Class Dismissed

• Author: David L. Hudson Jr.
• Pages: 18-19

National

Pulse

The Docket

18 || ABA JOURNAL OCTOBER 2018

defense, Still She Ri ses helps connect

clients to public benefi ts and service s,

including abus e treatment, counsel-

ing and child care.

A PATH FORWARD

Before the arriva l of Still She Rises,

women in the north Tulsa community

have barely had easy a ccess to free

lawyers. Now, they can walk t hrough

the doors and g et the help they need.

Even though the Tulsa o ce is a

little more than a year old, the t eam

has received support and ga ined trust

from the community. With fi ve new

young attorneys joining the te am in

the fall, Steinberg says S till She Rises

will continue to sta rt a path forward

with stakeholders in the sy stem to

help change some of the practices,

culture and syst ems that are impact-

ing the women of north Tulsa.

“Sometimes it feels like pushi ng

a boulder up a hill, but we’re mak-

ing progress every day,” Steinberg

says. “We are really inspired by t he

clients. If my client can go through

the system and be treat ed with such

inhumanity, lack of dign ity and

unfairness a nd still come out at the

end of the day with a sense of hope,

optimism and resilience, t hen the

least we can do as law yers is to stay

in the work and fi ght really hard

every single day.”

Brown witnessed the t eam’s pas-

sion as Still She Rise s defended her

through every step of her c ase until

it was resolved with a su spended

sentence, no jail time and six ye ars

of probation. Today, she participates

in rehabilitation af tercare with

Women in Recovery, an intensive

outpatient alternative in Tulsa for

women facing long prison sentences

for drug-related o enses. Brown had

been part of the rehab g roup before

Still She Rises’ a rrival to Tulsa.

Working and taking care of her

family, including her 9-year-old

daughter, Brown still sometimes c alls

the Still She Rise s members who

helped her and encou rages others

in need of help in her community to

reach out to the organization.

“The day I accepted t he plea it

felt almost godsent,” she says. “With-

out them, I would be incarcerated

right now. Still She Rises means my

fre edom .” Q

Class

Dismissed

Is free speech and

academic freedom

under assault at colleges

and universities?

By David L. Hudson Jr.

Teresa Buchanan,

by most accounts,

was a rising aca demic

star at Louisia na

State University. She

began teachi ng there

in 1995, was promoted to ass ociate

professor with tenure in 2001, and

recommended for a full professorsh ip

in 2013.

However, her fortunes changed

after a public school superintendent

and several of Buchanan’s students

had complained about inappropriate

language , including comments about

a student’s sex life and repeated use

of the word pussy.

Another student alleged Buchana n

used “extreme profanity ” in the class-

room. She acknowledged she used

profanity to get her students’ at ten-

tion, loosen them up and prepare

them for the te aching environment .

The university removed her from

the classroom in 2013 and investi-

gated Buchanan for violati ng its sex-

ual harassment policy, which defi nes

such harassment as “speech a nd/or

conduct of a sexually disc riminatory

nature, which was neither welcomed

nor encouraged, which would be so

o ensive to a reasonable person as to

create an abusive working or lear n-

ing environ ment and/or impair his/

her performance on the job or in the

classroom.”

A faculty committee determined

Buchanan had violate d the sexual

harassment policy but recommended

against her dismis sal. However, the

university’s chancellor fi red her

anyway in 2015. She sued for her

job back, but this past Januar y a fed-

eral distric t court granted summar y

judgment to the university and other

defendants. The court determi ned

her profanity and comments of a sex-

ual nature were not protect ed by the

First A mendment.

“In addition to being just plain

wrong, LSU’s decision to fi re Dr.

Buchanan is supremely ironic,”

says her attorney Bob Corn-Revere ,

who’s based in Washington, D.C.

The late “Ann Hopkins won a land-

mark Supreme Court rul ing in 1989

declaring that she was a v ictim

of sex discrimin ation when Price

Waterhouse refused to promote her

to partner becau se she used profan-

ity. Now, LSU claims that it can fi re a

woman for the same type of b ehavior

by calling it sexua l harassment.”

In Buchanan’s case, the federal di s-

trict court a lso ruled that because

her speech was made duri ng class-

room instruction, it wa s part of her

o cial duties and, therefore, her

First A mendment claims were fore -

closed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s

decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos

(2006). In that decision, the court

ruled public employees have no

free speech protec tion for o cial,

job-duty speech.

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

Many see her case as emblematic

of the precarious stat e of academic

freedom for college and universit y

professors. Others view t he case as

an example of the perils of apply-

ing the categorical r ule in Garcetti to

limit professorial spe ech.

“She was terminat ed for ‘sexual

harassment ’ over the recommenda-

tion of a faculty commit tee just for

preparing her adult students to be

the best teachers they c an be,” says

Will Creeley, senior vice president

of legal and public advocacy for the

Foundation for Indiv idual Rights in

Education. “P rofessor Buchanan ha s

proved to be an excellent educator

over her career, and punishing her

for doing her job strikes at the heart

of academic f reedom.”

Unfortunately, she is far from

alone, Creeley says. “Faculty spe ech

is under threat nationwide, fr om

overly broad restrictions on fa culty

speech contained in un iversity poli-

cies to calls for cen sorship for speech

outside of the classroom.”