Protecting an Independent Faculty voice: Academic Freedom after Garcetti v. Ceballos

Anticipating this outcome, the AAUP and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression had submitted an amicus brief to the Court, urging not only that the speech of all public employees on matters of public concern must be protected under the First Amendment but also particularly that applying a job-related standard of protection to speech could threaten academic freedom, noting that "much potentially controversial expression by university professors relates to the subject matter of the speaker's academic expertise, and could thus be deemed unprotected under a diminished and distorted concept of 'public concern.'" Perhaps in response to that caution, the majority in Garcetti observed that "there is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for" by its decision. [...] our report revisits in some detail the complex relationship between principles of academic freedom and legal safeguards for the exercise of that freedom by university professors.