We keep getting new ones every week. University professors—supposedly enjoying academic freedom—keep getting into trouble for offensive political speech. Sometimes they get fired or punished and sometimes they don’t. How do administrators decide? It doesn’t seem like it’s about the politics.

The professor as activist: What will get you fired?

So today it’s time for the latest bitter ILYBYGTH play-along: Can YOU match these professors with their punishments? [Only click on the links if you want to cheat.] [And be warned: These rants sometimes include offensive language.]

Case 1: Law-school professor with a history of racist-y statements declares (incorrectly) that very few black students are top in their class. The line that got her in the most trouble? “[O]ur country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.”

Case 2: University professor rants on facebook about how much he hates white people. (He’s white, by the way.) The troublesome lines: “I now hate white people. . . . I hereby resign from my race. Fuck these people. . . . Fuck you, too.”

Case 3: Grad student instructor confronts a conservative undergrad. Stood in front of the undergrad’s Turning Point USA table and shouted, “”Becky the neo-fascist, right here. Wants to destroy public schools, public universities. Hates DACA kids. . . . Fight white nationalism! Fight white supremacy!”

Case 4: Adjunct instructor declares his support for antifa and hints that he’d like to hit Trump with a baseball bat. Gets heat for declaring on facebook: “It’s not pretty, and I’m not proud, but seeing what Evangelical Christians are doing to this country and its people fills me with rage, and a desire to exact revenge.”

So how were these professors punished? Are left-wing professors protected? Are conservatives attacked? Not so much. It seems like the differences are more about whether or not the professor had tenure.

Can you match the cases above with the punishments below?

Punishment #1: Instructor is fired.

Punishment #2: Instructor is removed from teaching, but keeps her job. The university president calls her ideas “repugnant.”

Punishment #3: Instructor is removed from teaching but keeps her job. University president privately apologizes to her for having to punish her.

Punishment #4: Instructor is fired, then un-fired. University calls his comments “offensive” and says they “violated university policy.” However, on a re-think, the university decided that “No student or university employee has come forward to assert that [the instructor] has in some way penalized them for their race. . . . There is no evidence that he administered grades and conducted himself in class in a manner that reveals any racial bias on his part.”

…so what do you think? Can you match the punishments with the cases? And, most intriguingly, do these cases reveal that conservative professors are punished more harshly than liberal ones? That mocking and belittling African Americans is a bigger crime on campus than threatening and insulting white people or evangelicals?