“Stick to Prescribed Messaging”: Mayo Clinic Suspends Professor for Comments on Trans-Athletes

Ordering faculty to ” stick to prescribed messaging” raises serious questions of academic freedom and free speech. Yet, while conservative sites have raised concerns, faculty members (including his colleagues at Mayo) are again conspicuously silent. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) should be pursuing this matter with vigor. The 1915 AAUP Declaration called for the protection of both free speech and academic privilege. The Declaration stressed the guarantee of “unfettered discussion” free of the “prescribed inculcation of a particular opinion upon a controverted question.”