This is just a complaint at this stage (Lowery v. Mills (W.D. Tex.)), so these are only the plaintiff's allegations, but he's being represented by the people at the Institute for Free Speech, whose work I've generally found quite reliable. (I e-mailed UT on Thursday to ask if they had a statement, and have so far gotten no response.) From IFS's announcement:
A finance professor is suing officials at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) who threatened to punish him for his criticism of the university by threatening his job, reducing his pay, and removing his affiliation with UT's Salem Center.
In a complaint filed in the Austin federal court, Dr. Richard Lowery, an Associate Professor of Finance at the McCombs School of Business at UT-Austin, said the officials at the state's flagship university violated his constitutional right to criticize government officials. The lawsuit also claims the UT administration harmed his right to academic freedom.
Professor Lowery is well known for his vigorous commentary on university affairs. His articles have appeared widely, including in The Hill, the Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and The College Fix. He questioned the UT administration's approaches to critical-race theory, affirmative action, academic freedom, competence-based performance measures, and the future of capitalism.
One key target of Prof. Lowery's critiques was the UT administration's use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements to filter out competent academics who dissent from the DEI ideology.
