University of North Texas (UNT) has agreed to pay $165,000 to settle a First Amendment lawsuit brought by a former math professor, who was fired after mocking the concept of “microaggressions” as “garbage.”
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian legal group representing professor Nathaniel Hiers in the case, celebrated the settlement as a “win for free speech on public university campuses.”
“We hope this is the first step in the university restoring its role as a marketplace of ideas rather than an echo chamber for one viewpoint,” said ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer.
The case stemmed from an incident in November 2019, when someone anonymously left a stack of flyers warning against “microaggressions” in the UNT mathematics department’s faculty lounge….