Texas A&M Professor Suspended After Student Whined That She Criticized Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Joy Alonzo, an expert in the opioid epidemic, delivered a lecture to students at Texas A&M University where she is a professor, and by the time she got home, she found out she was in “big trouble.”
One of the students was the daughter of Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, who served for six years in the Texas Senate with current Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who backed her run for her current position. During the lecture, Buckingham’s daughter apparently told her mother that Alonzo said something “disparaging” about Patrick, which made it back to Alonzo’s supervisors as well as Chancellor John Sharp, who was in direct contact with Patrick about the comments. (Sharp previously served as a state comptroller, and Buckingham attended his wedding.) At one point, Sharp sent a text to Patrick indicating that Alonzo would be fired by the end of the week:
Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.
The end result was a “formal censure” against Alonzo and paid leave, but no specification of which comments merited the punishment. But what happened was a direct rebuke of a university employee by a politician.
According to the Texas Tribune, it’s not clear what Alonzo said about Patrick or what was found to be so offensive that it warranted a censure, possibly a firing:
Neither UTMB nor Texas A&M would confirm what Alonzo said that prompted such a reaction, and UTMB students interviewed by the Tribune recalled a vague reference to Patrick’s office but nothing specific.
The Texas Tribune spoke to three students, none of whom were identified out of “fear of retaliation,” to try to get some insight into what could have irked Patrick:
According to one student who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the school, some students wondered if it was when Alonzo said that the lieutenant governor’s office was one of the reasons it’s hard for drug users to access certain care for opioid addiction or overdoses.
A second student who also asked to remain anonymous for the same reason said Alonzo made a comment that the lieutenant governor’s office had opposed policies that could have prevented opioid-related deaths, and by doing so had allowed people to die.
A third student who also spoke on the condition of anonymity said Alonzo talked about how policies, like the state’s ban on fentanyl test strips, have a direct impact on the ability to prevent opioid overdoses and deaths. A push to legalize the test strips died earlier this year in the Patrick-led Senate despite support from top Republicans, including Abbott.
All of the students interviewed said they felt Alonzo’s comments were accurate and they were not offended by anything in the presentation.
Patrick has been deeply instrumental in seeing “anti-woke” policies implemented at Texas A&M and other Texas universities including a ban of “diversity, equity and inclusion offices on college campuses” and “a bill that would limit certain conversations about race and gender in college classrooms.” But some members of academia are pushing back:
When professors at UT-Austin publicly reaffirmed their academic freedom to teach critical race theory last year, Patrick pledged to ban tenure in public universities. Ultimately, that proposal was unsuccessful, but faculty say the broad attack on higher education has made Texas a less appealing and more difficult place to work.
A consistent problem with “anti-woke” policies such as the ones in Texas is a lack of clarity. The third anonymous student explained:
We’ve been left wondering exactly what it was they objected to. That vagueness just leads to some more self-censorship, since it’s hard to tell what is and isn’t allowed.
