UPDATED
School has spent at least $724,000 after DEI social media manager blocked Bruce Gilley
The University of Oregon will pay out $191,000 in legal fees to two legal groups representing a professor who it blocked on Twitter (now X) for saying “all men are created equal.”
The attorney fees will go to Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley’s representatives at Angus Lee Law Firm and the Institute for Free Speech.
The school already spent more than half a million dollars paying its own attorneys and now its insurer will pay out even more.
U. Oregon will also revise its social media guidelines and provide training to its employees to end the two-and-a half year lawsuit, as previously reported by The College Fix.
Gilley, a professor of political science at Portland State University, in 2022 sued the former communications manager of the @UOEquity X account after she blocked him for responding to her “racism interrupter” prompt with the quote “all men are created equal.”
His attorneys celebrated the legal fee judgement in quotes provided to The Fix.
“This fee award reflects the substantial resources required to vindicate fundamental constitutional rights in the digital age, as well as the vigor with which the University of Oregon chose to defend unconstitutional policies,” Institute for Free Speech Senior Attorney Del Kolde stated.
“The university made a costly decision to prioritize DEI principles over constitutional principles, aggressively litigating this case for nearly three years rather than acknowledging the obvious—that blocking someone for quoting the Declaration of Independence violates the First Amendment,” Kolde stated.
“Oregon taxpayers and UO alumni should question why university officials spent such enormous sums defending the indefensible, especially when the university ultimately agreed to the very reforms Professor Gilley had sought from the beginning,” attorney Angus Lee stated as well.
Unrelated to this case, the Canadian-American political scientist spent the last academic year at the New College of Florida as its presidential scholar in residence.
Gilley has previously drawn the ire of some in academia for a 2017 paper titled “The Case for Colonialism.”
The professor also battled with his own university over his attempts to teach about conservative political thought to fulfill a “culturally responsive” requirement.
Editor’s note: The headline and opening sentence have been fixed to clarify the amount awarded is $191,000, not $193,000.
MORE: Senate tames endowment tax plan, but universities still on hook
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley; Bruce Gilley/X