Campaign Update:
Come see Tom speak alongside union workers, representatives, and scholars at U-M Ann Arbor
This Tuesday, September 8th, 5:30PM!
Join the Campaign to Defend Tom Alter
On November 20th, 2025, Kelly Damphousse, President of the Texas State University and The Texas State Board of Regents, unanimously voted to fire Tom Alter, a highly respected, tenured Labor Historian!!
Why? Because Tom dared to his use his supposedly protected Constitutional Rights to Free Speech! We have to stand with Tom because he’s standing up for all of us!
What happened?
Tom spoke at a conference regarding socialist politics on his own time, from his own home, on a Sunday morning. The decision to dismiss him was based solely on false accusations made by a self declared fascist. He spoke September 7th and was summarily fired three days later suddenly leaving him with no income or benefits. He received no due process. Tom is a tenured professor who has fought for social justice his whole life. Like many other professors across the US he’s being censored for using his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Why is Tom Alter’s case an important one to form a defense campaign around?
Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse is carrying out a politically motivated attack on a socialist and a union member. This follows Damphousse’s racist and Islamophobic actions on campus. Damphousse’s language in his public firing of Tom Alter of “inciting violence and criminal activity” mirrors the language used by Trump and other far-right politicians around the world in going after left-wing and even some liberal organizations. Alter was a tenured professor who was summarily fired with no due process through a social media post. His firing ignored Texas State guidelines for removing tenured faculty, 85 years of academic norms established by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), broke Texas law governing tenure, and violated federal Constitutional rights guaranteed in the 1st and 14th Amendment.
Allowing Damphousse to get away with this firing weakens and chips away at two of our most important Constitutional Amendments whose significance goes way beyond the interests of professors and affects us all, especially the most vulnerable sections of society. We must stand the line and defend our basic democratic rights and prevent further inroads on these rights.
How can one case affect all of us?
As Tom Alter has said from the beginning of this campaign, “This did not start with me and it does not end with me.” Instead of picking off an individual, Damphousse has ignited a movement for free speech. Membership in the Texas State Chapters of AAUP and the Texas State Employees Union has doubled since Alter’s firing as workers unite to defend academic freedom and democratic rights across the state.
We are currently living in a time when history has called upon us to stand up for our democratic rights or lose them to an ever-creeping fascist current in today’s political reality. However, there is joy in resistance. The support that Alter’s public campaign has garnered from unions, democratic rights organization, and concerned people and activists around the world, demonstrates that we must and can win this struggle for a truly democratic and egalitarian society. Through love and solidarity, we will win.
What can I do to help?
Share information about Tom Alter’s Campaign with your family, union members, community members and friends. Plan to attend Tom Alter’s speeches when he tours in 2026 to promote this campaign to defend free speech and fight back against all current repression of activists, organizers, union members, and our communities!
Donate today! Tom and his family need our financial support as he fights to be reinstated after this wrongful termination.
Give what you can to make this important defense campaign a model for every civil liberty fight that is being waged in this country. Please help us help Tom as he fights to pay his family’s basic monthly living expenses, housing, health insurance and groceries. Additionally the battle to win Tom’s professorship back will take time. He has committed to spearheading the Movement For Free Speech, not just for himself, but for all of us!