I’m one of the professors Collin College fired in its attack on free speech – The Dallas Morning News

Last year, a Texas historical association named me educator of the year. In January, my college fired me.

Im a professor of American history at Collin College in Plano, Texas. For almost 15 years, I have loved teaching, sponsoring student organizations, winning grants and awards for my scholarship, and earning excellent evaluations from students and administrators alike.

But on May 15, my career will end. I never imagined I would lose my job because I shared knowledge.

In August, while teaching about the history of pandemics, I gently encouraged my students to consider wearing masks to keep themselves and others safe from a deadly pandemic. No mandates. No punishment for not wearing a mask. I simply offered advice.

For that, I received a pink slip.

For years, Collin College has worked tirelessly to erode free expression.

In 2017, I co-wrote an opinion piece, published by this newspaper, calling for the removal of Confederate monuments. I was warned that my advocacy might make the college look bad.

In 2019, I gave an interview with The Washington Post as an expert on the history of race relations in Dallas, after a former Collin College student was arrested in the 2019 El Paso shooting that killed 23. I was disciplined by the college for granting an interview.

Sadly, I am not alone.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is representing me in a lawsuit against Collin College, estimates that there were more than 570 incidents over the past seven years in which scholars were targeted for some type of professional punishment when they exercised constitutionally protected speech. In more than 20 percent of the cases, the professors were terminated.

This trend is not limited to one end of the political spectrum. Professors across the country, representing diverse viewpoints, are routinely punished for their constitutionally-protected speech.

Collin College has become an epicenter of the war on free speech in higher education, with four professors fired there over the past two years. One professor was fired for criticizing Mike Pence after work hours, on her private Twitter feed during the 2020 vice presidential debate. Another lost her job after publicly calling for the college to post a COVID dashboard. A third was canned when she was listed on the statewide Texas Faculty Associations website as a contact person for the nascent local chapter being organized by Collin College faculty members. All these professors were beloved and acclaimed educators.

Collin Colleges actions have prompted an investigation by the American Association of University Professors and two years of passionate protests, including a free speech rally held last Tuesday night that drew two dozen to the colleges Board of Trustees meeting. Nevertheless, the institutions leadership has refused to budge.

Meanwhile, the chilling climate of censorship, and the fear of addressing subjects that might offend somebody, sometime, somewhere started with K-12 classrooms and has now reached graduate programs.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, concerned that Marxists are supposedly poisoning the minds of college students, proposed banning tenure for new professors. Tenure is a system designed to protect professors from being fired because the topics they research or the conclusions they draw are unpopular at the moment. Patricks proposal could cause a serious brain drain in the state.

College classrooms should be where students get their final lessons in how to cope with, learn from, and respond to competing ideas and how to empathize with those who have different experiences before they emerge into the larger world. Students are being robbed of the opportunity to learn those lessons at institutions of higher education across the nation.

Threats to democracy do not have to come in the form of a Russian tank or exploding missiles. Freedom can be fatally eroded, slowly but relentlessly. A professor is fired here, a principal forced to retire there, a book is banned or an idea forbidden elsewhere. Soon the crumbling edifice of a flawed but once-vibrant republic collapses.

Michael Phillips is a history professor at Collin College, and author of White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001. He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.

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I'm one of the professors Collin College fired in its attack on free speech - The Dallas Morning News