The Volokh Conspiracy
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Texas Tech Investigates Professor for Social Media Posts
The AFA objects
The Academic Freedom Alliance sent a letter to Texas Tech University protesting its suspension and investigation of Education Professor Jairo Funez-Flores. Like many others, Funez-Flores has shared his thoughts on the events in Israel and Gaza on social media. As with many academics, his views on Israel are controversial. In his case, expressing his private political opinions on social media resulted in his being suspended, investigated, and threatened with termination by his state university employer.
The professor's social media posts were first collected by Texas Scorecard, a conservative journalism site focused state politics. The site asserted that the social media posts were "antisemitic" and "do not correspond with the high standards of ethical conduct the university demands of its employees." The system chancellor and university president subsequently announced by Funez-Flores had been suspended with pay while an investigation is conducted. They denounced his posts as "hateful, antisemitic, and unacceptable."
The university's actions have been publicly reported here and here.
From the letter:
There can be no question that the social media posts of Professor Funez-Flores
are constitutionally protected expressions of private political opinions and cannot
themselves form the basis of university discipline. For the university to explicitly
leverage complaints about such social media posts into grounds for a fishing
expedition into the professor's professional conduct on campus is not only
inconsistent with the university's policies and constitutional commitments but
has a direct chilling effect on all members of the faculty who might wish to
engage in their own constitutionally protected expressive activities on
controversial topics. The publicly announced suspension and investigation is itself
a form of punishment, and the stated cause of this punishment is that the faculty
member engaged in protected political expression that some found "hateful,
antisemitic, and unacceptable."
