A conversation with a colleague leads me to repost this item from 2016; I also made similar points in this 2017 post about a different controversy. It's of course far removed in some ways on the facts from the controversies we've been seeing recently. Some might argue, for instance, that outright support of murder (or what seems like outright threats of violence) should be treated differently from wearing blackface, condemning Catholicism, condemning Islam, and the like. But the underlying principle, both as a matter of First Amendment law for public institutions and as a matter of academic freedom for all institutions, may be relevant to at least some degree in all these cases. All these other examples are helpful, because of course decisions made as to one category of speech will often end up being used as precedents and analogies as to other categories as well (especially in light of censorship envy).
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People often support disciplining and even firing professors who say things that are perceived as racist on the grounds that
