Court Opinion

ID: 9727916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:52:52.199894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:44.336989
License: Public Domain

BRAUER, J., Concurring.
We judges and lawyers are used to dealing in fine distinctions. Should we apply the Brandenburg standard? Or is Pickering closer in point? Can certain language in Bekiaris be reconciled with other parts of that opinion? And if so, what is the impact of that case on ours? I join in the opinion of the court and do not disparage this technique. By and large, it has served us well.
But sometimes it is necessary to lean back and look at first principles. This is such a time.
A university is a marketplace of ideas or it is nothing. It is a home for sober reflection, for critical inquiry and analysis, for vigorous advocacy, *350for dialogue, all in pursuit of the truth. The imposition of one’s cause or point of view by coercion upon those of different persuasion is totally inconsistent with a university’s process and function.
Professor Franklin incited students forcibly to shut down a Stanford facility devoted to research of which they disapproved. Believing or at least proclaiming that the police were about to resort to brutality, he embarked upon speech and action designed to encourage students to defy the dispersal order thereby risking arrest, possible criminal conviction with its devastating effect on the youngsters’ future and, given his perception of the police, physical assault. He now makes the incredible argument that he had no reason to suppose his conduct to be beyond the pale for a professor so as to subject him to discipline.
If that is protected speech, if a university is compelled to retain such a man in its employ, and retain him in the capacity of mentor, the Constitution of the United States is the instrument of its self-destruction. It isn’t.
A petition for a rehearing was denied October 11, 1985, and appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied December 31, 1985. Bird, C. J., did not participate therein.