Freedom For Me, But Not For Thee

End of Friday read:

A @UTAustin professor filed a libel suit agnst the daughter of a #TXlege GOP consultant who has worked for Dan Patrick, Sen. Bettencourt.

Now, @TeamBettencourt has filed a bill to let schools revoke tenure if profs sue studentshttps://t.co/Jiy1MmNuf3

— Kate McGee (@McGeeReports) April 16, 2021

It's really got to be easier to fire peope other prominent people don't like:

UT-Austin classics professor Thomas Hubbard, who is tenured, studies ancient pederasty, or the sexual relationship between a man and young boy, which multiple students raised concerns with in 2019. Hubbard taught a class called “Mythologies of Rape,” and published academic writing about the age at which boys can consent to sexual relations, including an article titled "Sexual Consent and the Adolescent Male, or What Can We Learn from the Greeks?"

At the time, former UT-Austin President Greg Fenves said he found the content “outrageous,” but he maintained that academic research, including the study of controversial or offensive ideas, is protected by the First Amendment.

Bettencourt said in a Senate Higher Education Committee hearing this week that he was shocked when Hubbard took a “dispute at a low level” and escalated it to the courts without trying to first resolve it within the university's grievance system.

“The professor has to be the adult in the room. While the students are probably over 18, they’re very young and inexperienced,” Bettencourt said. “Once they end up in a courtroom, that student is stuck in a civil litigation for probably two years or more.”

Yeah, it's not that simple:

“The University did appoint a special committee to examine my teaching record, and that committee reported that they found no evidence of my introducing irrelevant or inappropriate material into my teaching,” Hubbard wrote. “I agree that litigation should always be a last resort, but in this case, it was the only resort given the absence of cooperation from the University.”

In 2019, students protested at Hubbard’s house, banging on the door of his house and vandalizing his home. He has since relocated to California and works for UT-Austin remotely.

One of the students who Hubbard sued is Sarah Blakemore, the daughter of a prominent Republican political consultant. Allen Blakemore serves as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s campaign strategist and spokesperson, and has done campaign work for Bettencourt and other Republican lawmakers.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Sarah Blakemore signed up to take Hubbard’s class in 2019, but dropped it after she read his research. Court documents allege she passed around a flyer with false statements about his research and courses.

“I understand everyone has their own academic license, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for teachers at a public university to be promoting breaking the law,” Sarah Blakemore told the Statesman in 2019. She declined to comment to The Texas Tribune at the advice of her attorney.

Studying ancient cultures and "breaking the law" strike me as two very different things.  Shall we ban reading Plato, then?  There are clear intimations of pederastry in the Phadeo, if memory serves.  And wait'll she learns the French Revolution involved beheadings (also illegal today) and American history is rife with incidents of lynching, well into the 20th century.  Can we teach that?  Or no?

I do love this justification for Bettencourt's bill:

“This comes from the media reports and just the outrage over the fact that we’ve got any students, don't care who it is, [getting sued]” Bettencourt said. “Tenure grants protection of freedom of speech to the professor but none to the student and so it's not a level playing field.”

Slander is not protected speech.  But then, Bettencourt doesn't believe in protected speech for thee; only for he, and his friends.

In Wednesday’s hearing, Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, raised concerns about the bill limiting a person’s access to the courts based on their profession.

“I don't want to create a perverse incentive that student misconduct, whether it's libel or something more physical, that professors are placed in a position of having cause of action in front of court, but to receive that justice I may very well find myself vacating my tenure,” he said.

But Bettencourt said the bill would not automatically revoke tenure if a professor sues a student. While he noted that it’s rare for professors to sue students, he said the bill would offer universities the option and tell professors “if you take that step, there could be consequences.”

In other words, don't fuck with the children of prominent Texas Republicans.

“We talk about free speech in public square, but there is a significant amount of damage when that contract protects that professor in ways that are granted through employment and through those protections that so many others in other respective fields of work are not protected,” he said. “Yet the public square and free speech provisions in those arguments are allowed to diminish that very brand, hurting so many as well as the institution itself.”

Sometimes I wonder why this state tries to operate universities at all.  It's pretty clear the very concept scares some "important" people to death.