Frank Easterbrook

I do recall him as a sort of compelling professor.

But looking back on things, much of what we read and much of what I remember were the talismanic cases and essays that we read by the likes of Robert Bork, Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner.

So these Chicago School figureheads, these law and economics disciples.

So ahead of this sort of Naples antitrust meetings, I'd actually been marinated in this kind of Chicago School sauce or, or soup.

But the court left open the possibility that a different enforcement record could lead to a justiciable case later on.

And Judge Easterbrook wrote separately, arguing that professors have this concept of academic freedom backwards, that these professors have that concept backwards.

In his view, the academic freedom principally belongs to the university as an institution, not to individual faculty members.

And the university has to be able to decide what will be taught, who will teach it, and how its educational program will be structured.

And the state legislature is responsible for the university, and so that flows to them to make those decisions.

His wonderfully provocative formulation is that the professor's classroom speech, quote, has not been regulated, it has been hired.

And that obviously sets up this seeming conflict, at least between Judge Easterbrook and the panel, the 11th Circuit panel in Purnell.

If academic freedom means creating a sphere insulated from political orthodoxy, who are we insulating from whom? Is it the professor from the university? Is it the university from the legislature? Is it the student from the professor? Or somehow all three of those at the same time? So perhaps that question that we've been trying to solve for about 800 years, we can answer all of your questions here on this panel.