Fordham University faces backlash for suspension of student over Instagram posts

In July 2020, Austin Tong, a rising senior at Fordham University, was placed on probation and barred from campus as a result of two posts he made on social media, one regarding a killing during the George Floyd protests, and another with respect to the 31st anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In response to the university’s actions, Tong sued Fordham for allegedly failing to “substantially adhere to its own published rules and guidelines for disciplinary proceedings.”

Key Players

Austin Tong is a senior at Fordham. As a result of the controversy surrounding his probation and activity on Instagram, he has amassed nearly 28,000 followers, received mention in the Wall Street Journal, and interviewed with various conservative media outlets, including Fox News and One America News. Tong is the former vice president of operations in Fordham’s undergraduate student government (he resigned for reasons unrelated to his probation) and is an avid supporter of President Donald Trump. 

Fordham University is a Catholic and Jesuit research institution located in the Bronx, New York. Fordham currently holds the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education’s (FIRE’s) lowest rating for Free Speech, meaning it enforces at least one university policy — in this case, an information technology usage rule — that “both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” Fordham has continually appealed a 2019 New York State Supreme Court decision that nullified the university’s decision to withhold club status from Students for Justice in Palestine, an on-campus political group, according to The Observer, Fordham’s student newspaper. 

Further Details

On June 3, Tong posted a photo memorializing the late retired St. Louis Police Captain David Dorn, who was killed June 2 in a pawn shop by a looter during the unrest following the police killing of George Floyd. The photo is captioned “Y’all a bunch of hypocrites,” commenting on the lack of public reaction to Dorn’s death. On June 4, Tong posted a photo of himself with a legally obtained semiautomatic rifle, captioned “Don’t tread on me. #198964 ????”; the hashtag is commonly used by Chinese citizens to avoid censorship of online discussions regarding the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.

According to Reason, the nation’s leading libertarian magazine, Fordham Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students Keith Eldredge wrote to Tong on June 8 to tell him he was under investigation by the university regarding the two Instagram posts. Specifically, the letter stated, “it is reported that on June 3 and 4, and in the recent past, you made several posts on social media related to the current racial issues in the country and political issues in China, including one in which you were holding an automatic weapon.”

During a June 10 hearing with Eldredge, Tong said he was “sympathetic to the movement for racial equality,” the New York Post reported. Tong further explained that his photo showing him holding an AR-15 rifle was “to show that had students in China been afforded this right [to bear arms], there would have been fewer casualties at the hands of the Chinese State” in 1989.

On July 14, Fordham reached a verdict, finding Tong guilty of violating Fordham’s policies on “bias and/or hate crimes” and “threats/intimidation.” Tong’s probation banned him from entering campus without prior approval, taking leadership roles in student organizations, and participating in athletics. He was also required to complete online implicit bias training and write an apology letter. 

“While what happened to me is a total disgrace, I hope to use my example as an opportunity for the millions of people out there that fear to freely speak, and to protest the serious case of speech censorship in college campuses,” Tong told FIRE. “We will use this opportunity to let the world know that now is the time that we must speak loudly, fight for our rights, and let those who silence speech know they will face consequences.”

Lindsie Rank, program officer at FIRE, wrote a letter on July 17 to Fordham University on Tong’s behalf. “When Tong immigrated to the United States from China at six years old, his family sought to ensure that he would be protected by the rights guaranteed by their new home, including the freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” Rank wrote. “Here, however, Fordham has acted more like the Chinese government than an American university, placing severe sanctions on a student solely because of off-campus political speech.”

Outcome

Fellow students and publications rise in defense of Tong; Fordham under federal investigation

Reason called Fordham’s actions “pretty appalling.” The New York Post said Tong was “wrongfully penalized.”

“Campus assaults on free speech are an old story,” wrote Tong’s lawyers, Brett Joshpe and Edward Paltzik, in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal. “The Trump administration has started to crack down on abuses like these. A March 2019 executive order subjects schools that violate their own published free-speech guidelines to potential loss of federal funding.” 

Fordham is currently under two federal investigations: one regarding Tong’s probation, and another for allegedly accepting undisclosed gifts from China. A letter from Assistant Secretary of Postsecondary Education Robert L. King stated: “[T]he Department is concerned Fordham’s many promises to protect freedom of thought, speech, and expression, promises made to induce reliance and payments of massive annual tuition and fees by students and their parents, may be substantial misrepresentations.” 

FIRE Senior Research Counsel Adam Goldstein wrote the investigation seemed at least partially motivated by Trump’s executive order titled “Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities.” As FIRE explained at the time of its enactment, the executive order “directs federal agencies to ‘take appropriate steps’ to ‘promote free inquiry’ at institutions that receive federal research and education grants, including through compliance with the First Amendment or fulfillment of their institutional promises.”

Evan Vollbrecht, a writer and editor for The Observer, wrote in an op-ed that while he “[did] not hold Austin Tong … in very high regard,” and believed Tong was “long overdue to face the music,” Fordham’s handling of the situation was “completely incompetent.” Vollbrecht had written on prior negative experiences involving Tong, whom he has called “an unpleasant person to know.”

On Sept. 11, in response to a motion by Fordham to dismiss the lawsuit, Paltzik released a statement alleging that the university was being dishonest about its close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, Fox News reported. The letter revealed that, on Aug. 10, the Department of Education sent a letter to Fordham seeking information on possible foreign funding discrepancies. In his missive, Paltzik argued the school punished Tong in an attempt to hide any “qualifying gifts, contracts, and/or restricted and conditional gifts or contracts from or with all foreign sources.”