Texas A&M ‘wanted to fire scientist who criticised politician’

Just days after Texas A&M University’s president resigned in a case of political interference, the institution has been accused of threatening to fire a lecturer over alleged classroom criticism of the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick.

The academic, Joy Alonzo, an expert in opioid abuse, was ultimately retained by Texas A&M, but only after the university system’s chancellor had promised state officials that he would look into firing her, The Texas Tribune reported.

Dr Alonzo’s comments to her class in March – the specifics of which were unclear – were quickly relayed to state officials by a student who was the daughter of Dawn Buckingham, the state land commissioner, and a friend of John Sharp, a former state comptroller now serving as the Texas A&M chancellor, the Tribune said.

Within hours, the report said, Mr Sharp wrote to Mr Patrick promising that Dr Alonzo “has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”

The revelation represents the latest in a long-running series of acts of partisan interference in US higher education by conservative politicians and activists.

Only a few days earlier, Texas A&M’s president, Katherine Banks, resigned over her handling of a case in which conservative activists successfully convinced the university to block the hiring of Kathleen McElroy, a black journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

That case also led José Luis Bermúdez to give up his position as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Texas A&M’s treatment of Professor McElroy bore similarities to the 2021 incident in which Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer-prizewinning author who led the 1619 Project detailing racism throughout US history, abandoned a job offer at the University of North Carolina after UNC’s trustees delayed offering her tenure.

Texas A&M is one of the world’s biggest universities, with 75,000 undergraduates. The internal emails obtained by The Texas Tribune described Dr Alonzo as referencing to her class Mr Patrick’s role in the nation’s opioid crisis, but the emails did not include details of what she allegedly said. The emails also described the university formally censuring the professor.

Mr Patrick is a conservative former radio talk show host with a record of attacking higher education, especially over matters of racial equity. He has advocated ending tenure for all new hires at the state’s public colleges and universities, and for any who teach about the nation’s enduring record of race-based mistreatment.

Synthetic opioids including fentanyl are blamed for tens of thousands of preventable deaths each year in the US. As lieutenant governor, Mr Patrick also serves as president of the state senate, where he was blamed in this year’s legislative session for blocking measures that experts regarded as helpful in fighting the opioid death toll, including bills that would have decriminalised drug paraphernalia and legalised tools to test drugs for fentanyl.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com