The College of William & Mary's President, Gene Nichol, has told the school: "You can't fire me. I quit!" Only in more words.

For those who don't know anything about this, Nichol took over the school in 2005, after serving the University of North Carolina School of Law (of which I am an alum) as Dean. (Full disclosure: I've met Nichol and like him a lot though I disagree with him about a great many things.)

And yet though I like him, I approve of the decision not to renew Nichol's contract. As documented more fully by Eugene Volokh, Nichol was on the forefront of the collegiate movement to censor unpopular speech at state-funded universities through discipline, intimidation, and punishment, in violation of the First Amendment, at least as I and a number of non-university administrators see it. The speech code Nichol introduced at WM goes strangely unmentioned in Nichol's resignation announcement and in this Inside Higher Ed story on the affair. Both focus more on Nichol's decision to remove a cross from a chapel and on his decision to allow students to use university funds to pay for a sex show.

Unfortunately, Nichol is probably correct that the trustees viewed the sex show and the cross as the nails in the coffin, rather than his attempt to institute a regime of censorship.

That said, give 'em hell Gene, and fire a broadside in your future endeavors, no matter what seas you sail upon.

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