"Finally (on First Amendment issues), the court held plaintiffs likely to succeed on their unconstitutional conditions claim because the administration’s actions “are an effort to force the UC to suppress Plaintiffs’ members’ right to engage in disfavored speech, in exchange for the benefit of continued federal funding.”
This is an absurdly stupid ruling on the face of it. So any university can essentially lock in their current funding forever, regardless of whether it meets government needs or intent, simply by deliberately pissing the administration off regularly and then accusing any attempt by the government to change its funding priorities of being retaliation? No, they ARE 'government contractors' as long as their salaries are being paid by the government and can be subject to the same constraints on how they use my tax dollars as any other federal employee. Shitty research deserves to get cancelled and being politically unpopular is not a valid reason to save it. Two things can BOTH be true: it's politically disfavored AND legitimately deserves to be cancelled as a counterproductive waste of government funds. The First Amendment does not confer any right to having your 'speech' subsided by your fellow citizens.
With that argument (very 1967, for my father, a university dean at a state college, had to parry similar theoretical claims by the Leftist bomb-throwers and their acolytes on campus), the setting of a mandated curriculum in a government school must then necessarily be a concomitant abridgement of the same rights. Do you mean that a government school may not in any circumstances mandate or mandate the forbidding of the teaching of anything at all?
We all know (I hope) that first amendments rights don't mean a person can express their opinion just anywhere. I see no way that a person can reasonably rationalize that a professor has absolute first amendment rights in a classroom operated under the administration. The professor works for them, not the other way around. He is an employee. If he doesn't like the terms of his employment, he can quit.
Now, consider this: What if that professor is teaching racism? What if he is teaching that blacks are inferior and should not have the same job opportunities as everyone else? Can the administration terminate him? According to FIRE, no.
I think that there is missing context in this quote: "The court noted that while “antisemitism is undisputedly a laudable and important goal,”
It sounds like the court is praising antisemitism ...
Correct. The full quote is: "Rooting out antisemitism is undisputedly a laudable and important goal. However, the unrebutted evidence shows that the Task Force Agencies and the Funding Agencies have gone well beyond that stated purpose." Its int he linked PDF: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.456332/gov.uscourts.cand.456332.90.0.pdf
"Finally (on First Amendment issues), the court held plaintiffs likely to succeed on their unconstitutional conditions claim because the administration’s actions “are an effort to force the UC to suppress Plaintiffs’ members’ right to engage in disfavored speech, in exchange for the benefit of continued federal funding.”
This is an absurdly stupid ruling on the face of it. So any university can essentially lock in their current funding forever, regardless of whether it meets government needs or intent, simply by deliberately pissing the administration off regularly and then accusing any attempt by the government to change its funding priorities of being retaliation? No, they ARE 'government contractors' as long as their salaries are being paid by the government and can be subject to the same constraints on how they use my tax dollars as any other federal employee. Shitty research deserves to get cancelled and being politically unpopular is not a valid reason to save it. Two things can BOTH be true: it's politically disfavored AND legitimately deserves to be cancelled as a counterproductive waste of government funds. The First Amendment does not confer any right to having your 'speech' subsided by your fellow citizens.
With that argument (very 1967, for my father, a university dean at a state college, had to parry similar theoretical claims by the Leftist bomb-throwers and their acolytes on campus), the setting of a mandated curriculum in a government school must then necessarily be a concomitant abridgement of the same rights. Do you mean that a government school may not in any circumstances mandate or mandate the forbidding of the teaching of anything at all?
I think you've got it dead wrong about Texas A&M.
We all know (I hope) that first amendments rights don't mean a person can express their opinion just anywhere. I see no way that a person can reasonably rationalize that a professor has absolute first amendment rights in a classroom operated under the administration. The professor works for them, not the other way around. He is an employee. If he doesn't like the terms of his employment, he can quit.
Now, consider this: What if that professor is teaching racism? What if he is teaching that blacks are inferior and should not have the same job opportunities as everyone else? Can the administration terminate him? According to FIRE, no.