In an interim victory for freedom of speech that may lead to an important precedent, a court has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the University of Texas.
According to Richard Lowery’s complaint, filed in February 2023, university officials threatened his “job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, [and] academic freedom” as part of a campaign to stop him from criticizing various stupid and/or horrific policies of the school.
An example of Lowery’s language that has the school’s administrators gunning for him is a College Fix piece, “At UT-Austin, teaching white 4‑year-olds that they’re racist is funded by taxpayer dollars.”
Administrators repeatedly pressed a superior of Lowery, Carlos Carvalho, to “do something about Richard.” When Carvalho resisted, Dean Lillian Mills threatened to oust Carvalho as executive director of a Center at the school.
Officials also “allowed, or at least did not retract, a UT employee’s request that police surveil Lowery’s speech, because he might contact politicians or other influential people.”
Professor Lowery is represented by attorneys at the Institute for Free Speech, whose senior attorney Del Kolde stresses what should be obvious to the administrators: “Professors at public universities have the right to criticize administrators and speak to elected officials. The First Amendment protects such speech and, in a free society, DEI programs and UT’s president are not above public criticism.”
The goal of the lawsuit is, in part, to enjoin University of Texas officials from further threatening Lowery’s liberty to speak … and from acting on their previous threats.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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5 replies on “Campus Critic Defended”
Why does the State of Texas continue to fund administrators of this caliber? Shouldn’t they be shown the door?
Officials who work in institutions at least partially funded by taxpayer dollars ought be held financially liable for using their job function to undermine constitutional rights. Else the institution ought have its public funding held in abeyance. Libprogs don’t learn without consequences and that is cruel to deprive them of such. Be different if they were mentally crippled. Then at least they could have a warning label.
My first thought is that you are begging a question here. The question that is begged is, are there tendencies toward racial bias that are embedded in children by the age of four? Assuming for a moment that there are, it could be said that the professor is himself begging the question, does he know what he’s talking about?
My second thought is that if you’re going to work for an institution, it seems to demand a certain collegiality such that you would not make your initial presentation on a topic come in the form of mockery and sarcasm. Again assuming that there may be some embedded racism in a four-year-old whose parents are racist, and assuming that his colleagues who have proposed that hypothesis are sincere, I think this guy could be fired for not being collegial and for calling into question research about which he knows maybe not enough. I’m going to defend the institution because that’s always fun.
My first thought is that you don’t know the proper meaning of “beg [a|the] question”, which does not refer to provoking a question nor to leaving some question unanswered, but to circular reasoning.
My second thought is that the imputation of some vice to children needs some meanungful evidence, rather than those who do not make the imputation being expected to prove these children innocent in the absence of evidende otherwise.
My third thought is that collegiality has already broken-down when four-year-old members of some racial group are treated as racist by assumption.
The story is somewhat ambiguous. If individual officials are named as defendants along with the University, then I am greatly cheered.
So long as no more than the budget of the University of Texas takes a hit, the disincentives for officials to act as they have are generally far too weak. But if they find their own financial standing significantly hit, then others like them will not act so freely to use the institution as they have.