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Editor’s note: Over the past several decades, few places in America have become more hostile to free speech than our universities. Yet in the wake of rising anti-Semitism and the pro-Hamas campus rallies and occupations that were sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacre, university administrators seem to have had a sudden change of heart.

The Freedom Center is exposing the most egregious perpetrators of these double standards in free expression as the Top Ten Ivory Tower Hypocrites. These are universities whose leaders have permitted woke leftist activists to run roughshod over campus rules and violate codes of conduct with impunity, while failing to extend even basic free speech protections to students and faculty with opposing views. The University of Louisville is #5 on our list.

#5: University of Louisville

As a publicly funded educational institution and part of the Kentucky state university system, the University of Louisville has both a constitutional and a moral obligation to uphold the principles of academic freedom and free expression. Instead, the university has perpetuated a blatant double standard, firing a professor for his off-campus remarks on the harms of radical gender ideology while insisting that pro-Hamas speech that threatens Jewish students on campus must be permitted on campus.

Professor Allan Josephson was hired by the University of Louisville in 2003 to lead its department of psychiatric and child psychology—a program that at the time was “struggling.” Following fifteen years under Josephson’s leadership, the department “now has a national reputation,” according to a lawsuit filed by on the professor’s behalf by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

“He provided such superlative leadership that his supervisor … awarded him perfect marks in his 2014, 2015, and 2016 annual reviews,” the lawsuit describes.

This all changed after Josephson spoke out about his views on childhood gender transition—a topic that was practically unheard of when he was hired back in 2003, but that has rapidly become a huge topic of controversy in American society.

At a 2017 event held by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Josephson condemned the radical new practice of transitioning children who are confused about their gender and subjecting them to experimental treatments that can cause permanent life-altering changes such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. This path of medical intervention neglects “the developmental needs of children and relies on ideas that are just not true,” stated the professor—a view that has since been upheld by recent medical analyses such as Britain’s Cass Report.

At the Heritage Foundation forum, Josephson went on to explain that “the notion that gender identity should trump chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics when classifying individuals is counter to medical science.”

“Children persistently, insistently, and consistently demand many things that are not good for them,” he continued. “A parent’s role is to resist these demands when parental wisdom trumps children’s limited life experience.”

Astoundingly, Josephson’s remarks at this off-campus forum—which according to every principle of academic freedom as well as the professor’s personal constitutional right to free speech are legally protected—led to his firing by the University of Louisville in February of 2019.

“Universities are supposed to be a marketplace of ideas, but the University of Louisville is turning itself into an assembly line of one thought,” declared Travis Barham, an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Dr. Josephson has had a long and distinguished career at the University of Louisville, leading and rebuilding its child psychiatry program. Public universities have no business demoting or firing professors simply because they hold a different view than their colleagues or the administration, but that’s exactly what’s happened here.”

One of Josephson’s colleagues claimed falsely that the professor “has recently given speeches… in which he refutes the existence of transgender identity.” As the lawsuit filed by the ADF explains, Josephson “never refuted the existence of gender dysphoria; he simply advocated a different method for treating individuals experiencing it”—A method that has since been validated by a great deal of medical science that the radical gender cult prefers to ignore.

Josephson’s case has now been ongoing for several years. The university attempted to get the case dismissed, arguing that it was legal of them to fire Josephson for his remarks at an outside event because they related to his official duties as a professor. In September of 2024, a federal court sided with Josephson and the long tradition of protecting free expression in America, noting that “Even if Josephson’s participation in the Heritage Foundation panel were part of his official duties, that would not alter our conclusion that he engaged in protected speech at that event.” The case will now continue in district court.

The University of Louisville’s persecution of Josephson for his protected—and medically evidenced—speech is made particularly egregious by its recent insistence that pro-Hamas demonstrators on campus must be allowed to air their calls for Jewish genocide.

Mere days after Hamas’s barbaric October 7 massacre of over 1200 innocent Israeli Jews, the campus chapter of SJP at the University of Louisville planned a “National Day of Resistance.” Chants at the event included “From Palestine to Mexico, all these walls have got to go” and “not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes.”

Even more egregiously, the Louisville SJP chapter promoted their demonstration with an image of a paraglider flying into a crowd. Paragliders were notoriously used by Hamas to invade Israel and perpetrate the atrocities of October 7^th and are widely considered to be a symbol of support for the slaughter and bloodshed committed by Hamas on that day.

Louisville SJP offered only the flimsiest of justifications for this promotion of terror: “We have been using it as a symbol to our return to our land,” a protester told a local media outlet. “We are not sympathizing at all with the actions that these people and these paragliders may be doing.”

Responding to anti-Semitic protests on campus, Louisville administrators explained why they could not censor such cries for Jewish genocide or take action against the perpetrators.

“Many in our community—both on and off campus—have strongly questioned the university allowing such a gathering on campus and have expressed disbelief and anger that the university has not censured this organization,” described the President of the University in a statement following the Day of Resistance protest. “The answer is that as a public university, the University of Louisville’s restrictions on such speech—no matter how offensive the content—would constitute a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution that protects free speech…”

Where were these same principles when Professor Josephson, with his lifetime of expertise, dared to question the doctrines of radical gender ideology and child gender transition? For its blatant double standards in protecting anti-Semitic hate speech while firing a professor for questioning pediatric gender “treatments,” the University of Louisville belongs on the list of Ivory Tower Hypocrites.

Previously in this series…

#6: Wake Forest University

#7: University of Nevada-Las Vegas

#8: University of Illinois-Chicago

#9: George Mason University

#10: The University of Washington