University of Oregon DEI hires punish prof for quoting the Declaration of Independence

Three years ago (June of 2022) a DEI hire at the that University of Oregon's "Division of Equity and Inclusion" posted an anti-white post on X.

Seeing that post, a professor at Portland State U quoted it on the same UO site and added the comment "all men are created equal.”

UO's DEI enforcers--apparently unaware that the prof was quoting the Declaration of Independence-- were furious, but couldn't block the post from X, so a university DEI official instead blocked the prof from posting on the UO "Equity account."

So with the help of the Institute for Free Speech, the prof sued to challenge that obvious public-forum viewpoint discrimination.  

At this point UO adminishits had the chance to settle at no cost by recognizing that the prof's quoting the Declaration could not remotely be considered "hate speech," and then ordering the DEI hires to stop punishing free speech.  Of course sitting atop a massive pyramid of highly-paid adminishits, UO rulers did no such thing.

Instead, since the state-run university would be using taxpayer money for its legal fees, the admins knew they'd lose nothing if they lost the case.  So they chose to defend the indefensible.

A district-court judge ruled against the prof, but the Ninth Circuit vacated that ruling and sent the case back to the lower court—a signal that the university’s position was constitutionally suspect.

If the university had been a private entity you'd think some lawyer would have advised 'em to settle.  But again, all gruberment entities sue with your money, so it don't mean shit to them, eh?  So UO stubbornly reloaded and continued to defend punishing a prof for quoting the Declaration of Independence.  Seriously.

The university ignored another signal when a lower court granted a preliminary injunction preventing the university from censoring the prof’s posts even if a UO DEI official thought they were “hateful,” “racist,” “offensive,” or “off-topic”--which were rules by UO for blocking social-media posts.

Finally, in March of this year UO settled the case.  The settlement required UO’s legal counsel to agree that the prof’s speech was and is constitutionally protected and should not have been blocked.  

Then last month another judge awarded $191,000 in attorney fees to the prof’s legal team. This figure brought the university’s total legal expenses to at least $724,000 (some of which was paid by the university's insurer).

Nearly three years of litigation over DEI enforcers blocking someone for quoting the Declaration of Independence--all because the state-run university could use taxpayer funds to defend university officials’ ability to punish a prof for posting “all men are created equal.”  Wow.

And note that this kind of pig-headed stubbornness by university adminishits who can use taxpayer funds to defend when they're sued is *very common,* like the government fining a farmer for levelling a seasonal drainage, claiming it was part of the "navigable waters of the United States."  Actual case.

Source.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/censoring-all-men-are-created-equal-cost-u-oregon-724k-will-other-universities-learn/