Dear Colleagues,
We at University Administration are now prepared to issue our Academic Freedom guidelines for your classes. As you know from last year’s memo, we in administration are strong advocates of free speech on campus. With some guidance from us, we believe you will feel more empowered to speak your mind, with proper limits.
While the previous provost, president, and general counsel have “resigned,” we assure you our commitment to education remains steadfast. The new president even helped draft the law titled “De-Woke the Campus for Academic Freedom Act.”
With your help, we can ensure the campus has vibrant and open discourse about subjects that do not matter to anyone.
REGULATIONS FOR THE EMPOWERMENT OF TEACHING
Recording Policy: Your syllabus must read as follows:“Students are encouraged to record my class. Where appropriate, students may submit my class session to administrative officials and the appropriate Turning Points USA chapter and to the Professor Watchlist. Students will be held harmless in the event of my receipt of death threats or wrongful termination.”
Preferred Names: Your syllabus must read as follows: “I will address you by your preferred name, so long as it has nothing to do with LGBTQ+ issues and does not involve transgender identity. Thus, if you are Matthew, I’ll still call you Matt, if you want.”
Note: We don’t want to make Matt uncomfortable. His dad’s a donor.
Course Names: If your course name appears controversial, we encourage you to change it. For example, if you teach “Abortion Law,” please consider naming it “Abortion is Wrong and the Law.” If you teach “Family Law,” consider naming it “Nuclear Family Law.”
Course Topics: Please ensure that your course description and course assignments closely match. Otherwise, you risk disciplinary action. For example, in the course “Constitutional Law,” stop assigning the dissent. That’s just some liberal’s view, not the law. Also, do not use cases that relate to university conduct, as the Board views that as a direct threat.
Controversial Topics: Please avoid controversial topics. For example, if you teach “International Law,” please do not use the words “war crimes,” “genocide,” “ICC,” “The Hague,” or “international law” in your course assignments.
Also, we’ve taken the liberty of eliminating some courses that are de facto controversial and cannot be taught. That includes “Women and the Law,” “Critical Race Theory,” “First Amendment Law,” and “Water Law” (the governor is big into AI).
You’ll probably notice we no longer teach “Transgender Law,” and the dean and professor who authorized that course have been fired. Your new dean, as you know, is a former legislator and proud author of the “Bathroom Bill.”
If your course offends someone on the basis that our great United States is not a meritocracy, your course is canceled. Thus, we will no longer be teaching courses in “Employment Discrimination” or “Civil Rights Law.”
If you teach “Family Law,” please ensure that all cases involve a traditional nuclear family.
For your interdisciplinary “History and the Law” course, avoid mention that Nazi Germany brutally vilified and tortured the LGBTQ+ community in ways similar to the United States southern states today. Avoid mention that Nazi Germany targeted communists. Do not mention that anti-fascists fought fascism. Our state legislators have a hard time understanding the difference between antifa, communism, and fascism, as the high school history courses in this state were destroyed 30 years ago.
If you teach “Bankruptcy Law” or “Tax Law,” avoid commentary related to the impact of tariffs on the economy.
Controversial Words: To avoid misunderstanding and triggering of unfortunate termination proceedings, please avoid the words “trans,” “transatlantic,” “transoceanic,” “transportation,” and “Transylvania.”
Controversial Club Sponsorship: Please avoid sponsoring controversial clubs. Such club names include “LGBTQ+ Outlaw Club,” “Critical Race Theory Study Group,” or “Rights for Everyone Club.” Sponsorship of the “TPUSA Chapter” and “Charlie Kirk Worship Club” is strongly encouraged.
Accuracy of Materials: Please ensure your choices of materials is accurate but balanced. For example, if you teach a “Health Law” course, please balance your assignment of peer-reviewed resources that demonstrate that vaccines do not cause autism with at least one non-peer-reviewed resource, preferably ones endorsed by RFK Jr. Under no circumstances are you to quote Charlie Kirk, as we are unsure as to the accuracy of any of his quotes.
Clinics: The Immigration Law clinic will be repurposed to require mandatory service in ICE to get a better understanding of how immigration works on the ground and not in the ivory tower of academia. Being improperly arrested by ICE will not count toward service hours.
Faculty Bios and CVs: Please ensure that your bios and CVs do not have any reference to preferred pronouns, any work you have done for LGBTQ+ causes, or any “left leaning” causes such as the Federalist Society. We also encourage, but do not require, donations to a right-wing conservative candidate of over $200 or more to demonstrate faculty intellectual diversity.
DEI: Thanks to a generous grant from the Koch Foundation, we have established a “Drug Enforcement and ICE” (DEI) program that examines the positive ways ICE interacts with our communities. All DEI links will now automatically repost there.
Thank you all for your attention to this matter!
Administration
LawProfBlawg is an anonymous law professor. Follow him on X/Twitter/whatever (@lawprofblawg). He’s also on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads depending on his mood. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com. The views of this blog post do not represent the views of his employer, his employer’s government, his Dean, his colleagues, his family, or himself. This piece is satire, hopefully.
The post Teaching Law In A Red State appeared first on Above the Law.
