Charlie Kirk, Free Speech and the Right

Republicans target a foolish professor in a South Dakota case.

The limits of free speech and cancel culture will be percolating through the federal courts, and a new case offers a censorship warning to the political right. A South Dakota court last week issued a temporary restraining order in a professor’s lawsuit challenging his firing for comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination (Hook v. Rave).

Charlie Kirk was wearing a white tee-shirt with 'freedom' written across the chest when he was fatally shot at the Utah Valley University event. (AP)

On Sept. 10, shortly after Kirk’s murder, University of South Dakota art professor Phillip Hook posted his views on social media. “I don’t give a flying f*** about this Kirk person,” Mr, Hook wrote. “I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the idiotic right fringe to even know who he was.” He added: “I’m sorry for his family that he was a hate spreading Nazi and got killed. I’m sure they deserved better.”

Those are cruel and stupid words, and we’d hope for better from educators except for the intellectual decline of American faculties. Three hours later Mr. Hook removed the message and apologized. On Sept. 12, Speaker of the South Dakota House Jon Hansen shared a screenshot of the first post and called for Mr. Hook to be fired for the “disgusting rhetoric.”

South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden chimed in, posting that “The Board of Regents intends to FIRE this University of South Dakota professor, and I’m glad.” Mr. Hook received a letter from South Dakota Fine Arts Dean Bruce Kelley informing him of the school’s “intent to terminate” his contract. The letter cited two university policies for the termination, including “unfitness to discharge the trust reposed in public university faculty members.”

South Dakota is a public university which makes Mr. Hook’s termination a government punishment for speech. Mr. Hook wrote his screed from home, and the court said the school hadn’t “produced evidence to indicate the speech had an adverse impact on the efficiency of the [University’s] operations.”

The First Amendment was written to protect speech that would otherwise be silenced by political opponents. That includes hateful outbursts by jerks and scoundrels. In granting the temporary restraining order, the court noted the First Amendment “prohibits government officials from subjecting an individual to retaliatory actions for engaging in protected speech.”

In recent years conservatives have been the main target of censors on campus. See Ilya Shapiro at Georgetown, Amy Wax at the University of Pennsylvania and Joshua Katz at Princeton. The legislatures of blue states would love nothing more than legal permission to fire professors for private remarks. The few conservatives on campus faculties, take heed.

Mr. Hook is typical of all too many fools in the U.S. academy. But he wrote the comments from home on a political subject, which is his right as a citizen. If he can be fired for that, so can every free thinker on the right.