More and more, we find the leaders of our educational institutions seeking to silence people who disagree with their policies. A revealing case is that of University of Texas professor Richard Lowery.
Lowery, who teaches finance at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business, has been critical of the way the university is being run, which is to say, along very progressive lines. His superiors are unhappy over that. Do they argue back? Do they just ignore him? No — they want him to shut up.
Quoting from the Institute for Free Speech’s summary:
Professor Lowery is well known for his vigorous commentary on university affairs. His articles have appeared widely, including in The Hill, the Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and The College Fix. He questioned the UT administration’s approaches to critical-race theory, affirmative action, academic freedom, competence-based performance measures, and the future of capitalism.
One key target of Prof. Lowery’s critiques was the UT administration’s use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements to filter out competent academics who dissent from the DEI ideology.
And so the administration has undertaken a number of harassing and punitive measures against him. Never mind that the University of Texas is a public institution subject to the First Amendment and therefore bound to uphold his freedom of speech.
Lowery has filed suit against UT, asking the court to “bar UT officials from threatening or acting on the threats made to Lowery for his protected speech” and to “declare that the ‘threats against Lowery amounted to unconstitutional state action designed to chill Lowery’s protected speech and retaliate against him.’”