Suzi Weissman interviews Tom Alter
Posted October 13, 2025
Contact the Committee to Defend Tom Alter for more information and to get involved in this important defense work.
On October 12 Suzi Weissman interviewed Professor Tom Alter, a tenured professor at Texas State University and author of Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth the Transplanted Roots of Farmer Labor Radicalism in Texas for KPFK’s “Beneath the Surface” program. A popular professor, he was fired on the basis of a well-known neo-fascist’s filming of an online conference where he was discussing different methods of movement organizing.
Suzi Weissman: Welcome to “Beneath the Surface.” I’m Suzi Weissman. Professor Tom Alter, a tenured historian at Texas State University, was fired on September 10th after he was accused of inciting violence in a video of him speaking at a socialist conference. His remarks about organizing and defending workers was secretly recorded and doctored by a self-described fascist influencer who launched an online smear campaign.
Within days, Texas state President Kelly Damphousse fired Alter for, “jeopardizing the health and safety of the university community,” violating both due process and First Amendment protections, not to mention the protections offered by tenure. Tom’s case is emblematic of what he calls the new McCarthyism sweeping higher education. It’s a far-right campaign of repression aimed at purging left and liberal educators. But it’s also a story of resistance. A mass solidarity campaign followed his firing, with students, unions, civil rights organizations and colleagues rallying to his defense.
On September 27th, a Texas judge ordered his reinstatement, which is pending the decision of the university president. Tom is joining us today to discuss the case, the far-right assault on academic freedom, and why the fight for free speech must be collective and not just individual. Tom, welcome to the show.
Tom Alter is associate professor of history at Texas State University and a member of Texas State Employees Union and the American University of University professors, otherwise known as AAUP. He’s the author of the book Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth the Transplanted Roots of Farmer Labor Radicalism in Texas. What a great topic. Welcome to the show. Sorry about what happened to you and solidarity with you.
Can you walk us through what happened, your talk, who you were speaking to, who recorded it, and what happened?
Tom Alter: Thank you so much for having me on. And yes, this is a story of resistance. I was invited to give a talk on September 7th as part of a Revolutionary Socialism conference, specifically on building revolutionary organization today. There’s a crisis on the left of organizing and trying to get us together to regroup, to fight all the assaults that we are facing as working-class people. On Sunday, September 7, at an online conference, I was giving a historical overview as well as offering my views on different modes of organizing today.
I was speaking from my home office via zoom on my own time on a Sunday morning. Not exactly prime time. I identified myself as a member of Socialist Horizon — a new, honestly small socialist organization – and as a member of the Texas State Employees Union, the union that represents all state employees in Texas. I did not identify myself in any capacity as a faculty member or employee of Texas State University.
Unbeknownst to the conference organizers, a self-described fascist, who also describes herself as an anti-communist cult leader, filmed the conference. This person has horribly anti-Semitic views, saying that Jewish people chose to die in the Holocaust and Hitler went to heaven. It’s just a really icky rabbit hole.
SW: Why don’t we name her? I was going to ask you more about her, but her name is Karlyn Borysenko.
TA: Yeah. Yeah. And so, she filmed the conference. She filmed my talk. At the end of my presentation, there was a question and answer period where both I and the other speaker gave our slight concluding remarks followed by a short break. During the break, someone who knew me and knew that I taught at Texas State asked me a question about what it’s like teaching there. That’s when my employment came up.
SW: So, somebody in the audience asked you a question unrelated to the actual session?
TA: Correct. There were numerous sessions throughout the day, and rather than having everyone go offline for ten minutes and hoping to get everyone back, there was an official break. I was getting ready to get a glass of water and be ready for the next session, when someone happened to ask me really innocent question. He was curious about what it’s like teaching at Texas State. I answered him, and that became the gotcha moment for the self-described fascist.
SW: Was it a planted question?
TA: I don’t think the person who asked the question had any intention whatsoever of trying to out me. It was purely innocent question. The person was originally from Texas and just asked questions about his home state.
SW: How did you find out what Borysenko was doing?
TA: Some people were familiar with this Borysenko character. She proclaims that she infiltrates conferences. Well, really, these are online conferences open to the public. So, she’s really not infiltrating. What she’s doing is recording them against the wishes of people that are participating, often taking comments out of context.
She used a comment I made about different modes of organizing out of context. I commented that direct action anarchists, such as at Cop City, are literally putting themselves on the line, putting their bodies on the line. while their direct action organizing is laudable without sound organizational structures – which anarchists don’t have — how does one expect to overthrow the U.S. government, the most bloodthirsty, profit driven organization in the history of the world?
I was asking a question, not making a statement calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government. But this wannabe media influencer, self-described fascist, took that and started a campaign saying, here’s a Texas State University professor calling for overthrowing the U.S. government!
I heard about it and decided not to give it any air. This is ridiculous — just let it pass. It wasn’t getting many views. Well, someone made a complaint to the Texas State University president Kelly Damphousse. He went online and announced that I was immediately terminated for inciting violence, that I was a danger to the health and safety of the campus community.
I got a group text from local community activists while I was at my son’s soccer practice. I’m involved in activism in my community here in San Marcos, and they wanted to have an emergency meeting for me. And I said don’t worry about it. I know about online fascists. We’re just not going to give it any air. And they responded: You’ve been fired.
SW: In the Texas State Tribune article about your case, it says that once you were fired by the president of the university, the Texas State University system Chancellor commended the firing.
TA: Yes.
SW: And this is before any due process, any discussion. You were summarily fired.
TA: Yes. Summarily fired. As I mentioned, other people found out before me that I was fired. When I went home, there was an email that had been sent at 5:11 Central Time to my personal email. I was immediately locked out of my Texas State email. I haven’t got access back to it yet. I’ve been locked out of my office on campus.
Basically, the university president and hence the chancellor just capitulated to a self-described fascist with no due process. You can be fired if you have tenure, but there’s a process to be followed, a very strict process. It’s also state law in Texas. The university president violated Texas state policy on tenure, broke state law and violated federal constitutional rights. (There was an anti-tenure bill that was passed in the state of Texas a couple of years ago. It gives the state legislature control over tenure not the universities, which should control the process.)
SW: This is pretty horrific. And of course you’re not the only one. I want you to talk a bit more about what tenure means. How does it protect you? How does it protect all of us in academia?
TA: Tenure exists to protect professors from exactly this kind of assault — but it isn’t automatic. It takes a rigorous six-year process to earn it. It is earned through one’s contributions to the academic field that you’re a part of. In my case, it was History. I’ve published articles and a book on my specialty, Growing Radicalism and Working Class Movements. It’s also earned through service to the university and a good teaching record. I had all those things.
Tenure allows you to pursue different historical research topics that may be controversial or push boundaries; it gives you the ability to pursue those subjects without being fired. Now, if you’re not fulfilling your research, not fulfilling your teaching responsibilities, not providing service to the university — basically the kind of grunt work that makes universities move — If you’re not doing that, then there’s a process to remove someone from tenure. But I had met all those things. I also have, as all Americans, free speech.
Texas is one of those employment-at-will states where the management can fire you immediately. But tenure is like a contract you have with the university. And so, it isn’t a not an employee at will. I have a contract with the university through my tenure, and so they can’t just summarily fire me. There has to be a process. That’s what tenure does. It gives you the academic freedom to pursue different topics that may be controversial without facing repercussions.
SW: Your firing is part of a much larger attempt to transform higher education in this country, which, as we know, has been a fight forever. But it’s been also protected for the longest time. Under the Biden administration, this repression began against Palestine solidarity activism. And that has reached professors, staff and students. Then Trump has turned that incipient McCarthyism into something much more full blown in an attempt to purge the universities, not just of left wing and liberal professors, but to control the content of what is being taught. Maybe you could say a bit about what they’re doing and why you think that’s happening?
I understand a second Texas professor has been fired. Every time I open Facebook, there’s a case of someone either suspended or fired. It’s fairly widespread.
TA: Yes. There was a Texas A&M University professor fired for teaching gender identity to an early childhood development education class. One of the students did not like hearing gender there is a spectrum. This professor was trying to teach future educators that there are different types of children in their classrooms.
This has been an ideological assault on higher education. Universities are classical liberal institutions, meaning that in a free and democratic society you can have open debate, discussion, and learn from different perspectives. Students learn different perspectives. Sometimes it reinforces their preconceived ideologies and at other times it opens people up to different ideas. That’s not always what the far right wants. They’re seeking to control one of the basic institutions of a democratic society, which is a liberal arts university. If you weaken liberal institutions, it’s very dangerous. It’s eroding the basic foundations of a democratic society.
SW: Is your case precedent setting, that is, will it be a precedent for professors nationally? We’re seeing how far too many universities are complying in advance. This also speaks, I think, to the administrative reorganization of colleges and universities altogether. It used to be that those who ran the administration of a university came from the faculty, and now they hire people who have never been faculty members, but were trained as administrators, either as provosts, presidents, deans, whatever. They’ve created this bureaucratic layer that all of us in academia know all too well.
TA: Yes. As you mentioned, there are quite a few professors and academics under attack across the country. We’ve seen it at the University of North Carolina. We’ve seen it at Rutgers University and many other places.
Where my case is different — precedent setting as you say – is that in those other cases there was some form of process. Often the process is flawed. It might have been predetermined from the beginning, but there was a process and that’s what tenure is supposed to have. Mine did not have any process. That is completely unprecedented as far as we know.
Of course there could be a case out there, so I’m not going to speak in absolute terms. But as far as we know, mine is possibly the only case where a tenured professor was fired without any process.
But if you go back to the 1950s, and the height of the original McCarthyism, tenured professors were let go, but they went through some process. It was usually a kangaroo court, but there was a process. Mine had no process.
SW: People are beginning to talk about the new McCarthyism. Those who went through that period point out that it was a period of mass intimidation. When you combine these new cases with the other aspects of the Trump assault on democratic rights, on the Constitution, it is similar. Now there is also the detention and deportation of anyone who looks Latino or speaks Spanish. Can you talk compare the two, maybe looking at the lineage of repression and resistance in the state of Texas? What might you say from your own research?
TA: Going back to the early 1900s, the Texas Socialist Party was the second largest socialist party of any state, right after Oklahoma. Hallettsville, Texas, a little dinky town between Austin and Houston, had the third largest socialist newspaper in the country — and the first repressed under the Espionage Act and the mass censoring that was going on when the United States entered World War One.
Jump ahead. You get ahead into the 1950s and Texas legislature passed an anti-communist act. They said you could not be a member of the Communist Party, the governor wanted to pass a law that Communists should be executed. They didn’t go that far. But they said you cannot be a member of the Communist Party and hold a government job or run for office. The Supreme Court cases eventually came in and corrected that.
So, there’s a long history of repression in Texas. And like today it’s also tied to broader fights. in the 1950s, it was tied to the civil rights movement. Today the repression that’s going on in academia, can’t be separated from the ICE raids and the attacks on immigrants that are going on. They are literally kidnaping people off the streets. This is a multi-pronged attack on our democratic rights; the academic aspect is just one front.
You mentioned the Biden administration initiated attacks on Palestinian activists and free speech. That’s why I’ve seen a lot of broad support. People understand it as an attack on democratic rights. And it’s not just about my getting my job back, but that it would be a real blow to democratic rights if we don’t win this case. That’s why so many people have rallied around it.
SW: On September 27th a Texas judge reinstated you pending a university decision. Can you talk about how that happened? What was the role students, unions, the AAUP, DSA, all kinds of organizations played? If you Google Tom Alter, the first thing you see are all of the declarations in solidarity with you against the actions of Texas. Tell us about the campaign.
TA: I was fired on a Wednesday evening. And on the next morning, students at Texas State University were out protesting. They protested five school days straight. Immediately, my union, the Texas State Employees Union, came to my defense. They provided the ground game in organizing. Then the American Association of University Professors provided me with a lawyer, and a lot of the national connections.
I’m a labor historian, so I’m part of the Labor and Working Class History Association. They immediately issued a statement in my defense. That’s been followed by a plethora of other academic associations: the American Historical Association’s Organization of American Historians, the Alliance for Texas History. The academic world has spoken.
The labor movement has spoken, students have spoken, and faculty have spoken. We’ve even had elected officials here in San Marcos — representatives from the city, county and state level — coming out to speak for freedom of speech and democratic rights. And so, the support has just been amazing. We’ve got like the academic world, the labor movement, students free speech advocates on our side.
SW: And also, international solidarity.
TA: As well as international solidarity, trying to keep track of it all. There are members of the Argentinian National Congress that have chimed in with letters of support. That has been a real positive of this. It’s been a unifying moment for the broad left — and we know the left tends to be fractured. My talk was critical about different parts of the left yet the whole spectrum of the left as well as liberals came together to defend this assault on all of our rights. And so that’s been great.
A judge ordered my reinstatement so I’m back on the payroll and health care benefits. But the university did not put me back in the classroom. It has proceeded with charges against me so now I’m going through the process, which they had disregarded. But in Texas, and especially at Texas State; it’s deeply flawed. There’s no faculty governance. The university president basically has the final say. I had a hearing with him on Monday, October 6th, and there was supposed to have been an announcement by the end of the week, but that hasn’t happened.
SW: You were suspended from teaching. What has happened to your classes?
TA: I was teaching a couple classes, and I was also a faculty advisor for a few student organizations, including the Young Democratic Socialists of America. They’ve been great. They’ve stepped up completely. And I’ve also been advising a number of graduate students on their master’s thesis. So, while it’s been totally disruptive, there’s a lot of great faculty in the history department and they’ve stepped in.
SW: Where does the case stand and what do you think might be the outcome?
TA: Yes. I had a hearing with the Texas State University president, Kelly Damphousse, where I was offered to the opportunity to present my side of the case. I explained I was not advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. I was talking about a hypothetical revolutionary party and a hypothetical revolutionary situation. And I was not engaging in partisan political activity, which means usually running for election.
I thought that the hearing went well, was asked good questions. But now we’ve been waiting close to a week without any decision. So, we’re waiting to hear the outcome, which will either be reinstated and be a victory for all those that defend free speech and democratic rights. Or I could be terminated.
SW: In which case there will also be a giant campaign?
TA: There will be a giant campaign. The academic world is enraged about what’s happened to me. There’s also a lawsuit that’s pending. Hopefully the university president will come to his senses and rule on the side of democratic rights, and I won’t be terminated. But if they proceed, there’s a lawsuit and a broader campaign for free speech. The fight for free speech and democratic rights does not end.
SW: What collective strategies do you see as important to defend free speech and rebuild solidarity on campus? I think somewhere I read that you said, “use your rights or lose them.”
TA: I used my rights and then lost them but still keep on using free speech rights. I’ve gotten where I am so far with my campaign because of the broad support. I encourage people to join the union, join other political organizations that match things that you hold dear to your heart. Organize. Contribute what you can. Now is the time to fight back.
We learn about things from the past. We hold those up and we’re like, wow, look at the great battles of the labor movement, the fights for civil rights. Well, history has been thrust upon us. Now we’re in one of those moments, whether we chose to be or not. What we do now is important.
The fight didn’t start with me, and it doesn’t end with me. It keeps on going for all of our rights until we’re free. And we truly have transformed society. And we’re no longer have giant corporate universities or corporations controlling our daily lives.
SW: Tom Alter, thank you so much for all of that. We wish you all the best and solidarity. Of course, We wish you the best, Tom.
TA: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Tom Alter was informed on October 13 that he has been fired from Texas State University. He wrote the following message:
I stand in opposition to Texas State University’s attack on democratic rights that are protected by the Texas and United States Constitutions as well as the academic freedom that was once the hallmark of Texas higher education.
To be clear, my termination is part of a broader political attack being carried out by the authoritarian far-right to crush democracy and democratic institutions in the United States in general and Texas in particular. But the charges leveled against me by the Texas State University administration do not stand up to the facts; I have truth on my side and I look forward to my day in court.
My termination, in clear violation of my First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, association, and of assembly brings shame, embarrassment and a heavy blow to the academic reputation of Texas State University. This hurts not only faculty, staff, current students and alumni but the San Marcos community as well.
This fight did not start with me and it does not end with me. I want to thank my unions, the Texas State Employees Union, American Association of University Professors, and Texas-AFT; the broad coalition of democratic rights supporters in the Committee to Defend Tom Alter; the Texas State chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America; Socialist Horizon; and all those who value basic democracy.
Love and Solidarity,
Tom Alter
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