U of Tennessee pays student who faced expulsion $180K

The University of Tennessee is paying one of its pharmacy graduates $180,000 and giving the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression a further $70,000 to settle the lawsuit the alumna and FIRE filed after a UT professional conduct committee allegedly voted to expel her over social media posts.

That’s according to a copy of the settlement agreement provided by FIRE, a free speech and academic freedom advocacy organization. In an email, Melissa Tindell, a spokesperson for the UT system, said, “It is our general practice to refrain from commenting on legal matters.” The settlement document says, “Any payments pursuant to the agreement are not to be construed as an admission of liability.”

An attorney with FIRE previously told Inside Higher Ed that the professional conduct committee apparently took issue with posts that Kimberly Diei made under a pseudonym, including “Bitches can’t even put the ‘ho’ in hotel cuz they getting fucked in borrowed cars” and posts referencing shaving before sex and the song “WAP,” a raunchy Cardi B anthem featuring Megan Thee Stallion.

Diei said that a UT College of Pharmacy associate professor who chaired the committee wrote her an expulsion letter in 2020 calling her posts “unprofessional,” “sexual,” “crude” and “vulgar.” Diei said she appealed the recommended expulsion and a dean stopped it, but she sued UT officials anyway in 2021. She alleged, among other things, that her First Amendment rights were violated and that she was self-censoring for fear of further punishment.

A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee dismissed her case. But last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit revived it, determining the lower-court judge was wrong to dismiss it and that the First Amendment likely protected Diei’s online posts.