That’s… Wow, since when can someone bar someone else from testifying in court? I thought it was the pursuit of truth?
If they were being subpoenaed - compelled to be a witness - I am sure the matter would be different.
expert witnesses are much different from a regular witness since they have an exception to the hearsay rule (can testify about things they didn't directly observe themselves), their credentials are examined, they make a report, they are required to be paid, etc. Because of this you cannot subpoena them like a regular witness.
more info https://www.expertinstitute.com/resources/insights/can-a-non...
They're allowed to testify in court. They are just not allowed to get paid to do it, nor are they allowed to use their affiliation with the university as credentials when testifying because they are not speaking for the university.
>"It is important to note that the university did not deny the First Amendment rights or academic freedom of professors Dan Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Austin," the school said in an email to NPR. "Rather, the university denied requests of these full-time employees to undertake outside paid work that is adverse to the university's interests as a state of Florida institution."
The operative phrase there is "outside paid work."
I believe you interpreted NPR's article exactly the way NPR intended you to interpret it. That is to say, you were supposed to read it and walk away misinformed due to the framing.
So Gray Wimsett at least claims it is against the policy to volunteer to do the work in this case.
From the University of Florida: "Conflict of Commitment: occurs when a University Employee engages in an Outside Activity, either paid or unpaid, that could interfere with their professional obligations to the University." https://policy.ufl.edu/policy/conflicts-of-commitment-and-co...
> you interpreted NPR's article exactly the way NPR intended you to interpret it.
This take seems born out of bias, one that comes with prebuilt animosity toward NPR while assuming the university admin's stated reason is the sole and actual reason for denying testimony.
It's notable that the university could defuse the situation by clarifying what are acceptable avenues for the professors to testify - and then doesn't do that.
Do you believe the purpose of the article was to inform you of the nuances on both sides and let you make an informed judgement for yourself?
I hope not. We tried that with journalism and wound up with endless views from nowhere. It was barely better than when journalists parrot Gov/Biz/LEO press releases w/o vetting the content (which is done all the time).
edit: I'll append to note that NPR's 2008 election coverage set a gold standard for equanimity that I haven't seen repeated (inc by NPR). They gave conservatives a better shake than RW news orgs did.
Everyone is biased. The key to better journalism is competency.
The key to worse journalism is having an arms-race reaction to bias and building a news org on that reaction - which is to say building it out of bias.
One example of how it's unimportant: A motto like "fair and balanced" kind of pretends that one particular network wasn't founded on activism but it was. More importantly, it's the activism that those viewers want.
Perhaps the motto brings the viewers some comfort by reinforcing a view that the only world worth having is the one they visualize. Why take that away based on some arbitrary calculation?
What you quoted "It is important to note that the university did not deny the First Amendment rights or academic freedom of professors..." comes from University of Florida and as far as I can tell is not an airtight argument. No valid conflict of interest is presented in the article for for example.
If typically has allowed such outside work, if there was not a conflict on a governmental issue, then the University of Florida as a governmental institution is performing 'self dealing', in this case by putting their thumb on the scale of public discourse, by limiting/restricting the speech of the professors.
Part of why we have the first amendment is to limit the ability of the government to effect the course of public discourse and the University of Florida is definitely doing that.
If they were simply not allowed to take payment for that testimony, the article and title should reflect that, regardless if such a policy is also wrong.
And I would have liked for the article to elaborate more on this barring. What would happen if they testified anyway, if they did or did not get paid for it, etc.. It is after all the central issue of the article, and that they leave it so vague is either incompetence or deception.