Castagnera on Education and Employment Law

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Sign up for my First Quarter 2015 Higher Ed Webinars here

http://jamescastagnera.wordpress.com/ned-mcadoo-2/

Here's what I have to offer:

Preventing and Managing Sexual Assault Cases - January 20
Academic Dishonesty and Discipline - January 29
Managing Your International Students - February 12
Disabilities in the Classroom and Online - February 19
Intellectual Property - March 5
Student Handbooks - March 12

Friday, January 2, 2015

Ruminations about Free Speech in the Global Marketplace of ideas

Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies rightly takes President Obama to task for making it sound as if it's up to corporations to "man-up" to North Korean threats and cyber-attacks. Isn't that in the president's job description, he asks with justification.
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/may-clifford-d-the-war-on-free-speech/

His article goes on to talk about instances in which radical Islamists have cause universities, media and other entities to abandon their free speech rights. This is something I wrote about years ago:
http://psi.praeger.com/doc.aspx??x=x&d=%2fcommentary%2fCastegnara-20081028.xml&original_url=doc.aspx%3fx%3dx%26d%3d%252fcommentary%252fCastegnara-20081028.xml&ws=WS_PSI&as=doc.aspx&token=43507BB17FFEE35F32852A487B63D3D6&count=.!

Corporations for their part know how to fight for free speech when they want to. Witness the US Supreme Court's controversial Citizens United decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

As for the controversy over "The Interview," my best guess is that Sony took the opportunity to ride the wave of media and social-net hype to a box office success for a film that otherwise was likely to yield mediocre results.

Then there's Hobby Lobby, which the Supremes permitted to use another section of the First Amendment to deny its female employees the contraceptive services otherwise mandated by Obamacare.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/us/hobby-lobby-case-supreme-court-contraception.html?_r=0

No, Mr. May, I would say that the big corporations are perfectly capable of taking care of their First Amendment rights when they want to. And the Supreme Court is right there to help them do it.

They are also entirely capable of abrogating those rights when profits are at issue. And that's why, Mr. May, you are right that it's up to Uncle Sam to protect those rights for all of us, especially when a foreign power --- Asian or Radical Islamic --- presents a threat to them.