7 ms·

Can a State University Fire a Professor for Being an Ass on Twitter?

50 points by raleighm 9y ago

gringoDan 9y ago
Great analysis of the oft-misinterpreted First Amendment.
lvspiff 9y ago
Aren't California Professors at-will employees? Couldn't they just fire the employee and say "they were no longer needed" and leave it at that?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Aren't California Professors at-will employees? No, non-executive public employees in California are mostly not at-will employees. They tend to have protection by civil service laws and union contracts and federal due process protections related to employment, none of which apply to private at-will employment.
- refulgentis 9y ago
  Oftentimes engineers see law like code, if you can find a way to break it, great! In practice, this wouldn't fly, the whole point of court is to negotiate between the letter of the law and the situation to obtain justice. In the hypothetical it's very clear why she actually got fired
- hmahncke 9y ago
  CSU professors (and professors in general) may technically be at-will (I don't know) but they are definitely members of a union that has negotiated various employment rights, including around how dismissal works. Furthermore, I think the article says she is tenured, which adds another layer of protection to her employment. If CSU did want to dismiss her (after going through the various steps as the popehat article describes), there would be further review steps based on the union rules and tenure.
- mikeash 9y ago
  At will means you can be terminated for no reason, but not for any reason. Stating that it was for no reason doesn’t make it so.
  - pron 9y ago
    What do you mean by no reason?
    - s73v3r_ 9y ago
      The employer opts not to say why the person is being fired, just that they are being fired.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
Being an ass on Twitter is one thing, but being an ass on Twitter and sending those upset with you to the school's suicide prevention hotline is beyond the pale.
- TheRealPomax 9y ago
  but not beyond the law, so an analysis that completely ignores "who was the biggest ass" and instead focuses on what laws apply to this situation, and to which degree interpretation can be extended, is most refreshing.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Causing your school's suicide hotline to be flooded with troll phone calls presents a very arguable case for substantial disruption, depending on the evidence. Which points to the part of the law that might apply.
    - rusk 9y ago
      Except that if you read to the end it wasn’t her school it was another. So she’s cunning as well as nasty.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    And the conclusion was that the person in question could be disciplined, or even fired for the suicide hotline stunt.
    - ThurmaUman 9y ago
      wtf. That wasn't the conclusion. Halve that. Disciplinary action might be legally justified. It would clearly be a dangerous case to lose for the University (setting up some nasty jurisprudence, among other damages), so it's unlikely to happen.
    - TheRealPomax 9y ago
      The conclusion of the article is quite intentionally left off because even after that analysis, it turns out that the law isn't like programming (as the article literally points out) and even after looking at what the law, and judicial reason, allows for, there is no clear cut answer here. There are too many grey areas for there to be "one conclusion". And of course the conclusion in court in cases like these is, as it should be: the judge's decision based on all the information surfaced during the trial to help them reach their decision.
stevenwoo 9y ago
OK, not a lawyer but this seemed good so I read a couple of other posts and it appears he got something really wrong on the possibility of Trump being indicted entry. https://www.popehat.com/2018/04/04/what-it-means-that-trump-is-only-a-subject/ https://www.popehat.com/2018/04/04/what-it-means-that-trump-... Mueller won't indict Trump because he follows the rules and the Justice Department reaffirmed an internal rule in 2000 that they will never indict the President. It's not in the Constitution explicitly as he writes but it's never mentioned in his discussion but several commenters note the omission.
- kbenson 9y ago
  I think if you're at the point where you're willing to say a person will or will not do something because of some institutional rule when their job is also to uphold the law and the constitution, and there may indeed be conflicts in what their priorities are as they see them, you've become far too lost in the weeds. Mueller is a person, not a state machine. Let's not act like we can completely predict the future here, especially given the dearth of information we have compared to him.
protomyth 9y ago
If you think that this structure creates an incentive to react disruptively to speech, in order to supply a basis for a professor to be fired, you'd be right. If you think that schools might lie about the amount of disruption, you'd be right. The Heckler's Veto can extend a long ways so be careful.
madengr 9y ago
Nothing new. This guy was suspended for his NRA comments: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/23/u-kansas-professor-suspended-after-anti-nra-tweet https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/23/u-kansas-prof...
mc32 9y ago
My opinion would be this: you should be able to express yourself as a private citizen any which way you want, withinn the law. However, once you're doing it while representing your employer, you're no longer free to go beyond expected conduct. For example, on twitter if you're janeschmoe, tweet whatever you want, but if you're janeschmoeUSC bio: professor at USC, then you're on your own, i.e. not protected, because you're invoking your employer in your bio. And this would not be protected simply by obscurity, but rather because your private twitter does not invoke your employer in anyway. Well, so long as you keep your private twitter persona sanitized from any association with your employer.
- mattbierner 9y ago
  Two questions on this: - What if @janeschmoe mostly tweets about USC and her work there? Even if they are not officially saying, “this is an official twitter account of a USC professor”, her activity could cause people to think the account is official - Does merely mentioning your employer cross the line? Not mentioning this could also be kind of sketchy if, for instance, @janeschmoe starts tweeting “USC has the best professors!!!” (Totally just asking for a friend)
  - mc32 9y ago
    This will look like a cop out but I would say keep things sanitized. Don't commingle official and private opinions. Just as let's say a chiropractor should not date their patients. To keep things simple as posdible and limit repercussions, fence your personae properly.
- Magmatic 9y ago
  So there's a very practical problem I have with this. Say you maintain a blog promoting the disenfranchisement of women, things like "We need to send women back to the homes, barefoot in the kitchen." While reprehensible, perfectly legal. Your employer is faced with both an external and internal problem. 1) The more public your views, the more people see these views as condoned by the company as being acceptable, whether you agree with that the perception is likely. Even if protection is afforded under the law it's widely understood that you can "manage out" problem employees and people will judge the company for not doing that. 2) The employee is likely hampering their own effectiveness in the workplace substantially. In this example it's going to be very difficult to get women, a huge chunk of a likely workforce, to work effectively with the person in question. The company cannot realistically resolve the feelings of enmity that arise from this kind of speech and the best remedy to the situation is going to be empoyee termination.
qntty 9y ago
No mention of tenure? Looks like Jarrar is probably tenured, meaning the bar is much higher than for a regular government employee.
- 5555624 9y ago
  She is tenured. She brings it up in one of the tweets: “I work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. I will never be fired. I will always have people wanting to hear what I have to say.” I'm always amused when these type of people tweet something offensive and stand by it; but, immediately make their Twitter account private. (I can tweet something very offensive, but don't be mean to me.)
amp108 9y ago
She presented the school's student counseling number as her own contact #. That could and should land her in hot water with her employers, state employee or not.
coldtea 9y ago
Even if it can, it shouldn't and it shouldn't be able to. People should be allowed to have private lives and opinions, outside of what they fucking make for a living. Also, can people stop overreacting for mere words? And can they also understand that anybody can have a bad day and do write something stupid -- doesn't mean there should be repercussions that affect the rest of their live, like making them unhireable or firing them...
- amp108 9y ago
  She also told people to contact her, and gave out the schools counseling hotline number instead of her real one. She deliberately messed with the school and dragged them into her personal conflict. Why shouldn't they fire her, if they can, in that case?
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Because in the end, nothing too great happened. And people can do all kinds of BS. Doesn't mean they're condemned to it for live. Or that they don't deserve second and third chances. The Old Testament "eye for an eye" responses just lead to worse outcomes.
    - amp108 9y ago
      > Because in the end, nothing too great happened She fake-doxxed another school's crisis hotline, made that resource unavailable to students who needed it; she embarrassed her school and forced the administration to issue a statement when they had better things to do. > Or that they don't deserve second and third chances. If she's fired, she has as many chances as she wants to apply to a school that wants to risk having to clean up after her irresponsible bullshit.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        >She fake-doxxed another school's crisis hotline, made that resource unavailable to students who needed it; Did she? Did many people really called that crisis hotline because of her, and to the point of making it "unavailable"? And was that resource so needed in the first place that making it unavailable for some hours would be some kind of disaster (most schools don't have any kind of "crisis hotline" around the world and they manage just fine). >she embarrassed her school and forced the administration to issue a statement when they had better things to do. Yeah, that's what I was referring to by "nothing much". >If she's fired, she has as many chances as she wants to apply to a school that wants to risk having to clean up after her irresponsible bullshit. And that's what I called by not giving chances and Old Testament mentality. Perhaps some people enjoy their society being the #1 in incarcerations in the world, or treating anybody who doesn't fit a clean cut profile as a pariah, and having all kinds of people who where not given a chance and ended up mentally unstable (and/or going postal every week or so). Because that's how societies end up with that. What happened to a scolding, and a promise to not do that kind of thing again? No, it's "straight to the unemployable line you go..."

50 points by raleighm 9y ago

Great analysis of the oft-misinterpreted First Amendment.

Aren't California Professors at-will employees? Couldn't they just fire the employee and say "they were no longer needed" and leave it at that?

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Aren't California Professors at-will employees? No, non-executive public employees in California are mostly not at-will employees. They tend to have protection by civil service laws and union contracts and federal due process protections related to employment, none of which apply to private at-will employment.
refulgentis 9y ago
Oftentimes engineers see law like code, if you can find a way to break it, great! In practice, this wouldn't fly, the whole point of court is to negotiate between the letter of the law and the situation to obtain justice. In the hypothetical it's very clear why she actually got fired
hmahncke 9y ago
CSU professors (and professors in general) may technically be at-will (I don't know) but they are definitely members of a union that has negotiated various employment rights, including around how dismissal works. Furthermore, I think the article says she is tenured, which adds another layer of protection to her employment. If CSU did want to dismiss her (after going through the various steps as the popehat article describes), there would be further review steps based on the union rules and tenure.
mikeash 9y ago
At will means you can be terminated for no reason, but not for any reason. Stating that it was for no reason doesn’t make it so.
- pron 9y ago
  What do you mean by no reason?
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    The employer opts not to say why the person is being fired, just that they are being fired.

s73v3r_ 9y ago

Being an ass on Twitter is one thing, but being an ass on Twitter and sending those upset with you to the school's suicide prevention hotline is beyond the pale.

TheRealPomax 9y ago
but not beyond the law, so an analysis that completely ignores "who was the biggest ass" and instead focuses on what laws apply to this situation, and to which degree interpretation can be extended, is most refreshing.
- protomyth 9y ago
  Causing your school's suicide hotline to be flooded with troll phone calls presents a very arguable case for substantial disruption, depending on the evidence. Which points to the part of the law that might apply.
  - rusk 9y ago
    Except that if you read to the end it wasn’t her school it was another. So she’s cunning as well as nasty.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  And the conclusion was that the person in question could be disciplined, or even fired for the suicide hotline stunt.
  - ThurmaUman 9y ago
    wtf. That wasn't the conclusion. Halve that. Disciplinary action might be legally justified. It would clearly be a dangerous case to lose for the University (setting up some nasty jurisprudence, among other damages), so it's unlikely to happen.
  - TheRealPomax 9y ago
    The conclusion of the article is quite intentionally left off because even after that analysis, it turns out that the law isn't like programming (as the article literally points out) and even after looking at what the law, and judicial reason, allows for, there is no clear cut answer here. There are too many grey areas for there to be "one conclusion". And of course the conclusion in court in cases like these is, as it should be: the judge's decision based on all the information surfaced during the trial to help them reach their decision.

stevenwoo 9y ago

OK, not a lawyer but this seemed good so I read a couple of other posts and it appears he got something really wrong on the possibility of Trump being indicted entry. https://www.popehat.com/2018/04/04/what-it-means-that-trump-is-only-a-subject/ https://www.popehat.com/2018/04/04/what-it-means-that-trump-... Mueller won't indict Trump because he follows the rules and the Justice Department reaffirmed an internal rule in 2000 that they will never indict the President. It's not in the Constitution explicitly as he writes but it's never mentioned in his discussion but several commenters note the omission.

kbenson 9y ago
I think if you're at the point where you're willing to say a person will or will not do something because of some institutional rule when their job is also to uphold the law and the constitution, and there may indeed be conflicts in what their priorities are as they see them, you've become far too lost in the weeds. Mueller is a person, not a state machine. Let's not act like we can completely predict the future here, especially given the dearth of information we have compared to him.

protomyth 9y ago

If you think that this structure creates an incentive to react disruptively to speech, in order to supply a basis for a professor to be fired, you'd be right. If you think that schools might lie about the amount of disruption, you'd be right. The Heckler's Veto can extend a long ways so be careful.

madengr 9y ago

Nothing new. This guy was suspended for his NRA comments: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/23/u-kansas-professor-suspended-after-anti-nra-tweet https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/23/u-kansas-prof...

mc32 9y ago

My opinion would be this: you should be able to express yourself as a private citizen any which way you want, withinn the law. However, once you're doing it while representing your employer, you're no longer free to go beyond expected conduct. For example, on twitter if you're janeschmoe, tweet whatever you want, but if you're janeschmoeUSC bio: professor at USC, then you're on your own, i.e. not protected, because you're invoking your employer in your bio. And this would not be protected simply by obscurity, but rather because your private twitter does not invoke your employer in anyway. Well, so long as you keep your private twitter persona sanitized from any association with your employer.

mattbierner 9y ago
Two questions on this: - What if @janeschmoe mostly tweets about USC and her work there? Even if they are not officially saying, “this is an official twitter account of a USC professor”, her activity could cause people to think the account is official - Does merely mentioning your employer cross the line? Not mentioning this could also be kind of sketchy if, for instance, @janeschmoe starts tweeting “USC has the best professors!!!” (Totally just asking for a friend)
- mc32 9y ago
  This will look like a cop out but I would say keep things sanitized. Don't commingle official and private opinions. Just as let's say a chiropractor should not date their patients. To keep things simple as posdible and limit repercussions, fence your personae properly.
Magmatic 9y ago
So there's a very practical problem I have with this. Say you maintain a blog promoting the disenfranchisement of women, things like "We need to send women back to the homes, barefoot in the kitchen." While reprehensible, perfectly legal. Your employer is faced with both an external and internal problem. 1) The more public your views, the more people see these views as condoned by the company as being acceptable, whether you agree with that the perception is likely. Even if protection is afforded under the law it's widely understood that you can "manage out" problem employees and people will judge the company for not doing that. 2) The employee is likely hampering their own effectiveness in the workplace substantially. In this example it's going to be very difficult to get women, a huge chunk of a likely workforce, to work effectively with the person in question. The company cannot realistically resolve the feelings of enmity that arise from this kind of speech and the best remedy to the situation is going to be empoyee termination.

qntty 9y ago

No mention of tenure? Looks like Jarrar is probably tenured, meaning the bar is much higher than for a regular government employee.

5555624 9y ago
She is tenured. She brings it up in one of the tweets: “I work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. I will never be fired. I will always have people wanting to hear what I have to say.” I'm always amused when these type of people tweet something offensive and stand by it; but, immediately make their Twitter account private. (I can tweet something very offensive, but don't be mean to me.)

amp108 9y ago

She presented the school's student counseling number as her own contact #. That could and should land her in hot water with her employers, state employee or not.

coldtea 9y ago

Even if it can, it shouldn't and it shouldn't be able to. People should be allowed to have private lives and opinions, outside of what they fucking make for a living. Also, can people stop overreacting for mere words? And can they also understand that anybody can have a bad day and do write something stupid -- doesn't mean there should be repercussions that affect the rest of their live, like making them unhireable or firing them...

amp108 9y ago
She also told people to contact her, and gave out the schools counseling hotline number instead of her real one. She deliberately messed with the school and dragged them into her personal conflict. Why shouldn't they fire her, if they can, in that case?
- coldtea 9y ago
  Because in the end, nothing too great happened. And people can do all kinds of BS. Doesn't mean they're condemned to it for live. Or that they don't deserve second and third chances. The Old Testament "eye for an eye" responses just lead to worse outcomes.
  - amp108 9y ago
    > Because in the end, nothing too great happened She fake-doxxed another school's crisis hotline, made that resource unavailable to students who needed it; she embarrassed her school and forced the administration to issue a statement when they had better things to do. > Or that they don't deserve second and third chances. If she's fired, she has as many chances as she wants to apply to a school that wants to risk having to clean up after her irresponsible bullshit.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >She fake-doxxed another school's crisis hotline, made that resource unavailable to students who needed it; Did she? Did many people really called that crisis hotline because of her, and to the point of making it "unavailable"? And was that resource so needed in the first place that making it unavailable for some hours would be some kind of disaster (most schools don't have any kind of "crisis hotline" around the world and they manage just fine). >she embarrassed her school and forced the administration to issue a statement when they had better things to do. Yeah, that's what I was referring to by "nothing much". >If she's fired, she has as many chances as she wants to apply to a school that wants to risk having to clean up after her irresponsible bullshit. And that's what I called by not giving chances and Old Testament mentality. Perhaps some people enjoy their society being the #1 in incarcerations in the world, or treating anybody who doesn't fit a clean cut profile as a pariah, and having all kinds of people who where not given a chance and ended up mentally unstable (and/or going postal every week or so). Because that's how societies end up with that. What happened to a scolding, and a promise to not do that kind of thing again? No, it's "straight to the unemployable line you go..."