Ohio university pays out $400,000 to Christian professor 'for violating his First Amendment Rights'

[FBaggins]

65. The university would be in a better position if he was

University professors have more "free speech" rights than high school teachers do. But the university would have far more ability to influence his conversation if that were the actual course name.

That's awfully close to your example where the university could "silence" the professor.

Not at all. The school could discipline the professor for failing to teach the subject he was hired to teach, but that doesn't mean "you can only say what we pay you to say"... it means "we can discipline you if you're an Econ professor who never teaches Econ". And Econ professor absolutely could spend a day discussing the economics of slavery during the early years of our country's history.

The school made a rule that staff had to use students' preferred pronouns. He chose not to.

Right - and that rule had nothing to do with the course that he was paid to teach. If he was a geography professor and decided to teach a flat earth perspective... they could restrict that.