Broad Backing for Appeal by Conservative Professor

Mike Adams, a conservative, Christian professor who believes his promotion to full professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington was derailed because of opposition to his views, is getting broad backing on a key point in his legal fight. In a decision in March, a federal judge -- citing a controversial Supreme Court ruling about public employees -- said that newspaper columns that Adams wrote were not protected by the First Amendment (in terms of his case) because he included them in his tenure dossier. Adams has been receiving support from the Alliance Defense Fund. On Friday, several groups that have not weighed in on the merits of Adams' promotion bid filed a brief backing his appeal, saying that the finding that the contents of a tenure file lacked academic freedom protection was a dangerous precedent. The groups backing the appeal are the American Association of University Professors, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. Their brief may be found here.