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. The First Amendment protects some exercises of academic freedom by public-university professors and public universities, but the bounds of these protections are not well defined. When a professor violates an official university pronoun policy by purposefully misgendering a student as part of a classroom-management device, a conflict arises between the professor’s individual academic freedom and the university’s institutional academic freedom. This Comment first seeks to situate this type of conflict within the history of academic freedom and the judicial principles that the Supreme Court and lower courts have used to discuss academic freedom. The Comment then argues that courts evaluating a conflict between individual and institutional academic freedoms should rule in favor of whichever exercise of academic freedom ensures that students can fully access the content of the lecture. In the case of misgendering as classroom management, the professor’s exercise of academic freedom harms the misgendered student and makes it difficult for that student to fully engage with the lecture, while the university’s exercise of academic freedom to promulgate a pronoun policy furthers a pedagogical environment in which all students can equally access educational content. Thus, the university’s exercise of academic freedom should override the professor’s in this conflict.

近年来，公立大学颁布了代词政策，旨在鼓励教授和学生尊重他人用来表明自己身份的代词。不遵守代词政策而是对学生进行性别歧视的教授 - 或使用与学生的性别认同不匹配的性别词语或代词 - 可能会因违反代词政策而受到其大学的纪律处分。

该评论认为，教授在课堂上发表错误性别学生的言论不应受到教授第一修正案的学术自由权的保护，该权利传统上涵盖教学和学术。第一修正案保护公立大学教授和公立大学的一些学术自由行使，但这些保护的范围没有明确界定。当教授违反官方大学代词政策，故意将学生性别错误作为课堂管理工具的一部分时，教授的个人学术自由与大学的机构学术自由之间就会出现冲突。本评论首先试图将此类冲突置于学术自由的历史以及最高法院和下级法院用来讨论学术自由的司法原则中。该评论随后辩称，评估个人和机构学术自由之间冲突的法院应裁定支持任何学术自由的行使，以确保学生可以充分访问讲座的内容。在课堂管理中的性别错误的情况下，教授行使学术自由会伤害性别错误的学生，使该学生难以充分参与讲座，而大学行使学术自由颁布代词政策则进一步促进了教学环境所有学生都可以平等地访问教育内容。因此，