BY BILL MULLEN
Can you identify yourself and explain what happened at Texas State?
My name is Tom Alter. Until being recently fired in violation of my free speech rights, I was a tenured associate professor of history at Texas State University in San Marcos, specializing in labor and working class forms of organizing and protest. I have been involved in the labor movement and other social justice causes for over thirty years. I am member of the Texas State Employees Union – CWA (TSEU) which represents employees of the state of Texas and a member of the American Association of University Professors-AFT (AAUP). This is in addition to my personal activism as a member of Socialist Horizon. I am writing this in my personal capacity not affiliated with Texas State University.
On September 7 I gave a talk on “Building Revolutionary Organization Today” as part of a two day online Revolutionary Socialism conference. This was not a call for a violent armed revolution but rather for a mass movement for a socialist future of economic democracy, a national health care system and fully funded free public education. I gave the talk on my own time on a Sunday morning from my home office via Zoom. In none of the conference promotional material was I identified as an employee or faculty member at Texas State University (TXST). Participants had to preregister and the conference had a no recording policy. I identified myself at the beginning of my talk as a member of the TSEU and Socialist Horizon – San Marcos. Unbeknownst to myself and conference organizers a social media grifter with a YouTube channel who calls herself an “anti-communist cult leader” recorded the entirety of the conference. This person also describes herself as a fascist and has horribly antisemitic and anti-queer views. The self-described fascist took a segment of my talk to make it appear that I was calling for the overthrow of the US government and posted it online. In its full context, I was not calling for the overthrow of the US government, but rather posed the theoretical question to direct action anarchists, who philosophically oppose the formation of political parties and call for abolishing the state, of how does one expect to overthrow the US government without organization? The fascist YouTuber also filmed a break period between conference sessions where a participant asked me what it was like teaching at TXST. Since I knew the person, the conference was on break, and it was not supposed to be recorded, I answered the person’s questions. This was the equivalent of a hallway conversation during an in-person conference. The fascist then edited her footage to make it appear that this break period conversation about my teaching at TXST was part of my conference presentation. She then posted the edited video online and called for a campaign for my firing from TXST. An online website called the Texas Scorecard, funded by Christian nationalist oil billionaires, platformed the campaign for my firing on September 10. Within hours, TXST University President Kelly Damphousse complied making a social media post announcing my termination effective immediately. He claimed I was “inciting violence” and was a danger to the health and safety of the TXST community. I only found out about my firing when I was alerted by San Marcos community activists to Damphousse’s post while at my son’s soccer practice.
I was summarily fired with no due process through a social media post. My firing ignored TXST guidelines for removing tenured faculty, broke state law governing tenure, and violated my federal Constitutional rights guaranteed in the 1st and 14th Amendments.
What has been the response to your firing?
The response to my firing by students, my unions, and supporters of democratic rights was immediate. I was fired on a Wednesday evening and students were on campus protesting my firing Thursday morning. Students protested on campus for five school days straight. Since then the TXST chapters of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and Socialist Horizon have continued organizing around my defense campaign and carried out further organized protests and meetings. My unions’ response was immediate as well. The TSEU had an organizer at my home the day after my firing to begin the union’s grassroots campaign for my defense and the AAUP provided a union lawyer to carry out my legal defense. Socialist Horizon members began the work of reaching out nationally and internationally to other left and democratic rights organizations seeking to wage a broad public campaign in defense of free speech. The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), of which I am a member of as a labor historian, quickly put out a statement condemning my firing and calling for a defense of free speech, academic freedom, tenure and due process. Other academic history associations in short time followed the lead of LAWCHA and put out statements of their own such as American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Alliance for Texas History, among many others. The academic historical profession has basically come out in defense of me, free speech, due process, academic freedom and tenure.
Outside of the public acts of protest against my firing there was been another chilling response to my firing. Faculty at TXST are now afraid for their jobs and teaching basic facts with academic freedom, tenure, and free speech no longer being respected at TXST. Needless to say, my firing has had a devastating impact on my family with two school aged children.
What is the basis of your legal claim against the University?
After my firing, my AAUP-AFT lawyer filed a lawsuit against the TXST president and provost. A district judge ruled that TXST had not followed due process and ordered my reinstatement. The TXST administration then made up its own form of due process consisting of a hearing between myself and TXST President Damphousse on October 6. On October 13, Damphousse once again dismissed me with the justification, in brief, that I was calling for overthrowing the US government and recruiting students into a revolutionary socialist party in my capacity as TXST faculty member. This claim is based solely on the doctored video. Damphousse has a fascist’s doctored video. I have the truth.
With litigation ongoing I cannot speak to the specifics of my legal case against TXST. I can speak to the basic principles my defense campaign is seeking to uphold. For those working in higher education, 85 years of academic norms and practices embodied in the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure are at stake. My case also has ramifications related to the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment is largely know as the amendment granting birthright citizenship and is one of the three historic amendments following the Civil War during Reconstruction which ended slavery and gave rights to former slaves won through struggle. Along with granting birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment guarantees that the State cannot deprive any person of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Tenure is a form of contract which tenured faculty have a propertied interest in. As a government entity, TXST in removing my tenure has deprived me of property without due process. This is in addition to the basic rights protected by the 1st Amendment of freedom of speech and right to assembly violated by TXST in my firing. Any erosions of the 1st and 14th Amendments cannot be accepted as this opens the door for further weakening of our Constitutional rights.
Can you describe the organizing that has been done on your behalf?
While my firing was quick and sudden, the organizing response to it was even quicker. As stated students and my unions immediately came to my defense locally. One of the larger actions organized in San Marcos was a press conference and rally at which representatives of the Communication Workers of America, the Texas AFL-CIO, the AAUP, the TSEU, the Council of American Islamic Relations, the YDSA, Socialist Horizon as well elected politicians at the city, county, and state level all spoke in defense of free speech. Nationally a Committee to Defend Tom Alter was formed with representatives from unions, social justice and democratic rights organizations, and prominent academics. This broad support shows the concern over the ongoing assaults on democratic rights and willingness of people to join in struggle to fightback and defend our rights. The Committee has publicized my defense campaign, drawing not only national but international support as well. Currently, the Committee has organized a letter writing campaign to the Texas State University System Board Regents who will be hearing my appeal to be reinstated during its meetings during the month of November. Here is the letter academics can send and another for civil society. The Committee has a website where people can stay up to date on activities related to my case in defense of free speech.
What is your political assessment of what has happened to you? What does it tell us about the state of free speech and academic freedom? What does it tell us about the fight we have in front of us?
My firing very much comes in the context of growing attacks on higher education and free speech. For the past few decades, universities have increasingly been run more on a business model rather than as centers of learning. More recently we have seen universities being used by politicians to carry out ideological political battles with the banning of teaching critical race theory, dismantling of DEI programs, and now sweeping course audits. These course audits can more accurately be called course purges as they are designed to eliminate courses related to subjects on gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ issues. Moreover we are undergoing an attack on free speech itself. This attack began in earnest two years ago over campus activism in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. Sanctioned by Democratic and Republican politicians alike, faculty, students, and university staff lost their jobs and were expelled for protesting the genocide in Palestine. Once the free speech rights of people protesting a live-streamed genocide were curtailed this opened the door for a broader attack on free speech and democratic rights. We are now experiencing a full on war on free speech that began on campuses and is spreading to other government agencies. All this comes amidst a deepening economic crisis as people are discussing and looking for solutions based within the working class and not catering to the greed of billionaires. I was fired over advocating for socialism in my own time. Students at Texas Tech and TXST were expelled and forced to withdraw using their free speech in opposition to public memorials for Charlie Kirk. A staffer at TXST was fired for making a social media post critical of Kirk. And recently a government employee was fired from the Texas Comptroller’s office for making a Tik-Tok post promoting the No Kings Rally in Austin that was in no way associated with his government job. Similar draconian measures can found across the country along with ICE agents terrorizing our communities. We are now past the point of sounding alarm bells. We are currently living in time when history has called upon us to stand up for our democratic rights or lose them to an ever creeping fascist current in today’s political reality. For myself, just typing the words out in the last sentence is chilling and sobering. However, there is joy in resistance. The support that my public campaign has garnered from unions, democratic rights organization, and concerned people and activists around the world demonstrates that we must and can win this struggle for a truly democratic and egalitarian society through love and solidarity.
Finally, how can people help you?
We have a letter-writing campaign to the Board of Regents and Administration at Texas State demanding my reinstatement. So far more than 3, 000 letters have been sent. We have a Go Fund Me campaign to help me and my family. I am off payroll and without health insurance for myself and my two children.
Tomorrow night there will be a Haymarket Books event titled “Speak Out! Tom Alter, MAGA McCarthyism and the Battle for Free Speech.” I’ll be speaking along with Eman Abdulhadi, Jodi Dean, Catarina Kissinger, Karim Mattar and Davd McNally. We are encouraging people to hold watch parties.
Tom Alter is a scholar and activist who was recently fired by Texas State University. He is the author of Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas. He is a member of the Texas State Employees Union, the American Association of University Professors, and Socialist Horizon.
Bill V. Mullen is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue. He is a member of the Committee to Defend Tom Alter.
