LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor,
There’s some big doin’s up there on Chatauqua Hill! It seems that Kelly Damphousse, who holds the official title of President of Texas State University, the man who fired Dr. Thomas Alter, has been promoted. With the support of Pranash Aswath, University provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and, reportedly, at the command of Texas’s own all-powerful wizard, Greg Abbott, the man behind the curtain, Damphousse can now add the unique distinction of “judge, jury, and executioner” to the growing list of achievements in his curriculum vitae.
To that, we might add, “Court Magician,” for his fabled prowess in waving his Hogwartian magic wand and altering his public statements after they’ve been uttered, leaving folks scratching their heads trying to figure out what it is he’s actually trying to say. Perhaps he’s not sure himself.
Of course, I’d be remiss if I did not nominate Damphousse for the famed and coveted Order of Lenin Award for outstanding service in the suppression of free speech and academic freedom here at the people’s university. Wait — what’s that you say? The Soviet Union is dead, and the Order of Lenin is now no more than a tarnished trinket available for a song on eBay? That makes it all the more fitting – a cheap gewgaw for a guy who apparently thinks the First Amendment has no value either.
Now, as fantastic as it sounds, Texas State has outdone itself! Damphousse’s Institute of Malicious Compliance has announced that it “respects” the decision of a district court judge who ordered the reinstatement of Dr. Alter —with pay.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves about that. No fists raised in victory, please. No triumphal marches or speeches on the Quad. No torchlight parades. Dr. Alter is forbidden to teach courses until – and I kid you not – “due process has run its course.”
Due process? Isn’t that what was denied Dr. Alter when he was fired? He had to go to court to force the apparatchiks at Texas State to grant it to him. Now it looks like they’re using it to silence him as they try to figure out what they’re going to do next.
When they talk about “respecting” the court’s decision, I can’t help but think about a fellow named Humpty Dumpty. Lewis Carroll gave him a voice in “Through the Looking Glass – and What Alice Found There.”
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”
So, is that the game? “We’ll ‘respect’ the court’s decision as long as we get to define respect — and as long as we hold the power?”
What is it they’re so afraid of?
And the issue is not just the cavalier treatment of Dr. Alter. Not by a long shot! The University’s administrators, cowering in the imagined safety of their ivory tower, peering through their peculiar periscope at a world of words and ideas that so obviously grieve them, have moved on to a new target — classroom instruction.
And right-wing Texas politicians seem to be leading the charge.
According to the University Star, Texas State’s student newspaper, state representative Brian Harrison, was the main voice behind the firing of a Texas A&M professor following a student’s complaints that the content of her course violated both an executive order by Donald Trump and the student’s religious beliefs.
I’ll cross my fingers and hope that the A&M professor doesn’t suffer the same fate as Galileo Galilei, who was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life for holding positions contrary to the religious beliefs of the day. But you never know. When Harrison cried “Indoctrination,” the man behind the curtain, having found his groove, called for the professor to be fired.
Which brings us to our current situation. Texas State University recently pulled the plug on a course “LGBTQ+” after Harrison’s post. Soon-tobe- former Congressman Chip Roy, never one to leave a pie undamaged by his thumb, chimed in, urging Damphousse not only to embark on a course-killing spree, but, according to the Star, to dump a graduate-level LGBTQ+ course, as well.
Roy, not surprisingly, jumped on the “indoctrination” bandwagon as well, having no faith, it would seem, in the ability or willingness of students to experience and grapple with new ideas and different viewpoints, weigh the pros and cons of an issue, participate in the debate and — agree or disagree — come to an informed conclusion.
Here we get to the Humpty Dumpty theory of language again. Indoctrination, to folks like Harrison and Roy, constitutes what they don’t want taught. Somehow, they’re missing the larger point that slamming the door shut on information that that you don’t agree with or that you find objectionable, is not the way to go. Limiting student exposure to your own pet beliefs and theories — and freezing out all others — is nothing short of indoctrination.
But that’s not what’s been happening in this disputed course. A student quoted by the Star, who had taken the course, said, “The professor never once told us to do anything in particular, vote a certain way, think a certain way. She was just laying out facts. And we were allowed to feel how we felt about it, and we were encouraged to do our own research.”
That, of course, was the big missing piece for the critics. Unlike the student, they couldn’t say, “Been there. Done that.”
And even if they could, trying to shut down the course would be wrong. As Victoria Bynum, Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at Texas State said, this is “an attack on the university’s independence.”
She’s absolutely right.
Sincerely, Jon Leonard San Marcos
