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Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We previously discussed the free speech lawsuit of Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting “All men are created equal.”

The court just granted a preliminary injunction holding that there was a substantial likelihood that he would prevail on the merits against the University of Oregon.

Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley was excluded from a Diversity Twitter page by the Communication Manager of the Division of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Oregon.

(The manager is identified as “tova stabin” who the court notes “spells her name with all lowercase letters.”).

Stabin has now left the school.

In Gilley v. Stabin, Judge Hernández previously offered this background:

In his decision, Judge Hernández zeroed in on the guidelines allowing for the censorship of offensive or hateful speech:

That is why this decision could have a lasting impact for higher education. The Oregon language is not dissimilar from many schools limiting campus speech under vague guidelines.

Notably, we have discussed how these schools have been losing in federal courts in their effort to maintain censorship systems. Yet, administrators continue undeterred in pursuing these policies with the support of their faculty.

Oregon has long been known for radical viewpoints in academia. I previously criticized the school policy to monitor student speech on social media and off campus as part of its speech regulations.

The school previously gave special recognition to University of California (Santa Barbara) Professor Mireille Miller-Young who criminally assaulted pro-life advocates on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara.  At Oregon, she was honored as a featured speaker at the University of Oregon’s  Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.  Part of its “black feminist speaker series,” Miller-Young’s work was highlighted by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English to show “the radical potential of black feminism in the work that we do on campus and in our everyday lives.”

It is unlikely that the legislature will object to this expensive fight to preserve the right to censor speech. The state itself has moved aggressively against free speech rights of doctors and others in areas like abortion. However, the people of Oregon should consider the use of their tax dollars to seek to limit the “indispensable right” of free speech and to give figures like stabin such discretion over what speech to allow on campus.