The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is becoming a very pro-faculty, pro-adjunct, pro-academic freedom and anti-Garcetti v. Ceballos court. It continues to reverse or remand upon appeal several draconian decisions of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. Loretta Capeheart, a member of the Illinois Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure at censured Northeastern Illinois University, received a favourable ruling as reported in Academe.

Robin Meade is an adjunct at Moraine Valley Community College that is located in Palos Hills, a southwest suburb of Chicago, and president of the Moraine Valley Adjunct Faculty Organization. Meade had written a letter that was quite critical of M.V.C.C.’s treatment of adjuncts “as a disposable resource” and “a separate, lower class of people” and commented on its adversarial impact on student learning. For this act of courage, she was fired by Moraine Valley Community College. Walter J. Kendall III, a professor of law at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, an Illinois Committee A member and past president of the Illinois Conference, shared the appellate court’s decision in an email. The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed reported on the Seventh Circuit’s ruling.

What is heartening is the Seventh Circuit’s refusal to cite Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 418 (2006) in order to destroy academic freedom, eviscerate the First Amendment and establish a virtual police state in public higher education. The so-called public-concern allowance of employee speech that was established in Pickering v Board of Education (1968) is given sweeping application by the appeals court. It rejected the district court’s interpretation of Garcetti and declared Meade’s letter as protected speech. Since the lower district court had issued a summary judgment against Professor Meade, the appeals court remanded the case back to the trial court–the district court–thereby, ordering it to consider her complaint in a multiplicity of areas including retaliation for exercising her right of freedom of speech that is protected in the First Amendment.

While Professor Meade has not at this stage won her case, she will get another day in court. She can still fight for the restoration of her position as an adjunct business instructor. Chief Judge Diane P. Wood wrote the Seventh Circuit decision. It is worth quoting at some length due to its profound implications in the battle against the destruction of tenure and corporate higher education’s increasing reliance on alienated, immiserated labour. I am also impressed by her knowledge and citation of relevant, advocacy literature: