SEO Headline (Max 60 characters)
Collin College Reinstates Professor Who Sued for Free Speech Issues
Collin College in Texas settled with and reinstated a former professor who sued it for violation of her free speech rights. Collin revoked the three-year contract extension it granted to Suzanne Jones, a longtime professor of education, in early 2021, citing her lack of support for the college’s mission. Jones said she was told that she’d erred in criticizing the college’s COVID-reopening plan and by allowing the college’s name to appear on the website for the Texas Faculty Association website, which she did not control. She also suspected she was being retaliated against for participating in the campus TFA advocacy chapter. Two other professors said they’d been effectively fired in violation of their free speech rights around the same time as Jones. Collin agreed in January to pay one of them $70,000.
Jones’s settlement includes a two-year, $230,000 teaching contract and $145,000 in attorneys’ fees. She plans to return to teaching, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represented Jones in her lawsuit. Greg H. Greubel, a lawyer with FIRE, said in a statement, “This is a huge victory—not only for Suzanne, but for every single professor around the country who hesitates to speak up because an administrator wants to silence them. Censorship is un-American.”
Collin said in a statement Jones will teach exclusively as part of iCollin, Collin’s virtual campus, through 2025, as part of the settlement. The college “recognizes that Dr. Jones is a great teacher and during her time at the college demonstrated good performance through high evaluations and was respected by her students and many of her colleagues.”
Trending Stories
THE Campus
Resources for faculty and staff from our partners at Times Higher Education.
- Challenges and opportunities of the 60-year curriculum
- Take care over sharing: guiding student teams on collaboration
- Everything you always wanted to know about open-book exams – but were afraid to ask
- How to encourage gender equity in interdisciplinary research
- Are block teaching and universal design for learning compatible?
Most Shared Stories
- 3 Questions on Academic Library Spending for the Scholar Who Wrote the Book on University Budgets | Inside Higher Ed…
- Academic experts offer advice on ChatGPT
- More colleges will likely face closure in 2023, experts say
- Two types of bullies in academe that can go unrecognized (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed
- Faculty member issues dire warning to grad students about jobs
Could Win at the Supreme Court