Chicago State U. Will Pay $650,000 in Legal Settlement Over Faculty Blog
By Terry Nguyen
January 8, 2019
A four-year legal battle between the administration at Chicago State University and two of its professors has ended in a $650,000 settlement of a lawsuit over faculty members’ First Amendment rights to publish a blog criticizing administrators.
Chicago State U.
Chicago State has settled, for $650,000, a lawsuit over faculty members’ rights to publish a blog critical of university administrators.
The university’s settlement covers the professors’ claims, lawyers’ fees, and legal damages, in addition to revising the speech policies challenged in the initial lawsuit, according to a settlement agreement published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which supported the lawsuit as part of its effort to protect campus free-speech rights.
We’re sorry. Something went wrong.
We are unable to fully display the content of this page.
The most likely cause of this is a content blocker on your computer or network. Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows
javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net.
Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page.
You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one,
or subscribe.
If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com
A four-year legal battle between the administration at Chicago State University and two of its professors has ended in a $650,000 settlement of a lawsuit over faculty members’ First Amendment rights to publish a blog criticizing administrators.
Chicago State U.
Chicago State has settled, for $650,000, a lawsuit over faculty members’ rights to publish a blog critical of university administrators.
The university’s settlement covers the professors’ claims, lawyers’ fees, and legal damages, in addition to revising the speech policies challenged in the initial lawsuit, according to a settlement agreement published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which supported the lawsuit as part of its effort to protect campus free-speech rights.
The case was filed in 2014 by Phillip Beverly, an associate professor of political science and the Faculty Senate president, and Robert Bionaz, then an associate professor of history. It accused university leaders of seeking to restrict faculty members’ speech on the independent CSU Faculty Voice blog. The blog, which started in 2009, is critical of the university’s leadership and discusses concerns about the administration’s accountability.
The lawsuit was brought after the university sent a cease-and-desist letter to the site, requiring its managers to “immediately disable” the blog “to avoid legal action.” Chicago State also stated that the blog had used university “trade names and marks” without permission and had violated decorum policies expected of faculty members.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a new blog post, Bionaz, who has since retired from Chicago State, criticized the settlement as another “unnecessary and costly” defense of Wayne D. Watson, the university’s former president, who stepped down in 2016 after a string of controversies.
“So the university must once again pay the price for Wayne Watson’s incompetence, his vindictiveness, his mendacity,” Bionaz wrote. “Hopefully, the settlement indicates that at least someone responsible for administering this school will actually put the university’s interests first.”
Under Watson’s leadership, Chicago State administrators had a tense relationship with faculty members. University administrators used Illinois’s public-records law to get information from the Faculty Senate in 2014, after the group refused to release details of a faculty vote to administrators.
In response to a request for comment about the settlement and Bionaz’s statements, a university spokeswoman, Sabrina Land, said, “We worked with our insurance company to reach the best settlement, and now the university is moving forward.”
