“Stick to Prescribed Messaging”: Mayo Clinic Suspends Professor for Comments on Trans-Athletes
The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine has joined the growing crackdown on free speech in higher education after suspending Professor Michael Joyner for comments in a 2022 New York Times story. In the story, Joyner maintained that there are differences between biological males and females in sports that give advantages to certain trans-athletes. The school declared that Joyner was guilty of using “ideomatic language” and threatened his termination unless he refrains from public comments in the future without approval from the school.
Joyner’s told the Times that “you see the divergence immediately as the testosterone surges into the boys” and that these biological realities can produce “dramatic differences in performances.”Notably, that is the view of many athletic organizations. For example, track and field competitions recently adopted restrictions based on similar conclusions.
The faculty was not happy when Joyner was widely quoted for telling the Times that “there are social aspects to sport, but physiology and biology underpin it… testosterone is the 800-pound gorilla.” As noted by Inside Higher Ed, the comments were picked up by various other media outlets as part of the ongoing controversy involving swimmer Lia Thomas.
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/06/19/stick-to-prescribed-messaging-mayo-clinic-suspends-professor-for-comments-on-trans-athletes/
