Collin College has a free speech problem

One should never fight a multifront war by choice, the old wisdom goes, but progressives in North Texas don’t have much choice in the matter. School dramas have sprouted like bluebonnets across the Dallas–Fort Worth area these past eight months. Last August, the first Black principal of Colleyville Heritage High School was placed on administrative leave after some parents accused him of teaching and promoting “critical race theory.” In Irving, a teacher saw her contract terminated last month after she protested the removal of rainbow “safe space” stickers at her high school. And late last month in Southlake, where a top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District told educators last fall to offer “opposing” perspectives when teaching the Holocaust, a “non-disparagement” clause was added to teacher contracts to prevent them from publicly criticizing the school district and its employees. On the last Tuesday of April, many of the usual protesting suspects were split between options. They could head to the McKinney ISD’s board meeting to provide a counterbalance to right-wing activists calling for a purge of books from the libraries. Or they could attend a board of trustees meeting at Collin College, a community college in the northern suburbs of Dallas that serves more than 56,000 students.

At Collin, protesters were rallying to oppose the college’s decision not to renew the contract of outspoken history professor Michael Phillips for the 2022–23 academic year. It was not the first time the college had been accused of dismissing a professor for criticizing the school, labor organizing, or publicly wading into political controversies. For two years running, Collin has been named one of the top ten worst colleges in the United States for freedom of speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an advocacy group that defends the First Amendment rights of educators and students on both the right and left. Unlike some community colleges in the state, Collin does not offer tenure—something state leaders such as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick would like to see at all state universities and colleges, because it makes it easier to fire professors for stepping out of line. In 2015, one Collin trustee, Bob Collins, told conservative groups that the lack of tenure was designed to prevent “ultraliberal, anti-capitalism, socialistic professors” from becoming entrenched at the college and hiring more of their own. In the last two academic years, at least four faculty members have learned their contracts would not be renewed for the following academic year and claimed their First Amendment rights were being violated. In 2020, history professor Lora Burnett tweeted during a vice presidential debate that the moderator needed to “to talk over Mike Pence until he shuts his little demon mouth up.” State representative Jeff Leach, who represents a Plano district the college serves, subsequently texted Neil Matkin, Collin’s president, asking if Burnett was being paid with taxpayer dollars. Matkin replied that she was, and that he would “deal with it.” When Burnett’s contract wasn’t renewed at the end of the school year, she sued the school on First Amendment grounds and settled this past January for $70,000 plus attorney’s fees, though Collin College did not admit liability.