AAUP Relaunches Investigation at Collin College

Today the AAUP wrote the administration at Collin College to urge the reinstatement of Dr. Michael Phillips, a professor of history with fifteen years of full-time service at the institution. The Collin administration has terminated Professor Phillips’s appointment effective May 2022. The action was evidently based on his remarks on social media and to the press on a variety of controversial topics as well as on student allegations of “bias” in his classroom discussions. The administration has not afforded him a hearing before an elected faculty committee in which it bears the burden of demonstrating adequate cause for dismissal, a procedure essential for protecting academic freedom.

Last May, the AAUP opened an investigation at Collin College into the cases of three other faculty members whose appointments were terminated or nonrenewed for similar reasons and without due process. The AAUP suspended the investigation in July, when two complainants decided to defer their participation because of their legal action against the college. However, one of those faculty members has once again agreed to participate. So the investigation, which will now include the case of Professor Phillips as well as the previous cases of Professors Lora Burnett and Suzanne Jones, has resumed.