By: Jonathan Turley | August 1, 2024
Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/01/bakersfield-college-agrees-to-2-4-million-settlement-in-free-speech-case/
Last year, we discussed the free speech case of Matthew Garrett, formerly a tenured history professor at Bakersfield College who was investigated and disciplined after he questioned the use of grant money to fund social justice initiatives. Bakersfield College has one of the worst records on free speech in higher education and has been repeatedly sued by faculty. It will now pay another $2.4 million in a settlement to subsidize the anti-free speech actions of its administration. The question is why California taxpayers continue to allow faculty and administrators to burn through millions in these efforts to punish divergent or dissenting viewpoints. Matthew Garrett will reportedly receive $2,245,480 over the next 20 years as well as an immediate one-time payment of $154,520 as “compensation for back wages and medical benefits since [his] dismissal.” Unfortunately, the college got its way in insisting that he resign from the Kern Community College District. So, it achieved greater uniformity and orthodoxy in viewpoints at the cost of millions in damages.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression supported his case and detailed in 2023 how his criticism of DEI programs made him a target of faculty and administrators:
Animosity toward Garrett by some faculty and administrators increased over the past couple years as Garrett and several other faculty members associated with the Renegade Institute for Liberty — a Bakersfield College think tank Garrett founded — joined the faculty diversity committee. Other committee members say that the Renegade faculty have made it difficult for the group to get anything done by stalling campus diversity initiatives. But it was Garrett’s comments regarding a proposed racial climate task force during a diversity committee meeting last fall that led Bakersfield to recommend Garrett’s termination.
At the October 2022 meeting of the Bakersfield Equal Opportunity and Diversity Advisory Committee, Garrett criticized a proposal by professor Paula Parks to create a racial climate task force he felt might usurp the jurisdiction of the diversity committee. He also contested the student survey data cited as justification for the proposed task force and questioned the survey’s objectivity and the lack of evidence connecting the data presented and the proposed solutions. Several other faculty members in the meeting also challenged the veracity of the survey data. But ultimately, the committee voted to approve the creation of the task force.
On Nov. 15, Parks published an op-ed in Kern Sol News accusing Garrett and other Renegade Institute-affiliated faculty of a “disturbing pattern of actions” that “created negativity and division in the name of free speech.”
We previously also discussed the case of History Professor Daymon Johnson who was put under investigation after he commented on the extremist comments of another professor. Professor Andrew Bond denounced the United States as a “sh*t nation” and then invited conservatives to quote him. In August 2019, Bond posted a statement on Facebook that:
“Maybe Trump’s comment about sh*thole countries was a statement of projection because honestly, the US is a f**king piece of sh*t nation. Go ahead and quote me, conservatives. This country has yet to live up to the ideals of its founding documents.”
[Text changes added to profanity from the original]
Johnson proceeded to do exactly what Bond suggested and quoted him on the Facebook page for the Renegade Institute for Liberty. He asked others “Do you agree with this radical SJW from BC’s English Department? Thoughts?” He then posted on his own Facebook account the following statement according to his complaint:
“Johnson then used his personal Facebook account to comment on what he had reposted: ‘Maybe he should move to China, and post this about the PRC in general or the Chinese Communist Party and see how much mileage it gets him. I wonder, do they still send the family the bill for the spent round?’”
Johnson said that the college would not allow him to read the complaint but subjected him to months of investigation.
After the investigation was finally concluded with no action by the Kern Community College District (which oversees the college), it stated that it would “investigate any further complaints of harassment and bullying and, if applicable, [taking] appropriate remedial action including but not limited to any discipline determined to be appropriate.”
That threat took on a more menacing meaning given the controversy involving John Corkins, vice president of the Board of Trustees of the Kern Community College District Board. Corkins declared in an open meeting that critics of Critical Race Theory should be “culled” from the faculty and “taken to the slaughterhouse.”
As shown by Corkins, it remains popular in California to pledge to wipe out conservatives and dissenters from faculty. There are comparably few left. Conservatives and libertarians have been gradually purged from many institutions.
A survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.
Some sites like Above the Law have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty. Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university. So, the views of roughly half of the judiciary and half of the country are treated as legitimately excluded as intellectually invalid.
We have also seen administrators and faculty treat public or private funds as a subsidy for radical policies. For example, Oberlin College abused a small family grocery store for years and racked up millions in costs and damages that it expected alumni to cover. There was no blowback for its president or administrators.
These cases continue unabated despite a long litany of losses for universities and colleges over free speech limits and faculty discipline. The reason is that it is still personally and professionally beneficial for these professors and administrators to attack those with dissenting viewpoints. While faith in higher education is at an all-time low and these schools are gushing money in litigation, there are few remaining dissenting voices on faculties and even fewer willing to resist retaliation by speaking up.
Settlements are now just a cost of doing business for the anti-free speech movement in higher education. The costs are born by taxpayers or donors who are expected to foot the bill for intellectual intolerance.
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