A ‘very bad precedence for academic freedom on campus,’ legal group says
The University of Hawai’i has not responded to concerns about violating a professor’s “academic freedom” after changing a presentation in which he included a hypothetical example of a shooting, a higher education legal group told The College Fix.
Kenneth Lawson, a professor of criminal law at the university’s Mānoa campus, refused to change his lesson after a student complained, so the university did it for him, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing him.
“This use of the hypothetical by professor Lawson was clearly a legitimate use of academic freedom rights. The university is public. It is bound by the First Amendment,” FIRE fellow Graham Piro said in an interview Friday.
Piro said the university still has not responded to its most recent letter, sent Jan. 22, which called on administrators to reverse their actions and respect Lawson’s academic freedom.
“I think it sets a very bad precedence for academic freedom on campus,” he told The Fix.
The College Fix contacted the university media relations office via email three times, but did not receive a response to questions about the situation. The Fix also contacted Lawson by email, but he did not respond.
In a law class last fall, Lawson (pictured) used a hypothetical example of a shooting to demonstrate transferred intent, according to FIRE. Cornell Law School defines transferred intent as “when a defendant intends to harm one victim, but then unintentionally harms a second victim instead.”
Lawson used photos of himself and two deans at the university (pictured above) to illustrate this point, according to images from his lesson, shared by FIRE.
The idea was to challenge students to think about the legal issues “if a dean at his institution tried to shoot another dean, missed, and hit Lawson instead,” according to FIRE.
Such hypotheticals are “common in law school,” according to FIRE; however, a student complained to the university.
The anonymous complaint referred to shootings that occurred near the campus and described the hypothetical as “extremely disturbing,” according to the legal group.
University leaders met with Lawson and asked him remove the hypothetical, but he refused.
“At that meeting, [law Dean Camille] Nelson informed Lawson that the hypothetical and photos of the deans ‘had not violated any policy or law’ but still ordered Lawson to change the example,” FIRE’s first letter to the university states.
Piro said the university responded to the letter on Jan. 3, and then proceeded to change Lawson’s lesson.
However, administrators did not delete the hypothetical or remove Lawson’s photo; they just removed the two deans’ photos and replaced them with generic images of human beings, he told The Fix.
“It’s strange,” Piro said. “It throws doubt on their explanation that they were concerned about the rationale that was presented about being sensitive to student concerns about gun violence on campus.”
In the university’s letter to FIRE, it “did allege that we had mischaracterized certain facts and proceeding with the grievance,” Piro said. “But they declined to engage substantively with the academic freedom concerns that were raised.”
“Anytime they allege that we mischaracterized something, we would always want to hear what the university has to say, but they declined to engage substantively,” he told The Fix.
What’s more, since FIRE became involved in the situation, the dean filed a defamation suit against Lawson for statements he made in 2023.
Piro questioned the motives of the lawsuit, noting that Dean Nelson is the same administrator involved in the clash over his recent lesson example.
During a February 2023 faculty meeting, Lawson got into a “heated argument” with Nelson about a Black History Month panel with no black facilitators, FIRE reports. Both Nelson and Lawson are black.
In 2023, the university launched an investigation to determine if Lawson had created a “hostile work environment.” It also punished him by temporarily banning him from campus and later “requiring him to complete mandatory training and serve a one-month suspension without pay,” according to FIRE’s report.
The defamation suit alleges Lawson “planned to and followed through on hijacking the meeting to attack and scare Nelson.” The suit also cites emails that he sent a few days later followed by a call to boycott the panel on a university listserv.
Nelson alleges she “suffered significant emotional distress and reputational harm … because of Lawson’s alleged accusations of her of being a silent ‘Intellectual Negro,’” according to FIRE.
Lawson’s lawyers recently filed a motion to dismiss the defamation lawsuit, arguing that it aims to “chill and silence his constitutionally protected speech.”
The Fix asked Piro what outcome FIRE hopes for between the university and Professor Lawson.
“Regarding the academic freedom issue, we want to see the university acknowledge that its actions in changing unilaterally Lawson’s presentation violated his academic freedom rights,” Piro said.
“We want to see them give Lawson the ability to go back and change the presentation to what it previously was. We also want to see them commit to not doing this in the future because the precedent here, the university unilaterally changing courses, is quite concerning,” he said.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Shown are before and after versions of a slide presentation by Professor Kenneth Lawson, which the University of Hawai’i changed. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, University of Hawaii