I'm not familiar with exactly the comments which were said, so I can't really say what exactly happened. But there's definitely been many times in the past, many times that probably never resulted in some big legal battle that people wrote a lot about, where a professor was censured for how they conducted their classroom.
That said, I'm not really arguing TAMU/The State of Texas is in the moral right here. I'm definitely down to not give them the benefit of the doubt in this instance, but just hearing the idea that a non-tenured? professor said something potentially really bad that ultimately cost them their job, doesn't really strike me as something impossible and entirely without precedent. Things are different when you're a government employee and you're on the clock, often for good reason. Not that censuring professors for speaking potentially factual statements is a good reason though.
There is case law, yes.
https://casetext.com/case/vega-v-miller
I'm not familiar with exactly the comments which were said, so I can't really say what exactly happened. But there's definitely been many times in the past, many times that probably never resulted in some big legal battle that people wrote a lot about, where a professor was censured for how they conducted their classroom.
That said, I'm not really arguing TAMU/The State of Texas is in the moral right here. I'm definitely down to not give them the benefit of the doubt in this instance, but just hearing the idea that a non-tenured? professor said something potentially really bad that ultimately cost them their job, doesn't really strike me as something impossible and entirely without precedent. Things are different when you're a government employee and you're on the clock, often for good reason. Not that censuring professors for speaking potentially factual statements is a good reason though.