In November 2020, NC State opened an investigation on Chadwick Seagraves, a desktop support manager in the Office of Information Technology due to allegations of Seagraves having connections to the Proud Boys, a white nationalist organization, and reports of offensive social media posts.

The University closed their investigation on Jan. 11, concluding that there was no formal disciplinary action to be instituted against Seagraves. In the wake of the investigation, Student Government held a “freeze out” protest and signed Executive Order No. 5 in objection to the University’s response.

However, the Seagraves investigation has raised a lot of questions about freedom of speech on campus and fireable offenses for government employees.

According to Steven Greene, a political science professor at NC State, the Supreme Court defines freedom of speech as “anything short of incitement to imminent and lawless action.”

“We have a long tradition of believing to a considerable degree that people are allowed to believe what they want because freedom of speech extends from freedom of belief and conscience, [and that] as long as it is not clearly, directly harming people that we should allow that as an essential element of freedom and liberty,” Greene said.

Adam Newmark, a political science professor at Appalachian State University, said that the United States government generally protects people under freedom of speech, with very limited exceptions.

“A lot of this goes back to Supreme Court decisions, such as Schenck v. United States and Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire,” Newmark said. “Schenck v. United States established the clear and present danger doctrine. It’s the reason you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a movie theater because it could present a clear and present danger. Free speech rights are protected unless it would breach the peace and present a clear and present danger.”

Both Greene and Newark said Seagraves’ status as a government employee complicates NC State’s ability to take disciplinary action against him, despite having values to uphold for the University as a whole.

“This particular situation is different from most free speech cases,” Greene said. “Seagraves is a government employee, and as a general rule, it’s not the place of the government to censor speech, even if the speech is considered controversial.”

According to Greene, individuals and groups with “radical” views have the right to speak and post controversial ideas without being prosecuted, as long as they don’t act on these ideas. 

“Let’s just say someone posts a controversial idea on a very basic level; the government does not have the power to punish them for that and, I would argue, nor should they,” Greene said. “But when you then get to organizations like private companies, they may want their employees to represent certain values. And then you get into a more tricky middle ground, where you have the University that says we have certain values and we want the people who work here to be reflective of those values.”

Newmark said that it is difficult to restrict an individual’s speech within their private life, unless they are clearly inciting harm on others. 

“Generally speaking, it’s difficult to restrict people’s speech, particularly when their speech is part of their private life,” Newmark said. “If someone works for a private company, that did not agree with your speech, that company may be able to terminate them based on the provisions in their employment contract, which are different from universities.” 

According to Greene, the debate about free speech becomes convoluted when determining at what point speech does actually inflict harm. Greene said he believes that societal norms surrounding free speech have changed in recent years.  

“But if you have a member of a community that is clearly causing harm to the community, that’s where we draw limits,” Greene said. “Some of the controversy around this has to do with redefining limits and what is harm because we don’t allow you to harm others.”

Greene said he trusts the University’s investigation and does not think its findings of unsubstantiated allegations is reason to believe it supports Seagraves’ beliefs.

“There is no reason to believe that NC State is a university that is interested in promoting racism or violent overthrow of the government or sedition, or that they would be sympathetic towards protecting someone with these views,” Greene said. “The fact that they looked at it and took it seriously and could not substantiate the allegations is important to me. I don’t think you want someone losing their job over unsubstantiated allegations.”

Greene said he believes that free speech guidelines should be more expansive in a university setting, in order to provide opportunities for scholarly debate. 

“If we can’t have free discussion of ideas in a university, where can we have them?” Greene said. “Everything in life is about balancing costs and benefits, and I would argue for making people uncomfortable with ideas to a certain degree in the interest of a free and full exchange. There is no simple right answer but I think it’s wise to lean towards more expansive speech.”