Collin College doesn’t renew contract of historian, author who claims retaliation

A Collin College professor is claiming his contract was not renewed because he often spoke out on COVID-19 protocols and community concerns.

Michael Phillips, a professor and author of the history book White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, shared on Twitter that his contract will expire in May.

“There’s been an ongoing war on free speech in the First Amendment in Collin College,” Phillips told The News. “The president and the administration, at all levels, want to just tightly control what can be said by faculty, what faculty can do, even off campus, and it’s shocking.”

He shared on social media that campus leaders questioned him for his involvement in efforts to remove Confederate statues from Dallas and for encouraging students to wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19. School officials previously had instructed staff to not even request students to wear masks because of Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates, Phillips tweeted.

“Every single time I’ve been disciplined, it’s been about free speech,” Phillips said.

In August of last year, Phillips also tweeted a photo of a presentation that said faculty and staff could not request, require or recommend students to wear a mask. Later that month, he said he received a discipline warning noting that his actions showed insubordination.

Phillips also claims that school administrators proposed that he work with them to “construct a narrative” around his departure and suggested he say he was leaving voluntarily.

School officials will not publicly comment on personnel matters, Collin College spokesperson Marisela Cadena-Smith said in a statement.

“Given that the renewal or non-renewal of faculty contracts is a routine operational matter at the college, we are dismayed at the efforts of some individuals to present this as anything other than what it truly is,” Cadena-Smith’s statement went on to note.

In general, the school uses a renewal process for faculty contracts that relies on both faculty peer review and administrative input recommendations to decide whether a faculty member is eligible to continue.

Collin College President H. Neil Matkin has previously denied in staff-wide emails that his administration retaliates against faculty and staff members.