Collin College strikes again! Dr. Michael Phillips, award-winning scholar, fired! (G&R 138)

Another professor from Collin College has been fired in retaliation for  speaking out against President Neil Matkin's continued rejection of  their First Amendment rights and their concern for safety on campus.  

Michael Philips has now been fired along with Suzanne Stateler Jones,  Audra Heaslip, and Lora Burnett, all in violation of their First  Amendment righs.  Philips first was reprimanded by Collin College for  being active in a campaign to remove Confederate statues in Dallas in  2017.  

More recently he has defended his fired colleagues and he has  urged mask-wearing amid the COVID pandemic, though Matkin has told  professors they are not allowed to mention it.     

Weeks ago, he was notified that his contract would not be reviewed  though he has been one of the best-regarded and most popular professors  on campus for 15 years, with nothing in his background to merit any kind  of penalty.     Philips is another victim of Matkin and the local Republican Party to  remove anyone who is not in lock-step with them and who is concerned  about the COVID pandemic and who believes in free thought on campus.

We talk with Dr. Phillips about his firing and the political situation  at Collin College.   

Outro- The Nervebreakers "Politics"

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Bio// Michael Phillips is a scholar of American race relations, Texas history,  right-wing politics, and apocalyptic religions.  After a seven-year  journalism career, including a stint at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, he  received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. His dissertation won the University of Texas at Austin Outstanding  Dissertation Award and was published as White Metropolis: Race,  Ethnicity and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, That book won the 2007  Texas Historical Commission’s prize for best book on Texas history.   

Phillips has combined his scholarship with activism and was one of the  leaders of the movement to take down Confederate monuments and rename  schools named after Confederate leaders in Dallas.  In 2019 he was named part of the first group of community college  professors to receive a Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies  Community College research fellowship for his project on the history of  eugenics in the state of Texas. Phillips, and his wife and research  partner Betsy Friauf, are under contract with the University of Oklahoma  Press to write an upcoming book, The Strange Career of Eugenics in  Texas, 1854-1940.  Since 2007, he has taught at Collin College in Plano, Texas and is  currently engaged in a fight over free speech and labor rights at that  institution. 

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Links// 

• Yet Another History Professor Says Collin College Fired Him Over Free  Speech Concerns  (https://bit.ly/3Gx9GKP) 
• Dallas Morning News:Collin College doesn’t renew contract of historian, author who claims retaliation  (https://bit.ly/3LagNMN) 
• G&R: Professors fired from Collin College, Retaliation in Texas (https://bit.ly/TXFiredGandR) (from Feb. 2021)  

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This is a Green and Red Podcast production. Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969).  “Green and Red Blues" by Moody.    Editing by Isaac.