Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS—3d Cir.: Lecturer who formed ‘Alt Right’ group revives speech claim against university, (Sep 9, 2025)

By Jason Albright, J.D.

Among other things, he had published an essay in which he argued that “human racial equality” is a “left-wing myth.”

A former lecturer in philosophy for the New Jersey Institute of Technology, whose contract was not renewed after he was featured in a New York Times piece that included a recorded conversation in which he predicted that “[w]e will have a Europe, in 2050, where the banknotes have Adolf Hitler,” has revived his First Amendment retaliation claim, the Third Circuit found. Applying Pickering, the appeals court said that, on balance, the disruption that the university alleged resulted from his speech “did not outweigh even minimal interest in [his] speech,” and the district court thus erred in concluding that it was not protected by the First Amendment (Jorjani v. New Jersey Institute of Technology, No. 24-2588 (3d Cir. Sept. 8, 2025)).

Lecturer. New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) hired the lecturer in 2015 to teach philosophy. Thereafter, it twice renewed his contract in 2016 and 2017.

Alt Right Corporation. During this time, the lecturer “formed the Alt Right Corporation,” to “widen the message of his philosophy, which he describes as an affirmation of the Indo-European Tradition” and “the idea that European cultures are intimately related to those of Greater Iran and the Persianate World, Hindu India and the Buddhist East and are the sources the [sic] world’s greatest scientific, artistic and spiritual developments.” The lecturer spoke at conferences and published an essay—on “AltRight.com,” a website he helped found—entitled “Against Perennial Philosophy.”

“[H]uman racial equality” as “left-wing myth.” In the essay, he argued that “human racial equality” is a “left-wing myth” and that a great “Promethean” “mentality” rests on a “genetic basis” which “Asians, Arabs, Africans, and other non-Aryan peoples” allegedly lack. The essay also argued that, by means of “genetic engineering” and eugenic “embryo selection,” Iran could produce “great philosophers” by “restor[ing] the pre-Arab and pre-Mongol genetic character of the majority of the Iranian population within only one or two generations.”

No disclosure. The lecturer did not discuss these outside associations with his students or colleagues. He also did not disclose them as required by NJIT policy.

Undercover recording. In 2017, an individual posing as a graduate student contacted the lecturer to discuss “how the Left persecutes and silences Right wing thought in academia.” The individual was actually working with a group called “Hope Not Hate,” whose goal is to “deconstruct[]” individuals it deems “fascist” or “extremist.” The two met at a pub where the operative recorded their conversations, at first with the lecturer’s consent. Later, however, apparently assuming the recording had stopped, the lecturer commented on matters concerning race, immigration, and politics.

New York Times piece. The meeting became a piece published by the New York Times, featuring a video excerpt from the lecturer’s remarks at a conference characterizing “liberalism, democracy, and universal human rights” as “ill-conceived and bankrupt sociopolitical ideologies,” before cutting to a secretly recorded portion of his conversation with the operative.

Secret recording, Hitler, Napoleon, and Alexander the Great. In that secret recording, the lecturer predicted that “[w]e will have a Europe, in 2050, where the banknotes have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great. And Hitler will be seen like that: like Napoleon, like Alexander, not like some weird monster, who is unique in his own category.”

Officials’ denunciations and calls. The day after the New York Times piece was published, NJIT’s president emailed all faculty and staff, denouncing the lecturer’s statements as “antithetical” to NJIT’s “core values.” NJIT’s Dean of the College of Science and Liberal Arts sent a separate email echoing those sentiments, and in the following days, NJIT received some unverified number of calls and, at most, 50 emails expressing concern about the lecturer’s recorded comments and his faculty role.

Paid leave. Six days after the New York Times posted the article, NJIT sent a letter to the lecturer placing him on paid leave. The letter explained the article (1) “caused significant disruption at the university” that NJIT believed would “continue to expand,” and (2) revealed “association with organizations” that the lecturer did not disclose on his outside activity form, despite prior direction to fully update the form the preceding Spring. The letter advised that NJIT planned to investigate whether he had violated university policies or state ethics requirements.

Additional fallout. Fallout continued with NJIT’s Departments of Biology, the Faculty Senate and the Department of History condemning the remarks. The latter demanded the lecturer’s termination and asserted that his “published beliefs create a hostile learning environment for students of color in particular.”

Investigation and nonrenewal of contract. NJIT retained a law firm to investigate, and the firm’s ensuing report concluded that he engaged in practices that created a conflict of interest. The firm found that the lecturer (1) “violated the New Jersey ethics code by failing to disclose that he was a founder, director, and shareholder of the AltRight Corporation”; (2) “violated NJIT faculty policy by cancelling 13 classes in the Spring of 2017,” some of which “were not due to illness as he suggested” and resulted in negative student evaluations; (3) erroneously claimed the “video excerpts in the NYT Op-Ed were misleadingly edited to paint [him] in a false light”; and (4) “exhibited a clear pattern of non-responsiveness from the time he started working at NJIT” by neglecting his email inbox.

NJIT then elected not to renew his contract.

Lawsuit, decision below, and appeal. The lecturer sued NJIT, alleging retaliation in violation of the First Amendment, and a federal district court granted the university’s motion for summary judgment. The district court concluded that the lecturer’s speech was not protected by the First Amendment because “Defendants’ interest in mitigating the disruption caused by Plaintiff’s speech... outweighs Plaintiff’s interest in its expression.” The lecturer appealed to the Third Circuit.

Pickering test. The appeals court found that NJIT’s actions do not pass the ordinary analysis under Pickering v. Bd. of Ed., 391 U.S. 563 (1968). The parties agreed that the lecturer spoke as a private citizen on a matter of public concern, and the court needed only to consider whether the distractions the university identified as flowing from his speech outweighed the “interest in his discussion.” The Third Circuit found that they did not.

Interest in his speech. Beginning with the lecturer’s speech, the appeals court observed that it “occurred entirely outside NJIT’s academic environs.” And “[h]is theories, even if lacking in classical rigor, remain of public import,” according to the opinion.

NJIT’s interest as employer. The court thus weighed the interest in the lecturer’s speech against the university’s interest, as an employer, “to promote ‘the efficiency of the public services it performs.’” Here, NJIT pointed to the “disruption” that followed the publication of the lecturer’s remarks, consisting of certain students’ disapproval of his speech, disagreement among faculty, and administrators fielding complaints. The Third Circuit ultimately found that the “minimal evidence of disruption” that NJIT cited “differs little from the ordinary operation of a public university and therefore cannot outweigh interest in [the lecturer’s] speech.”

No disruption of administration of university. First, according to the appeals court, there was no support for the university’s contention that student disapproval of the lecturer’s speech disrupted the administration of the university. “Some students and alumni disagreed with [his] views,” the court noted. “But NJIT never identified the exact number of calls or complaints made in person or writing, nor any details about the students’ concerns.” And “Entirely absent is any evidence of specific student protests, upheaval, or unwillingness to abide by university policies.” NJIT’s theory that student dissent rose to the level of “disruption” was thus simply speculative, said the court, Nor were the cited disputes among the lecturer and his colleagues “disruption,” in the view of the Third Circuit. NJIT cited pointed letters denouncing the lecturer published by faculty in the pages of the student newspaper, but “that is precisely the sort of reasoned debate that distinguishes speech from distraction,” said the court. Challenges to “employee harmony” might pose disruption when disagreements disturb “close working relationships,” the appeals court said. Exhibiting its situation-sense of academia, however, the Third Circuit noted that “that concern is irrelevant inside the university where professors serve the needs of their students, not fellow academics.”

That left only “NJIT’s ordinary obligation to field calls and emails, routine administrative tasks that, conceivably, might become so overwhelming in number or nature as to disrupt.” And here, “Calls were so few that NJIT’s witness was ‘not sure what the number is,’ and only knew ‘by reading some emails that so-and-so called the mother, and so-and-so called, former student called, things of that nature.’”

Non-denigrating environment? Finally, though NJIT raised an “interest in providing a non-denigrating environment” and appealed to the notion that the lecturer’s views could, “theoretically, undermine the pedagogical relationship between a teacher and student,” in the words of the court, the university failed to point to anything in the record that indicated this determination “was based on competence or qualifications.”

“In essence,” said the court, “NJIT posits that because [the lecturer] offered views it disliked, the First Amendment should not apply, and it is entitled to summary judgment. We cannot agree, lest we permit ‘universities to discipline professors, students, and staff any time their speech might cause offense.’”

Finding that, on balance, the disruption the university described did not outweigh even minimal interest in the lecturer’s speech, the Third Circuit concluded that the district court erred in holding that his speech was not protected by the First Amendment. The judgment of the district court was thus vacated and remanded.

The case is No. 24-2588.

Judge: Matey, P.

Attorneys: Patrick Trainor (Law Offices of Patrick Trainor) for Jason Jorjani. Connor E. Bradley (Walsh Pizzi O’Reilly Falanga) for New Jersey Institute of Technology, Joel S. Bloom, Kevin J. Belfield, Fadi P. Deek, Holly Stern, and Christine Li.

Companies: New Jersey Institute of Technology

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