didn't understand it--tenure is specific to a given contract (granted, it's the same for all of the professors with the same contract in the same institution/State). And you are allowing that there are potential arguments to made regarding possible violations of her contract, which is what I am saying.

I'm not sure--really--what argument you are making. Because you can't be arguing that there's no way she can be fired, since you are--again--allowing that it's not beyond the realm of possibility, even if difficult.

Regardless, what I'm saying is that tenure isn't some mystical god-given right that cannot be touched, no matter what. It's far from absolute. And again, it's her defenders who are trying to make this a 1st Amendment issue. I don't think it is one, at all.

Beyond that, my comparison to Damore--and other foolish tweeters who got canned--wasn't a legal argument, it was a comparison based on principles. So again, of Damore and other foolish can get canned, then Jarrar should be in the same boat. In other words, if tenure really is protection for such asshattery, then it needs to be revisited. Because imo, she's not the kind of person who deserves such protection.

And beyond all of that, I actually do agree with you: she's unlikely to get canned. But imo, that's exactly what she deserves.

As I noted earlier, her tenure protections only extend as far as the contract clauses guaranteed by the CBA the university has with the faculty union. Yes, generally these are pretty strong at state universities and it would take quite a lot to fire a tenured professor, but there are instances in which this could occur (e.g., criminal misconduct, research misconduct, sexual misconduct, negligence/incompetence in performing job duties, negligent supervision of students, willfully acting in a way that brings harm to the reputation of the university, etc.). There's a bit of variation in tenure stipulations, even among state universities, so it's a little difficult to generalize and say that "a tenured professor would never get fired for X."

And, just because a professor has done X, doesn't mean that is the "official" reason why he/she gets fired. Employers are sometimes uncannily good at creating cause for firing someone for something unrelated to what everyone thinks he/she should be fired for. A professor could tweet/say something incredibly stupid, which is usually protected, but if his/her employers want that professor gone bad enough, they will dig through every single thing that professor has ever done, dig through every part of his/her file, and find something/anything to use as an excuse to shit-can them (as long as it meets actionable criteria under the CBA/contract). Granted, this isn't common practice, but it can and does happen.

If there is no remedy available per the CBA/contract, then the university can (if the administrative brass is upset enough) make a professor's life miserable enough that he/she will quit (sort of like this garbage asshole who claims he quit because of the backlash to his shitty behavior. He'd already been placed on leave from his university, which makes me suspect they were pretty close to finding a reason to fire him anyway, but him quitting was a way for him to save a little face by playing the victim so he could then go to his next job saying he quit rather than that he was fired).

I've seen both sides of this happen before at universities I've attended and taught at. It's never pretty but firing tenured professors is more common than people seem to think, even though it's still rather rare.

I doubt the university would act based on what she said about BB, and that's good because they shouldn't. However, they could make a case for acting based on her public taunts of the university and the uni president by arguing that she willfully engaged in behaviors that brought harm to the university. If they do try to fire her, they'll likely have to build a case with other incidents too. Except in the extreme cases, it's rare that a tenured professor would get fired for just one thing.

I disagree. University professors are not special at all, especially these days when there are more universities and colleges than one can shake a stick at (and more than enough people with the credentials to do the job). We should be pulling down such distinctions, not building them up, whether we're talking professors, journalists, politicians, cops, judges, Hollywood producers, or anyone else.