Could a teacher or the university be legally liable in this situation? In which countries? Could a teacher or the university be legally liable in this situation? In which countries? Could the teacher be reprimanded by the university?
The situation is the following: A teacher wants to show students that what's legal is not always ethically right. As an example, the teacher tells the students that to free slaves was illegal. Therefore, the teacher says, sometimes to break the law would be the right thing to do. So the teacher is literally and directly telling the students that sometimes the right thing to do might be to break the law.
The questions seems purely hypothetical and a bit recursive. If a country has repressive laws, as some do, then it could well be that discussions of breaking the laws, even unjust ones, could lead to legal jeopardy.
A strange story recently came out of Thailand, where a person was threatened with jail for leaving bad reviews online about a resort. Saying bad things about Royalty there is very dangerous and so, I would guess, would be discussions of breaking such laws. Not to single out a single country, though. And, while the story is &quot;strange&quot; to me, as a US person, it might seem totally normal to someone else.
When laws are unjust, who can say where it ends. You can't depend on free-speech guarantees unless there is at least a strong societal norm protecting them. And even then, some people are willing to break norms, as I'm sure you can notice all around you.
Was it once true in the US that discussions of ending slavery were forbidden in some jurisdictions? I seem to recall that it was.
In any case, if a jurisdiction has unjust laws, making discussion of breaking them illegal might well be an additional unjust law. Unjust laws all the way down.