North Carolina School That Fired Professor for Criticizing CRT Settles Lawsuit — Back Pay and New Free Speech Policy

The Governor’s School of North Carolina, which purportedly promises parents that their children would be exposed “to a wide range of differing viewpoints,” has settled a lawsuit after firing a professor who criticized racially divisive ideology.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represents Dr. David Phillips, who attended the school in his youth and later taught English, announced that the school paid the fired professor about four years of his annual stipend and adopted “a policy to respect faculty free speech in its elective seminars—like the ones Phillips gave shortly before he was fired.”

BCN wrote about this lawsuit almost a year ago.

Dr. Phillips said he did not call for “critical race theory” to be banned but openly discussed. In his opinion, it is harmful. He said he complained over the years about how he and other dissenters were treated. A true educator wants to help students think critically, not confirm their biases and prejudices.

“Those goals are at the core of the Governor’s School’s mission,” Dr. Phillips said. “The school promises parents that prospective students will be exposed to a wide range of differing viewpoints, so they can explore their own perspectives with new insights.”

ADF attorney Hal Frampton said that Dr. Phillips ”was beloved, respected, and well-regarded by both students and faculty as an advocate for students who felt that their voices weren’t being heard and their perspectives weren’t welcomed at the Governor’s School.”

Will the Governor’s School of North Carolina do what it claimed to do all along: expose students to a wide range of differing viewpoints?

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