Professors Speak Out: The Truth about Campus Investigations

Professors Speak Out showcases the stories of 22 faculty members from various fields, all of whom have been investigated by their own colleges or universities. These disturbing narratives reflect the growing frequency of absurd campus investigations, which often result from the expression of disfavored opinions--opinions that should be protected by free speech rights and longstanding principles of academic freedom. Some of the contributors paid the ultimate price, the loss of a tenured faculty position. Many others learned that the investigation itself is the punishment, with chilled speech an inevitable byproduct. By providing a badly needed platform for persecuted voices in contemporary academia, this unique volume exposes the grave injustice that confronts faculty members today and calls into serious question the twisted bureaucratic processes that give rise to such investigations. Taken together, the stories told here show how a new campus McCarthyism is assailing academic freedom.

Nicholas H. Wolfinger is Professor of Family and Consumer Studies and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles, both in sociology. He is the author of Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages (2005), Fragile Families and the Marriage Agenda (edited with Lori Kowaleski-Jones, 2005), Do Babies Matter Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower (with Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden, 2013), Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Children, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos (with W. Bradford Wilcox, 2016), and Thanks for Nothing: The Economics of Single Motherhood since 1980 (with Matthew McKeever, 2024). Wolfinger is the author of about 40 articles or chapters, as well as short pieces in The Atlantic, National Review, Huffington Post, and other outlets. Between 2016 and 2021, his university investigated him three times.