'Insanely chilling': Academic freedom suit targets new California college diversity mandates

The threat to academic freedom from antiracism orthodoxy is expanding beyond one rural community college district to the entire California Community Colleges system, according to new filings in a professor's First Amendment retaliation and chilling-effects litigation.

Last month, Daymon Johnson joined his history colleagues Matthew Garrett and Erin Miller in suing Bakersfield College and the Kern Community College District for allegedly weaponized investigations into their roles in the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a right-leaning campus think tank with nearly two dozen "committed faculty."

A 30-year veteran of the Bakersfield school and a "Person of Color," Johnson took over as RIFL's faculty lead from its founder Garrett, who is now appealing his firing by KCCD in a secret board vote based on charges including the "dishonesty" of disagreeing with colleagues. Both are tenured.

The five-month investigation on him – for "criticizing and questioning a colleague’s views on RIFL’s Facebook page" –was itself the punishment and source of his ongoing self-censorship, Johnson claims. 

His July 13 declaration notes that KCCD deemed the term "Cultural Marxism" an example of "hate speech" in Garrett's termination notice. Johnson has often used the term but now refrains for fear of termination, including by not recommending Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz's forthcoming book "Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America."

A critic of Johnson filed a human resources complaint against him May 24 for not removing a post from RIFL's Facebook page – by a "retired professor" – that named the critic among "woke" faculty who "sling accusations" against RIFL faculty without evidence, according to Johnson. The complaint was also sent to KCCD's general counsel.

Before he turned over the Facebook page to retired faculty, "I deleted a few third-party posts … fearing that Defendants would hold me accountable" for them, the declaration states. 

The charges against Garrett could equally be applied to Johnson in past and hypothetical situations, the latter says.

One of them concerned a colleague's "profane" question to Garrett that students overheard and apparently misinterpreted.

"This is insanely chilling" to think that "students who feel 'hurt' while eavesdropping (without knowing the context) can justify disciplining me or even firing me – for merely listening."

Johnson's experience in the Central Valley institutions is "just a microcosm of a greater problem impacting all faculty" in the CCC system since it tied employment to faculty promotion of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and antiracism principles this spring, the newly amended complaint says.

It adds CCC Chancellor Sonya Christian, who previously led both BC and KCCD during the RIFL-related investigations, as a defendant. She cofounded BC's Social Justice Institute, an ideologically opposed think tank whose affiliated faculty have filed complaints against RIFL faculty including Johnson, some predating the COVID-19 pandemic.

The amended suit also makes new allegations about BC's implementation of the CCC policy, whose DEIA commitments effectively bar Johnson from continuing to serve on screening committees for new hires, he claims.

"Faculty members shall employ teaching, learning, and professional practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles" and administrators "shall include DEIA and anti-racist principles into existing policies and practices, funding allocations, decision-making, planning, and program review processes," one provision of the new policy reads.

Johnson is also self-censoring on non-racial issues that officials would likely frown upon "based on their prior conduct, threats, and commitments to DEIA ideology." He is staying mum about "the participation of biological males in female sports competitions and the holding of 'drag queen story hours' at Bakersfield College’s daycare facility" despite his personal opposition.

"Obedience to the state’s pervasive, all-encompassing political cult is now required" for CCC employees and counts as a "significant" factor in faculty evaluations, which will now compel Johnson to "affirm, promote, and celebrate political ideologies that he rejects and even finds abhorrent" and change his curriculum and teaching to remain at BC, he alleges.

"This makes Johnson the first to go after the new" California Title V regulations for community colleges, which "are to be used to force ideological conformity," Garrett told Just the News. "He won’t be the last."

Federal magistrate Judge Christopher Baker denied Johnson's motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the defendants from "investigating, disciplining, or terminating" him for his "social or political speech" or enforcing the new CCC policy. The July 14 order states it wasn't clear the defendants had been properly served.

The court docket shows the matter got resolved last week, and the defendants have until August 4 to respond to the motion. 

Johnson's declaration argues the scope of the potential harm he faces under CCC policy and recurring hostility from district leaders including trustee John Corkins, who described RIFL faculty as "livestock" to be "taken to the slaughterhouse." 

He has served on several shared-governance committees including the Equal Opportunity and Diversity Advisory Committee, whose first-come, first-serve membership enabled several RIFL faculty to join and form a bloc that slowed its work. 

Johnson has since stopped attending EODAC meetings, however, to "completely avoid having to give my conservative views on race, diversity, equity and inclusion" that might be used to charge him. KCCD's charges against Garrett cited racism claims from an EODAC meeting that were not validated by a recording obtained by Just the News.

A June 5 human resources email requires faculty to take DEIA training before they can serve on screening committees, and encourages them to take training even "if you are not sure if you will ever participate" on such a committee. The training is offered monthly and must be taken every two years to continue serving.

Contrary to the antiracist worldview required by the training, "I have never had reason to view Bakersfield College as a systemically racist institution dominated and ruled by white supremacists ignorant of their own racism," Johnson says.

He has served on "diverse" presidential selection committees that recommended candidates regardless of race who "demonstrated excellent teaching skills and indicated they understood the challenges" of socioeconomically diverse community colleges.

His revised proposed injunction specifically targets the "requirement of DEIA compliance" to serve on screening committees and DEIA use in faculty evaluations.

The amended suit makes a few factual changes. It wasn't Johnson after all who suggested a RIFL critic who called America "a f***ing piece of sh** nation" go to China and say the same about the Chinese Communist Party, but in fact a commenter on RIFL's page, it states.