Gabrielle Dohmen

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Comment
Volume 89.6
Academic Freedom and Misgendered Honorifics in the Classroom
Gabrielle Dohmen
B.S. 2017, University of Notre Dame; J.D. Candidate 2023, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professors Geoffrey Stone and William Hubbard for their helpful guidance. I am also very grateful to the Board of the University of Chicago Law Review for their comments, including exceptional help from Simon Jacobs, Leigh Johnson, Ryne Cannon, and Samantha Sherman.

In recent years, public universities have promulgated pronoun policies designed to encourage professors and students to respect the pronouns that others use to identify themselves. A professor who does not follow the pronoun policy and instead misgenders a student—or uses gendered words or pronouns that do not match that student’s gender identity—may be disciplined by their university for violating the pronoun policy. This Comment argues that professorial speech misgendering students in the classroom should not be protected by a professor’s First Amendment right to academic freedom, which traditionally covers teaching and scholarship.