Texas A&M Professor Suspended For Murderizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick With Free Speech
Texas A&M Professor Suspended For Murderizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick With Free Speech
Hey, wait, that's like ... cancel culture!
We should all understand that the right-wing declarations against “cancel culture” and calls for “academic freedom” are all a smokescreen. The Right doesn’t actually support anyone’s freedom but its own and would (and does!) gleefully cancel any culture it finds offensive.
Here’s a recent and disturbing case illustrating my point: Joy Alonzo is an expert on the opioid epidemic and a professor in Texas A&M University’s Department of Pharmacy Practice. She was suspended after giving a routine lecture at the University of Texas Medical Branch in March. Her supposed offense was daring to criticize the easily criticizable Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
We don’t know exactly what Alonzo said that wounded Patrick’s fragile ego. The lecture wasn’t recorded. However, the Texas Tribune obtained her presentation slides through an open records request and confirmed that “Alonzo gave students a broad overview of the opioid crisis and the science behind opioids. She walked them through how to prevent opioid deaths, how to recognize an overdose and how to administer naloxone. She even touched on what to do if a police dog was exposed to fentanyl.”
The slides show that Alonzo discussed how a lack of infrastructure limits the state’s ability to respond to the crisis, noting that many Texas counties lack a medical examiner; reporting on opioid deaths by emergency rooms is infrequent; and many law enforcement agencies and local health departments don’t track opioid deaths.
Alonzo, like many public health experts, openly supports dealing with the opioid crisis through harm-reduction efforts rather than locking up drug users en masse in non-air-conditioned prisons. However, Patrick, like most Republicans until personally affected, promotes more punitive measures, such as increasing criminal penalties for anyone providing fentanyl that leads to an overdose death.
There’s no evidence, at least from the slides, that Alonzo questioned the moral integrity of Patrick’s mother. A student present who wished to remained anonymous said Alonzo claimed “the lieutenant governor’s office had opposed policies that could have prevented opioid-related deaths, and by doing so had allowed people to die.”
Unbeknownst to Alonzo, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham’s daughter, then a first-year medical student, was in attendance at the lecture. Buckingham and Patrick go way back: They served in the Texas Senate together and Patrick endorsed her run for land commissioner last year. Buckingham is also good friends with John Sharp. A Democrat, Sharp is a former state comptroller who was appointed chancellor of the Texas A&M University System in 2011. Buckingham attended Sharp’s wedding in May. It’s all very cozy.
So, the younger Buckingham complained that Alonzo had disparaged Patrick, a public figure, and less than two hours after the lecture, Patrick’s chief of staff had contacted Sharp.
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.”
Texas A&M’s bogus investigation moved quickly. Hours later, University of Texas Medical Branch course leaders sent an email to the students who’d been exposed to Alonzo’s wrong-think, stating that her comments “about Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and his role in the opioid crisis” did not represent the opinion of the university. They could’ve stopped there but it wasn’t enough to merely distance themselves from her opinion. The email also included a “formal censure” of Alonzo with the discreet subject line “STATEMENT OF FORMAL CENSURE.”
“The statements made by the guest lecturer do not represent the opinion or position of the University of Texas Medical Branch, nor are they considered as core curriculum content for this course,” the email said.
“UTMB does not support or condone these comments. We take these matters very seriously and wish to express our disapproval of the comment and apologize for harm it may have caused for members of our community,” the email continued. “We hereby issue a formal censure of these statements and will take steps to ensure that such behavior does not happen in the future.”
Texas A&M already tripped over its own stupid this month when it botched an attempt to hire Black journalist Dr. Kathleen McElroy to revive its journalism department. Former university president M. Katherine Banks self-deported herself to unemployment over that mess.
Texas A&M “graciously” allowed Alonzo to keep her job after its internal investigation failed to prove any actual wrongdoing on her part. Someone with Alonzo’s reputation is probably better served at another university in a better-run state.
Chancellor Sharp’s actions were grossly unprofessional and he should answer for them. We don’t have to imagine what would happen if leadership at UC Berkeley had a conservative professor formally censured because they offended California’s Democratic Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis. It’s the sort of story Fox News would never let go, and neither should we.
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State universities in Texas are going to have a hard time attracting top academic talent, something they will have an increasing need for as current professors and research staff head for more tolerant states. Of course it may not be too severe since lots of students will be going elsewhere too and many fewer out of state students plan to attend schools in Texas. Florida will have the same problem, something that hit North Carolina about ten years ago with GOP assaults on teaching at all levels. In fact North Carolina reversed a decision to put a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist in an endowed seat with tenure less than two years ago. The teacher shortage in public schools continues to be a serious problem as high school grads look at how teachers have been treated and paid in NC and other states and decide that career no longer looks appealing. So fewer are enrolling as education majors as many teachers are reaching retirement status.
Should we not be surprised that Buckingham’s daughter went home and snitched to Mom about a perfectly reasonable lecture that she, as a supposedly grown-ass person and collage student, could have spent five minutes verifying or investigating? Texas is Fucked Up.