Thursday Open Comments – TAMU & DP Troubles

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.

“I am in a ton of trouble. Please call me!” she wrote to Chandler Self, the UTMB professor who invited her to speak.

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.”

This is a developing story, but I can tell you John Sharp is a snake and always has been.  I don’t know what stupid trouble Dan has stumbled into or what his culpability is in this mess, but it has already reached across the country.

Prominent law professor Eugene Volokh wrote on Volokh Conspiracy at Reason.com quoting the powerful Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE):

FIRE is deeply troubled by The Texas Tribune’s report on Texas A&M University’s censure and investigation of Clinical Assistant Pharmacy Professor Joy Alonzo for criticizing the Lieutenant Governor. {This letter reflects our under­standing of the pertinent facts, based on public information. We appreciate that you may have additional information to offer and invite you to share it with us.} We urge you to take swift, decisive action to ensure the university will meet its First Amendment obligations to respect faculty’s core expressive rights.

When citizens criticize public officials, the First Amendment’s protection is “at its zenith.” Public university faculty also have broad expressive and academic freedom rights to raise those criticisms in their classrooms, which the Supreme Court has held “occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition,” and where “government should be extremely reticent to tread.”

This looks bad, very bad.