Firing teachers who cheer Charlie Kirk’s murder isn’t embracing ‘cancel culture’

Listen to the mainstream media, and you’ll hear that conservatives, once stalwart opponents to censorship, are now themselves the censors.

“Is the right embracing cancel culture after the Charlie Kirk assassination?” Newsweek asks.

Poppycock.

No one has ever argued that expression should never face consequence of any kind.

Were I tomorrow to openly insult my boss and pen a column praising the finer points of “Mein Kampf,” my employer would be well within its right to show me the door.

If a pastor of a Christian church espoused atheism, the elder board would be wise to keep him from preaching.

In this case, if a teacher celebrates the murder of a father, it’s only normal that parents might email their principal requesting action.

The issue with left-wing crusades for cancellation over the previous decade isn’t that individuals faced social consequences for their speech but that the speech itself comprised innocuous opinions or inconvenient facts.

Examples abound of individuals facing professional sanction for the most trivial of expression.

Analyst David Shor lost his job for noting data that found riots actually helped the right.

A professor had to pack up his office for teaching the proper pronunciation of a Chinese word that sounded like an English slur.

A family-owned hummus chain lost a contract with Costco because of a post from the owner’s 14-year-old daughter.

Compare such inane expressions to recent posts from school personnel: “Finally, an assassin that didn’t miss their mark” with a happy emoji; “F–k Charlie Kirk and f–k you if you label him as anything other than a racist piece of s–t”; a note that news of Kirk’s death “brightened up” their day.

Do we trust these educators to raise virtuous children and teach them fairly?

As my colleague Robert Pondiscio and Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty education counsel Cory Brewer note in a recent report, teacher speech is subject to the so-called Pickering Test, written by Justice Thurgood Marshall in Pickering v. Board of Education:

“The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.”

If a teacher’s speech — or any other employee’s for that matter — interrupts his or her employer’s ability to perform its duties, termination is justified.

Indeed, at every school where I’ve ever worked, there were faculty handbooks with clauses and sections on appropriate social-media use, even off-hours.

There’s a strong case to be made that these recent expressions undercut the school’s ability to perform its prime purpose of educating children.

Do we trust a social-studies teacher to cover sensitive topics or grade fairly if they caricature Kirk as a Nazi?

Do we trust a teacher to provide a lesson on mental health or social-emotional learning if he or she delights in death?

Do we think school leaders who wish bullets through the heads of their political enemies will create welcoming institutions for conservative or faithful families?

Employers can fire employees for objectionable speech. Ultimately, this question is a prudential, not a legal, matter. No teacher faces jail time for the posts but rather social stigma and a lost job.

Where do we draw the lines?

Frustratingly, there is no clear standard or limiting principle for interpersonal conflicts. Once these were local decisions for individual employers to make, reflecting community preferences.

A private, Christian school with clear ethics, an urban public district with thousands of employees and a rural public school with a small staff might make different decisions for reasons both practical and moral according to their own policies and depending on the severity of the speech.

As a former public-school teacher and assistant principal, I worked with teachers who were publicly critical of conservatism.

That’s not a fire-able offense, and the right must be careful lest they themselves become the Jacobins.

However, I can tell you that I would not welcome a teacher into my building to teach 6-year-olds who only the night before wrote “f–k you” to a substantial portion of the populace on social media.

Neither would I if a teacher posted in celebration after George Floyd’s death.

Educators have a right to free speech, but no guaranteed right to the lectern in front of a classroom of impressionable minds.

Daniel Buck is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network, and a former public-school teacher and administrator.