re: Who should I contact regarding my disgust of Jesse Goldberg

Well frick, here i go. So if he gets up in front of a lecture audience at Auburn and says "frick all police because they are the thugs that do the bidding for the privileged," Auburn can't fire him for that? Educate me.

shite, let's keep going with the hypothetical. What if he had suggested that women were incapable of holding public office, or that black people were inherently inferior in the classroom by nature?

All bullshite.

All also entitled to protection. His views are abject bullshite, but if you only defend the rights of people with "acceptable," dare I say it, "politically correct," views, then they're not rights at all. The state, which Auburn unquestionably is, should have no say in what is or is not considered "acceptable" speech or opinion.

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

-Mencken

Auburn should make it abundantly clear that this guy's views are not those of the university and leave it at that. This stupid "weighing our options" bullshite to placate the donor class was a stupid, unprincipled move, with the added benefit of eliminating any sort of affirmative defense should they terminate his contract. The cat's out of the bag on that now.

There's a right way to do this:

LINK

And I really get it. Coming to this a-hole's defense pisses me off to no end. He can eat shite and die in a fire for all I care.

But frick him. It isn’t about him. It's about principle.

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We live in an environment in which private expression is suddenly a reason to terminate the employment relationship with anyone at anytime. Not that it goes without a cost. ATT fired an employee that was reported by a supposed family friend for a comment made in a private conversation having nothing to do with ATT and everything to do with her support of Trump. ATT best be ready to pay dearly at the pump.

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There's a difference with this case. Does the 1st Amendment apply to private entities like AT&T?

Yes it does, but only as far as they have the same legal rights of freedom of speech and association as any individual, and employers and platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, should absolutely have the ability to associate with who they want, or host whatever opinions they want, free from government reprisal.

Regarding Mr. Diaz's firing, well, that is absolute bullshite. I hope he has some sort of grounds for an unlawful termination suit, but without knowing the terms of his employment contract, I don't know if that will be the case. Florida is an at-will (there's that phrase again) state where legal protections for the privately employed are sparse.

I would suggest "speaking with your wallet," but boycotts are generally pretty ineffective.

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A week ago a team of Doctors produced a You Tube video in support of the use of Hydroxy. She was fired under the threat of terminating her entire team should she refuse to "go along" That Hospital Board ..... line up at the pump ....you'll get hit hard.

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Dr. Gold, on the other hand. I'm not quite sure what to make of her. Her CV suggests being a serial bullshite spinner and I have a very difficult time taking anything she says seriously at this point. Her employment history is sparse as hell, and substantiation is a bitch. Hell, she hasn't even disclosed where she was fired from. I can't hear anything this Dr. says without a veritable pillar of salt.

But the same argument I put forward above applies. I hate this absolutely stupid shibboleth, but "freedom of speech does not entitle you to freedom from consequences," and she's an MD spinning what are, by consensus of the medical and scientific community at large, potentially harmful yarns in the middle of a pandemic. If a board of directors has someone that they believe has revealed themselves to be medically unfit to practice on their team, then it's within their rights to remove them from their practice. 1st Amendment reprisal does not enter into the equation here.

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There are numerous ways to handle this silliness without priming the pump of a lawsuit. Mom's and Dad's spending their money at Auburn, should tell their "CHILDREN" Take any class under him and you will pay that tuition yourself. If he's preaching to classes less than 50% of the intended occupancy, he is a waste of time and should be simple uninvited to return.

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And that's a good way to handle it rather than outright termination. Make it about his performance, or lack of need, then do not renew his contract.

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The Administration is a group of cowards not willing to go to mat to remove trouble makers from the faculty. He is not a Professor. Not tenured ....do not leave the door open to give the clown a platform ....

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The cowardly move would be to fire his arse because you're worried about your image, being scared of losing that sweet, sweet donation money.

If higher-ed in the arts means anything at all, hell, being American, it means sometimes being exposed to those ideas, learning to tolerate the intolerable, trusting in reason to weed it out before it becomes action and trusting in debate to transform those that believe the intolerable. Auburn supposedly supports this via their endorsement of AAUP guidelines, their own written policy and what-not. Instead we get this cowardly "exploring our options" bull. I have no problem with Auburn coming out and calling it bullshite in the strongest possible terms, but floating the veiled threat was a step over the line for me.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.