UChicago Alum Suing U of Tennessee for Deeming Her Social Media Posts Unprofessional chicagomaroon.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chicagomaroon.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
FIRE
Newsdesk by FIRE February 17, 2021
This year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is releasing its 10th list of the “worst colleges for free speech.” Since our first list in 2011, more than 70 institutions in 31 states have found themselves named and shamed for actively working to shut down student and faculty speech rights.
Each year, hundreds of students and faculty members come to FIRE for help when their individual rights are threatened. Many of these cases are quietly resolved. Many more are resolved not so quietly. But the cases you’ll read about below are the ones that went kicking and screaming right onto this list.
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Kimberly Diei, a pharmacy student at the University of Tennessee, is suing the university over its professionalism policies for medical students.
Kimberly Diei, a second-year doctoral student at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center s College of Pharmacy, said she has a “mind for medicine” and decided to pursue pharmacy as a way to touch the lives of a range of patients.
Diei got her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences at the University of Chicago, which is considered one of the nation’s most academically rigorous colleges. She is a frequent participant in class, so much so that she said classmates have complained and approached her about limiting her speaking time.
In August 2019, Kimberly Diei enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Tennessee at Memphis, where she’s studying to earn her doctorate from the College of Pharmacy by 2023.
But an anonymous complaint about Diei’s Twitter and Instagram posts put those hopes in jeopardy. In September 2019, someone reported her social media activity to the pharmacy college’s Professional Conduct Committee. The committee reprimanded Diei for violating the college’s professional standards.
A year later, after receiving yet another anonymous complaint, the committee investigated Diei’s online content again. Within four days, board members voted to expel her from the pharmacy program, deeming her social media posts too “sexual,” “crude,” or “vulgar.”
Bar Council criticised by tribunal over lawyer complaint royalgazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from royalgazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.