I agree with this revision. It's important to frame your fight in terms of intellectual freedom within the academy, which is perhaps a conceptual framework your faculty can comprehend. Yale does not have any de facto obligation with regard to your free speech, legally or contractually speaking. Unfortunately, our society generally permits speech to be legal cause for termination/dismissal in private institutions (e.g. employment at a company), except in cases of discrimination and failures to adhere to equal opportunity laws.
The best advice I can give is to ensure you have open-minded faculty members at your back. If you have professors you feel you can talk to, I would try to have a casual conversation with them as soon as you can. Their advice and backing will be invaluable, if and when a formal situation arises.
> legal cause for termination/dismissal in private institutions
In the US, under at-will employment, an employee "can be dismissed by an employer...without having to establish 'just cause' for termination..." [1]
If you'd prefer a different standard because this rule sounds harsh against employees, think for a moment from a company's standpoint: If you know the law won't make it easy for you fire someone, you'll be really picky about who you hire, how you hire them, and how many people you hire.
I think at-will employment helps everyone by making the job market more liquid and reducing the size of the class of "unemployable" people.
I would just like to point out that it can also have a negative affect on job liquidity. For instance why would I move, at expense to myself, for a job if there is a reasonable chance of being fired for something unrelated to my work and with little recourse. It also means I'm less likely to disagree with the boss because something going bad for the company is not as bad as me getting fired from my point of view.
Fair enough to say 'that these show bigger issues with the company and you'd be better off elsewhere' but it doesn't stop companies like these existing and minimising the cost to them isn't something I particularly support.
The best advice I can give is to ensure you have open-minded faculty members at your back. If you have professors you feel you can talk to, I would try to have a casual conversation with them as soon as you can. Their advice and backing will be invaluable, if and when a formal situation arises.