Far-right lecturer asks Third Circuit to restore retaliation claims over suspension

PHILADELPHIA (CN) — A far-right college lecturer who was suspended and denied a renewed contract for reportedly espousing off-campus comments supporting Adolf Hitler and white supremacy asked a Third Circuit panel on Wednesday to consider whether his employment should have been protected under the First Amendment.

Following outrage from students, employees and alumni after the comments, the New Jersey Institute of Technology suspended Jason Jorjani — a philosopher and occultist with ties to the alt-right and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer — in September 2017 from his philosophy courses and later declined to renew his teaching contract.

U.S. District Judge William J. Martini dismissed Jorjani’s defamation claims in 2019, and later determined in 2024 that Jorjani’s speech caused such a significant disruption to the school’s educational mission so as to outweigh Jorjani’s interest in expression, allowing the university to take adverse action against him.

Representing Jorjani before the three-judge panel Wednesday, attorney Frederick C. Kelly III began his oral arguments by defending his client’s comments on race by noting that the record shows “a longstanding and legitimate debate on why the races differ in average intelligence” before U.S. Circuit Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, a Barack Obama appointee, redirected him.

Shifting focus to Jorjani’s controversial comments, Kelly suggested that both university and the lower court had overblown the disruptions caused by Jorjani’s statements.

In September 2017, the New York Times released an op-ed on a conversation with Jorjani that was recorded by an undercover anti-racist activist. In that conversation, Jorjani suggested Europe in 2050 would build concentration camps “at the cost of a few hundred million people” and that Adolf Hitler would be “seen as a great European leader” akin to Napoleon Bonaparte or Alexander the Great.

Jorjani has claimed the recording spliced and rearranged his statements in an unflattering manner.

Following the op-ed’s release, the university also unearthed a 2016 online article where Jorjani asserted that “Asians, Arabs, Africans and other non-Aryan peoples” are genetically and intellectually subpar, and suggested Iran should engage in eugenics to “restore the pre-Arab and pre-Mongol genetic character” of the country.

“This disruption here is not worthy of a university,” Kelly told the court panel Wednesday. “The question should be, ‘Gee whiz, do we have the ability to debate this? Is some kind of disaster going to befall us before we can debate this?’ If not, the disruption here — electronic communications, less than 50 in number — is going to disrupt the university? That speaks very ill of our universities.”

Krause asked Kelly how he would factor in the university’s interest in protecting its students’ learning environment, noting that the First Amendment “doesn’t require a public employer to sit idly by while its officers make racial insults against those they are hired to serve.”

“If you spend just five minutes with the essay … it is clear it’s not insult,” Kelly replied. “It’s not that it has some saving intellectual content; it is all intellectual content. It’s an appeal to reason.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Matey asked attorney Mark Haefner, representing the school and its administrators, whether the university was truly overburdened by disruptions caused by Jorjani’s statements.

“Why is that enough?” Matey, a Donald Trump appointee, asked Haefner. “Why isn’t that just sort of the operation of the normal university, whose entire product is ideas? That’s the only thing you’re selling: debate and discourse about ideas of all sorts of merit. Why isn’t that just the kind of thing that happens at universities all the time?”

Haefner noted that several students had filed complaints, that one student had dropped Jorjani’s class due to the scandal following the New York Times op-ed, and that another had previously dropped Jorjani’s class after researching Jorjani left them “troubled.”

“Having actual disruption certainly permits the argument that we can act now to avoid future disruption,” Haefner told the court panel. “So it’s not just mere speculation that if we don’t do something, it’s going to get worse; it’s actual reasonable inference based on how bad things are today.”

During rebuttal, Krause pressed Kelly on Haefner’s concerns over potential long-term disruption of university activities.

“[Jorjani’s] statement was that Asians, Arabs, Africans and other non-Aryans lack a genetic basis for the highest philosophical thought, and he is teaching philosophy to those students,” Krause told Kelly. “So why isn’t your colleague right that, for students who fall into those categories, that it’s on its face clear that it would cause a disruption to their matriculation of the class and their ability to be treated fairly in that class.”

“It’s not that ‘Gee whiz, all the whites have the ability to do philosophy and all the Brown people don’t,’” Kelly said. “That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying virtually no one has the ability to do this.”

“But he does seem to be saying that the only ones, and maybe they’re one-in-a-million, but the only ones who would be able to achieve that are Aryan,” Krause replied.

Kelly stammered for a few seconds before Krause continued: “What does that communicate for students who want to study philosophy and are presented with the only option of taking his class?”

U.S. Circuit Judge Peter J. Phipps, also a Trump appointee, joined Krause’s questioning on whether Jorjani’s race-supremacy comments could be considered as insulting toward his students — a determination that, if made, would bar the comments from First Amendment protections.

Follow @JacksonHeals