Daymon Johnson, a Bakersfield College history professor, settled with college and district officials after he sued them over DEI requirements.<\/p>\n
Institute for Free Speech<\/p>\n
Bakersfield College history professor Daymon Johnson secured a settlement last week after a three-year legal battle<\/a> with the college and its district over the California Community College system\u2019s requirements for faculty related to diversity, equity, inclusion and access.<\/p>\n In a 2023 lawsuit, Johnson accused administrators of penalizing him and other professors for expressing conservative political and social views based on the system\u2019s DEIA principles, including that faculty \u201cemploy teaching, learning, and professional practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles\u201d and demonstrate \u201cproficiency in DEIA-related performance to teach, work, or lead within California community colleges.\u201d He claimed the mandate would force him to express views he didn\u2019t believe. Johnson is a member of the Renegade Institute for Liberty<\/a>, a faculty group at Bakersfield that describes itself as dedicated to \u201cfree speech,\u201d \u201cfree markets\u201d and \u201cAmerican ideas within the broader Western tradition of meritocracy.\u201d<\/p>\n The settlement<\/a> turns a preliminary injunction granted by a federal court in February into a five-year permanent injunction that prevents administrators from investigating, disciplining or terminating Johnson for political speech. But he\u2019s still required to attend mandatory DEIA training to serve on a faculty screening committee. Johnson also won $150,000 toward his attorneys\u2019 fees, according to the Institute for Free Speech, which represented him in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter three years, rather than being mandated to value and promote DEI with its neo-Marxist understanding of race, grievance, identity politics, and cloaked affirmative action, I can finally get back to focusing on what I\u2019ve always cared about\u2014teaching history and engaging in the free exchange of ideas,\u201d Johnson said in a news release<\/a> from the Institute for Free Speech. \u201cI hope this settlement sends a message to college officials across California: faculty cannot be compelled to endorse political ideologies they don\u2019t believe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daymon Johnson, a Bakersfield College history professor, settled with college and district officials after he sued them over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,5676,15,584,8527,1286,100],"class_list":["post-396359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-career","tag-education","tag-events","tag-higher","tag-jobs","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}