Something of almost no significance to freedom of speech.

Universities are advising their staff not to council in favour of abortion or offer condoms for the purposes of birth control (but OK for purposes of diseas prevenion). Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.

This is what an attack on freedom of speech looks like. And the consequences are of far more significance in this case.

Being fired for bringing the university in to disrepute barely even registers.

So if you want to know whether someone's position on free speech is hysterical posturing, or whether it's genuine, you can compare their reaction on these two paired issues.

I'm confused, you think adding restrictions to what someone is and isn't allowed to publish has no significance to freedom of speech?

> Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.

Can you provide us with an example of a university prof being given a felony sentencing for providing counsel related to abortion? It was a bizarre thing to bring up and admittedly just sort of reads like American fear-mongering. You're coming at this from a very strange angle, you're gonna need a better formed argument if you want to change any minds here.

The way I read it was he was removing himself from an organization, not from academia entirely.

This particular organization wants to follow the antiracist line of thinking, and they probably feel that strengthens their community. He's perfectly entitled to leave it and complain about it. But, the organizations reasons for making people who join the organization align with this values statement seems like it should be their prerogative.

Maybe they feel like to grow as an organization, they need to ask their community to that line of thinking. If they have done the work to understand that's what they should do, isn't it correct, even if they lose a researcher like Haidt?