An Authoritarian Tale
Don't offend the Lt. Governor in Texas.
The Texas Tribune reports: Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture.
Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic.
The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch in March when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk.
In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk.
The basics are that Alonzo is a Texas A&M clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice (meaning she is untenured) who gave a guest lecture on her topic of expertise at the UT Medical Branch in Galveston. She apparently said something about Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick which some students found “offensive.” This led to her being placed on paid leave for several weeks.
There was never any clarification as to what she said that was so offensive. The closest that anyone can come is that some anecdote was the problem:
…Dean George Udeani said in a memo to Alonzo that during the lecture she “related an anecdote and an interaction with a state official.”
“I understand that your comment did not assign blame. However, some members of the audience felt that your anecdote was offensive,” he wrote.
“While it is important to preserve and defend academic freedom and as such be able to discuss and present to students and the public the results of research observations and strategies, you should be mindful of how you present your views,” Udeani said.
I find all of this remarkable on a number of levels, both as a university administrator and a scholar of democracy.
I am utterly stunned, as an administrator, that a student complaint, especially this vaguely described, could possibly have resulted in a muli-week paid suspension. I could conjure scenarios in which I might seek to immediately speak with a faculty member after a complaint. I can certainly even envision scenarios in which I would remove a faculty member from their teaching duties, but it would have to be pretty bad. At a bare minimum, putting a faculty member on leave in the middle of a semester could be very disruptive, depending on their teaching schedule and other duties.
Had she threatened violence against Patrick, or some criminal activity, then I could see a pretty serious reaction. If she had been viciously insulting to the students in the room, then yes, keep her out of the classroom and investigate. But if she did any of those things, no one appears to have heard them. And it remains telling that none of the official communication shared in the Tribune piece gives much of a hint.
Moreover, I would note that the students interviewed for the piece couldn’t even figure out what she might have said:
According to one student who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the school, some students wondered if it was when Alonzo said that the lieutenant governor’s office was one of the reasons it’s hard for drug users to access certain care for opioid addiction or overdoses.
A second student who also asked to remain anonymous for the same reason said Alonzo made a comment that the lieutenant governor’s office had opposed policies that could have prevented opioid-related deaths, and by doing so had allowed people to die.
A third student who also spoke on the condition of anonymity said Alonzo talked about how policies, like the state’s ban on fentanyl test strips, have a direct impact on the ability to prevent opioid overdoses and deaths. A push to legalize the test strips died earlier this year in the Patrick-led Senate despite support from top Republicans, including Abbott.
All of the students interviewed said they felt Alonzo’s comments were accurate and they were not offended by anything in the presentation.
In a statement provided by Copelin, the A&M system spokesperson, Alonzo said “her remarks were mischaracterized and taken out of context,” but she did not confirm exactly what the comments were.
All I can figure is that the university felt some kind of significant political pressure to respond.
Alonzo was right to be afraid. Not only were her supervisors involved, but so was Chancellor John Sharp, a former state comptroller who now holds the highest-ranking position in the Texas A&M University System, which includes 11 public universities and 153,000 students. And Sharp was communicating directly with the lieutenant governor’s office about the incident, promising swift action.
Less than two hours after the lecture ended, Patrick’s chief of staff had sent Sharp a link to Alonzo’s professional bio.
Shortly after, Sharp sent a text directly to the lieutenant governor: “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”
The text message was signed “jsharp.”
That the system Chancellor was immediately involved suggests to me that one of the students was politically connected. Typically the Chancellor is not going to be immediately involved (within hours!) in a student complaint. It is also, in my mind at least, insanely unusual for the Chancellor to be making such pronouncements and pursuing a course of action on such scant information. This is just pure power politics from my perspective.
So, as a scholar of democracy, this is just chilling. Indeed, if anyone should be fair game for public scrutiny and criticism, it should be politicians. So, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Alonzo said really critical things about Patrick, so what?
And back to my administrator hat, I would note that it is 100% an academic freedom issue for a policy expert to criticize policy, including government officials who are making and implementing said policy. If an expert on the opioid crisis cannot criticize Texas state officials on opioid policy who can?
This is terrorizing a scholar because someone in the audience was offended and, more to the point because something was said about a powerful person.
Worse, no one really knows what the offending utterance was.
This is very much the stuff of authoritarian government, where some criticism of a governmental official can lead to significant consequences for a mere citizen. Moreover, it is using fear of punishment as a means of controlling dissent. The fact that it is unclear as to what the offensive utterance was only heightens the fear and the impulse to self-censorship. Best not to mention state officials at all for fear of risking your livelihood. For that matter, what else might one say that is “offensive” that might get one in serious trouble?
It is further concerning to think that a student or students feel emboldened to act like unofficial political officers, reporting to the authorities when the party is being disparaged. I find the whole thing, from the students to the state officials to the cowardice of university administrators, to be utterly appalling.
Were her comments so innocuous that Alonzo herself can’t recall what she said?
I read about this yesterday. The first thing that came to mind was “thoughtcrime.”
There’s more to this…apparently the student who complained is the daughter of a political ally of Patrick’s.
In other TX
politicalcorruption news;1. Steven, I think you missed this paragraph:
2. This is the second time in two weeks that evidence of direct political involvement by members/appointees/employees of the Texas executive branch in internal A&M University personnel matters. President Banks had to do a “resign before you are fired” resignation last week due to the fallout of all this went down.
The Faculty Senate is justifiably freaking out and there is no way that this doesn’t affect recruitment and retention efforts. Once is an anomaly. Twice is a pattern.
As usual, the Republican response to having someone point out that their policies kill people and ruin lives is a combination of indignation (“How dare you say such a thing!”) and retribution. Notably absent is any actual substantive rebuttal of the claim…
In a non-corrupt state government, Buckingham would retire in disgrace over this flagrant abuse of authority. Yeah, right…
This is par for the Texas GOP. What’s remarkable is that she wasn’t fired… Yet.
@Argon: I wonder about whether she will be fired. I suspect that she would have very good grounds for a lawsuit if she were fired. She was “suspended with pay” which is outrageous, but by continuing to pay her, they remove another cause of action as well.
This looks performative to me on the part of Sharp, who wants to look good to the LtGov and let the whole thing blow over. Of course, that don’t make it right.
Thank goodness the Left never does anything like this, never lets complaints from students disrupt a lesson or derail a career. Motes and beams.
@Michael Reynolds:
Rarely do I take exception to your comments…but a Democratic Lt. Gov getting a tenured prof suspended or fired over a comment no one can remember?
One thing I find interesting about the coverage of this from the usual anti-woke+free-speech thinkers is that while they all agree it’s bad (and it is), their focus has been on the role of Lt. Gov. Patrick.
Don’t get me wrong–Patrick is very much to blame. But focusing this on Patrick glosses over the fact that at the start of this was the issue that “students were offended.”
To me, that’s a huge tell. These anti-anti-woke pundits typically focus on out-of-control liberal students who are ruining the universities and destroying free speech. Rarely, if ever, do they give conservative students the same attention. If anything they are more likely to amplify those from illiberal-right student movements and their critiques of the excesses of left-leaning students.
@Daryl:
Take it from the POV of the professor. Does it matter if her career is destroyed by a right wing student upset by critique of a Lt. Gov, as opposed to having her career destroyed by a left wing student upset by a critique of CRT?
This is why principle matters. Without principle things come down to brute force politics. Had we consistently stood for freedom of speech we’d be on much firmer ground. Because what we have here is yet another faculty member bullied by yet another hyped up student, and the side the bullying comes from does not alter the fact that it is bullying.
Principle matters more than whose ox is being gored in any particular situation.
@Gromitt Gunn: I 100% managed to skim over that. It does fit my suspicion, as noted in the OP, that one of the student s must have a political connection.
@Michael Reynolds: There are definitely instances of “deplatforming” by the left that make me uncomfortable – that I don’t agree with.
AND, there’s a difference here worth making note of. Left wing anti-speech complaints have to do with content that violates some idea or principle.
In this matter, the issue appears to be that it was perceived as demeaning to a specific person in the governmental power structure. That seems significant to me. Lefties seem to be just fine with insults to the people in power.
@Michael Reynolds: Please cite a comparable example.
@Michael Reynolds: Well, whoever had July 26 as the day MR goes full Glenn Greenwald wins the prize.
Fact: the complaining student did not get her suspended, The weak assed chancellor did that when he was pressured by the Lt Guv’s office.
And saying her career was destroyed by being put on paid leave is more than a little over the top.
@wr: The only true hard-core liberal left in America? Naaaahh. Must be a mistake on your part. Just like the one on Professor Alonzo’s.
@Michael Reynolds:
Except that this is not at all what we have here. What we have here is a faculty member being targeted by a state official and a complicit university administrator. The situation has almost nothing in common with the libs-shouting-down-speakers scenario that so annoys you. You of all people should know the difference between punching up and punching down…
@Steven L. Taylor: Indeed! I’d be interested in seeing an example of “having her career destroyed by a left wing student upset by a critique of CRT” myself.
To me, that’s a huge tell. These anti-anti-woke pundits typically focus on out-of-control liberal students who are ruining the universities and destroying free speech. Rarely, if ever, do they give conservative students the same attention. If anything they are more likely to amplify those from illiberal-right student movements and their critiques of the excesses of left-leaning students.
This is because the liberal students in questions aren’t idiots. They know that when the mask is peeled off of some dimwit who seems fixated on DEI it’s some twerp-fascist like this guy who was fired by the DeSantis campaign. That guy, by the way, was put on progressive podcasts as a young conservative intellectual, just because they needed to get some jerk to fill that role.
What all of the anti-woke stuff has been about is kids raised online being totally onto the con of what the right is up to. Reactionaries don’t like that, and for good reason.
The results are the same but I think the means matter. If unhappy students go to the admin and gripe resulting in the prof being fired that is likely the school keeping the consumers (students and parents) happy. It’s not really an infringement on free speech. When a professor gets fired because the politician they criticized has them fired it’s clearly an infringement of free speech and an abuse of governmental power. In the former case that can happy to any professor if they piss off the students and the admin doesnt back them. It happens at conservative schools but it gets little coverage. It usually means the prof was not that well liked already.
In the latter case it’s a unique risk based upon offending a politician. If politicians can get people fired just for feeling insulted how far can they go?
Steve
@steve:
Even if the school is the government, as is the case for state universities? Seems to me that it matters, for First Amendment purposes if not for academic freedom purposes.
Who signs text messages? What the hell is wrong with people? This is some serious Boomer shit right there.
I have a good friend who retired from teaching and administrative work at Tufts. She told me: “I can’t navigate these shoals any longer.” This woman is quite left-wing, yet she was terrified of doing or saying something she thought harmless that grossly offended a student. That’s no way to live.
@steve:
You might think that, but that is NOT the way that has been historically framed by a lot of folks in the “free speech” crowd. By and large a lot of those folks come out of the anti-woke crowd turn this on its head–that “woke students” are the ones who are out of control and actively threatening free speech at all turns (even when what they are doing is providing feedback, as requested, on a candidate).
To be clear, I don’t think either side is perfect about this. However, there’s an ongoing moral outrage about out-of-control students on one side (often giving them outsized agency over schools) and then failing to note the same behavior is present on the other side of the student body too.
@Modulo Myself:
Oh, it was more than that. He was also a Staff Contributor to the National Review, a Claremont Institute Fellow, and interviewed by the New York Times and other news outlets for profiles as well. These folks are activists as well (often going back to campus days) and yet somehow they get represented as just some “student” or “campaign worker.”
I don’t live in TX. But this is consistent with FL. A year or two ago a couple of, IIRC, UF poli sci profs were expert witnesses in a voting case that involved the state. DeFascist tried to get them fired. His position was that the university system is part of the executive branch, therefore faculty are his subordinates and required to support his positions on issues. I think in the end he failed to get them fired, but he delivered his message.
DrDaveT- State universities can also fire profs is they make students unhappy. What they should not be able to do, as was done at Texas A&M is fire someone for political reasons. Academic freedom is another issue. I think that a lot fo those fired at “liberal”schools should have been supported better by their admin. Back down once and it’s hard not to do it again. However, education has become big business. Schools have large fixed costs so losing students hurts. I think the academic job market here has been discussed a bit and it’s a lot easier to replace a prof who irritates paying customers than it is to replace paying students.
Steve
@steve:
It some extreme sense, yes. But it is very hard and it extremely rare that a university would fire a prof because they made some students unhappy. It really doesn’t work like that.
@Michael Reynolds: Match this, please.
And throw in Florida, as well. And the Moms for Fascism.
Again and again, every accusation from the Right is a confession.
@CSK: “Take it from the POV of the professor. Does it matter if her career is destroyed by a right wing student upset by critique of a Lt. Gov, as opposed to having her career destroyed by a left wing student upset by a critique of CRT?”
It’s always that way, an anonymous blah, blah, blah.
Meanwhile, on the right, it’s clear, blatant, repeated, and due to deliberate state action.
@Michael Reynolds: Anyone who can’t see a stark difference between a kid complaining and someone using the power of the state to get someone fired is deliberately not seeing the difference.
The Texas Land Commissioner should have told his daughter that the world is a harsh place where not everyone agrees with you and where issues have multiple sides, instead he chose to use the power of try to get someone fired.
The kid might be equivalent — they are a young and stupid kid, and they are all interchangeable, after all — but the full-on grown-ass adult is the difference and the problem. That adult is wielding the power of the state to punish people who don’t agree with state policies. You know this, and you choose to elide it and downplay it.
I mean this in the best of all possible ways: don’t choose to be stupid.
@wr:
This is just, chef’s kiss, perfect. Bravo.
@Barry:
i’m not sure what the comparison between what Michael said and what I said is. I was pointing out that college teaching–which I did for decades–can be a minefield for the left-oriented and the right-oriented.
Dr Taylor- Med school must be different. We have fired a number of docs after complaints of poor teaching. We investigated first and confirmed but we take the ratings and complaints seriously. To be clear I think we find that over 90% of the time there is little or no merit and most fo the time the remedies are well short of firing people.
Steve
@steve:
I supposed I was reacting to the phrase “State universities can also fire profs is they make students unhappy” which to me may, or may not, mean that the teaching is poor. Indeed, often very good teachers can make students unhappy.
But yes, I have non-renewed faculty who were demonstrated to be poor teachers, but as you note, it takes an investigation and evidence before one makes such a move.
Haven’t looked but I bet your tuition doesnt approach $60,000/year and you probably arent counting on multi-million donations from parents and grads after they leave. Sure you would be happy to get them but dont expect it. That’s about what our tuition is and what it is at so many of the schools where they profs who piss off students and they are probably counting on those donations. While you have an ethical obligation to treat both students and the prof well I can certainly see the elite institutions where this stuff seems to happen being very financially sensitive. Maybe unfair to the profs but it’s reality. Certainly in medicine we try hard to take every complaint very seriously even when the complainant is obviously wrong and crazy to boot. I hate it at times, as chair I have to respond to every complaint, but it’s just reality.
Steve
Student bitched, administration caved. That is precisely what has happened in numerous cases. Students whine, administrators are cowed and roll over.
But I see my fellow Lefties remain incapable of seeing their own faults. This is a weakness. We abandoned the principle of free speech. It was a mistake.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think it’s a massive blind spot for you that you can’t see that here is a MASSIVE difference between some students bitching and administration caving and one politically connected student bitching to her dad who tattles to the Lt. governor who puts his thumb on the administration.
Come on Daddy, these are two radically different things.
@Michael Reynolds: You can’t/won’t engage with even one of the criticisms of your comment. You retreat into vague pointless insults of people who disagree with you.
Myself? I am defending the free speech rights of those who have the least power in these dynamics, the ones who are just exercising their free speech rights, you know, students. Nobodies. You? You are siding with the ones who punch down. Because you are far more concerned with not having your own far more privileged position challenged.
Go ahead, tell me, how I a nobody who has never been heard of and nobody will ever know or remember is stifling your free speech. You are just another snowflake who melts at the slightest pushback because… Well, you tell me, can you handle it?
@OzarkHillbilly: And repeating the same weak assed argument of privilege is not gonna get any stronger no matter how many times you repeat it.
@Michael Reynolds:
Keep hammering that square peg, Michael. Eventually it might be round enough.
(Seriously, you think mommy’s role here was irrelevant? That the administrator would have reacted the same if just some student had complained, or some mommy who wasn’t a state official?)
@Michael Reynolds:
To be comparable cases you are going to have to find me a case wherein one student was able to get the systems Chancellor involved within hours and have a faculty member suspended.
And I will note that I not defending anything to do with your hypotheticals (which are vague and I can’t argue with vague).
The gross abuse of state power here is well beyond anything you are referring to. If you can’t see it, I guess you can’t see it.
@Michael Reynolds:
And this is a remarkably ironic statement. Chef’s kiss worthy, in fact.
@Michael Reynolds: BTW, you are essentially whatabouting this case.
Also, I would note, that the student was a student at institution X and the faculty was at institution Y. There is little motivation for the Chancellor of Y to immediately suspend a faculty member in Y because a student at X complained even if the Chancellor in question was the most cowardly of the “customer service”/can’t lose a single enrollment type.
Again, the timing alone is not comparable.
@steve: I have little doubt that there are significant differences in our two institutional contexts.
@Steven L. Taylor:
That is an important distinction that I glossed over earlier, because of my geographic/institutional closeness to both institutions. UTMB, or University of Texas – Medical Branch (where she was delivering the guest lecture) is not even in the same university system as her home institution (Texas A&M University in College Station).
@Gromitt Gunn: Exactly.
Reynolds defefends punching down because an SJW fan pierced his ego balloon once that stung him personally.
This is egregious enough for RATM. Killing in the name of….
Some malpractice bullshit gets me riled. This particular bullshit gets me riled. I cannot do anything about it. A lot of time I’m “live and let live”, not my business, zen-type mother fucker, and 2% of the time I am pure rage jumping around my room heartfelt screaming “FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!” on eleven.
The 2% doesn’t accomplish anything. It does feel fine and justified though. I am allowed catharsis through movement and screaming. I would never give that up. I need that.
Anger and rage is an undeniable part of who I am. But I am also “that’s not my business” zen accepting dude.
I am both.