Social injustice

Anyone who has been steaming mad about cable television station A&Es reaction to Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertsons statements in a magazine article likewise should be insulted by a new policy the Kansas Board of Regents created.

The Regents last week approved a social media policy that will govern all employees of every state university. The policy states that the chief executive officer of a state university has the authority to suspend, dismiss or terminate from employment any faculty or staff member who makes improper use of social media.

Improper use, according to the policy, is anything that incites violence, is contrary to the best interests of the university, discloses confidential student information, or impairs discipline by superiors or harmony between co-workers.

The policy is directly related to the infamous tweet by University of Kansas Associate Professor David Guth and the improper statements he made about members of the National Rifle Association and their children. The university suspended Guth after the comments and placed him in non-classroom duties for the remainder of this year. The Kansas Legislature, however, disapproved of what it viewed as weak action from the university and for a while considered taking separate action.

While the Internet buzzed with the free-speech debate surrounding Guths tweet, and later a reality television stars comments, not quite the same attention has been given to this policy change in Kansas.

But it should.

The Regents policy is over-broad and actively limits the free speech of all its employees. And while members of the NRA and fierce defenders of the Second Amendment might relish a policy that would prevent people like Guth from speaking their minds on social media, the policy also means that a Regents employee who shared the views of firearms enthusiast Ted Nugent similarly would find himself in trouble.

And therein is the danger of policies that restrict free speech and why it is important to fight any effort by the state to determine what is or is not acceptable for someone to say. It is not the Regents who should decide whether something is acceptable speech, yet a policy that reaches so far as to allow termination for language that impairs harmony could be defined as any speech, depending on the person in charge and his or her sensitivities.

In the case of Duck Dynasty, Phil Robertson was free to say what he said, and A&E was free to respond in a way that it felt was appropriate - and the supporting and dissenting factions can duke it out through appreciation days or boycotts that attempt to reward or punish speech but that really seems more like a well-thought-out viral marketing strategy.

The Regents, however, are an extension of Kansas government, charged with overseeing the states public universities. A policy that attempts to restrict speech before it occurs with broad and undefined language - and carries with it the threat of termination for saying something the university doesn't agree with - is the sort of measure that is designed to stifle free speech and squash public discourse that isn't state-approved.

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Social injustice