��֭����

Professor Pete Kosek was a leading voice for the faculty at Sterling College — a small, private Christian college in central Kansas — when negotiating changes to the college’s employee handbook. Ken Troyer, another Sterling professor, spoke out as well, including statements to the media about concerns he had with Sterling administrators’ communication with faculty and about a vote of no confidence in the college’s president.

For these exercises of basic faculty expressive rights, Sterling has now punished them both for exhibiting “behavior that is fundamentally inconsistent” with Sterling’s mission. But it’s these punishments that are “fundamentally inconsistent” with Sterling’s that its faculty enjoy “free expression, on and off campus.”

FIRE wrote to Sterling on April 3, 2025, articulating our concerns. Its administration ignored us, so today we’re writing to the college again as well as its board of trustees, urging them to reverse the punishments of Kosek and Troyer.

College clashes with faculty over revisions to the employee handbook

In 2023, Sterling faculty received a new version of Sterling’s employee handbook. Faculty voiced concerns about whether faculty were obligated to sign the handbook’s acknowledgement, which appeared to require that faculty affirm Sterling’s institutional stance on marriage, life, gender identity, and human sexuality. For example, a provision in the handbook stated: “[m]arriage is designed to be the lifelong uniting of one man and one woman in a single, biblical, covenant union as delineated by Scripture.” 

Concerned that this may adversely impact faculty who were divorced, Kosek led a group of faculty members in negotiating changes to the handbook. Over the course of a year, he went back and forth with Sterling administrators about making sure the handbook could be modified so that it didn’t single out divorced faculty for adverse action. 

On Aug. 21, 2024, Kosek emailed a large group of faculty members informing them he believed he and anyone else would be fired if they did not sign the handbook acknowledgement. Kosek also told the administration that while he would abide by the terms of the handbook, he disagreed with how the administration went about communicating with faculty and instituting the new handbook. Two days later, the administration clarified that while faculty were expected to abide by the terms of the handbook, they would not be terminated for not signing it. Kosek subsequently clarified this to the rest of the faculty. The situation seemed resolved, right? Wrong.

Months later, on Feb. 25 of this year, administrators summoned Kosek to a meeting and gave him a disciplinary warning. They told him that it was because he allegedly misrepresented the college when he told other faculty that he believed he and others would be fired over not signing the handbook’s acknowledgement. Sterling provided Kosek no real opportunity to defend himself from the charge.

Troyer, meanwhile, received a nearly identical disciplinary warning on the same day as Kosek, purportedly because of his comments to criticizing Sterling’s poor communication with faculty. (This poor communication was a major reason why a group of faculty a no-confidence vote in Sterling’s leadership.) Troyer had also the inclusion of non-Christians in the faculty at the college, and how that inclusion related to Sterling’s Christian mission. 

Similar to Kosek, Troyer had no real opportunity to defend himself. He was just expected to take the disciplinary warning and keep his mouth shut. 

If Sterling’s mission required absolute and unquestioning obedience to the administration, this might be understandable. But these punishments cannot be squared with the policies actually laid out in Sterling’s faculty handbook. That does not demand unthinking fealty, but imposes on “students, faculty members, administrators and trustees” the obligation “to foster and defend intellectual honesty, freedom of inquiry and instruction, and free expression on and off campus.” As if anticipating the exact scenario facing both Kosek and Troyer, Sterling adds in the handbook, “administrators should respect the right of faculty members to criticize and seek revision of institutional regulations.” 

����鷡’s first letter explained why the college could not square its punishment of Kosek with Sterling’s written commitments. Under First Amendment jurisprudence and at most private colleges (like Sterling) faculty members retain the right to comment on matters of public concern — and one of those concerns is how the college is being run. Indeed, faculty members are often among the regarding how colleges and universities operate since they witness firsthand the impacts of institutional policies. 

Sterling blew FIREoff. So now we’re taking this up the chain and writing to the Board of Trustees as well as the college. When a private institution like Sterling makes promises in its handbooks to faculty, it must keep those promises. To violate them with impunity is to undermine trust and credibility.