Tom Lewis, the founder and primary funder of the now-defunct T.W. Lewis Center at Arizona State University (ASU), revealed that he pulled his annual contribution of $400,000 due to the majority of the institution’s faculty reacting to conservatives, particularly guest speakers, with open hostility.
Lewis made the remarks during an appearance on The Mike Broomhead Show, describing “a steady beat down of realization” in which he determined universities “want your donations, but they don’t want your input, and they certainly don’t want your influence in the classroom or even selecting speakers.”
The T.W. Lewis Center closed after Lewis, an Arizona real estate investor, pulled his annual funding months after most professors at Barrett, the honors College where the center was housed, signed a petition calling conservative speakers Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager “purveyors of hate” and aiming to prevent them from speaking at a February 2023 event.
“It took me awhile to realize that, how hostile the faculty has become towards donors,” Lewis told Broomhead. “One faculty made the comment that the protest was not even about Prager and Kirk, it was about a donor attempting to influence the speakers.”
Lewis cited incidents involving former T.W. Lewis Center executive director Ann Atkinson, telling Woodward “a lot of faculty were outright harassing her” and the university’s deans “didn’t really want to get involved.”
Instead of promoting the event, Lewis said faculty “wanted to make sure these speakers stuck to certain topics; they didn’t want them to wander into politics and a few other areas” and “really tried to suppress free speech.”
When reached by The Arizona Sun Times, Atkinson confirmed Lewis’s analysis, and provided emails from professors who repeatedly contacted her about the February event.
In addition to the “harassing emails” from faculty, Atkinson said ASU faculty “threatened to write a media piece” about her “because they do not like the opinions of speakers I invited,” and days later she was “contacted by a reporter who expressed he was writing this story.”
Lewis added that ASU educators extended their campaign against the conservative speakers to classrooms.
“There are faculty members I’m told intimidated students in the classroom,” he relayed. “If they wanted to go to the event, they discouraged them from going. Some of the students that did attend wanted to go on the condition that they would not video the attendees because they didn’t want those teachers to see them at the event, fearing the teachers would retaliate against them.”
“I was overwhelmed,” Lewis said. “I’ve seen this coming; this is not new, but I think over the last few years – I think since COVID – the faculty at a lot of universities have just become hostile.” He later added, “They intimidate you into either silence or compliance.”
Dr. Owen Anderson, the ASU theology professor and Phoenix pastor who revealed ASU uses “DEI questions” to “screen” and exclude job applicants, told The Sun Times he experienced similar hostility, both from university administrators and his colleagues.
“I was told by my Dean not to talk to the media without running it by them first. Then, the director of my school asked to meet with me to follow up,” said Anderson. Ultimately, after the professor contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), “the Provost affirmed that I can speak without running it by ASU first, but that I need to say I do not represent ASU.”
Anderson added, “You have had faculty insult me on social media, making fun of my gender and race. One even called my Christian moral beliefs intolerant.”
Lewis suggested the environment at ASU stems from ideologically motivated professors redefining academic freedom.
“This issue of academic freedom,” Lewis told Broomhead, “if you ask a faculty if you can provide a book or speak to students in a classroom, they will absolutely go nuts. Somehow they think that is their private turf.”
“Academic freedom has always meant the freedom of an academic to pursue truth in their discipline. If you’re a biologist, you can pursue truth in biology, anywhere it leads.” Lewis posited, “But they expanded the definition, which is what leftists do.”
A joint legislative hearing last week, exploring alleged restrictions on freedom of expressions at Arizona’s public universities, ended with State Senator Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) asking ASU to investigate the matter and provide a list of corrective actions within 60 days of the July 18 hearing.
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Tom Pappert is a reporter for The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Tom on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Tom Lewis” by twlewis.com. Background Photo “Arizona State University” by Beyond My Ken. CC BY 2.0.
Thank you Mr Lewis for jolting Arizona State with a dose of reality. I wish more donors and alumni would follow your lead. We quit contributing to my alma mater when they started dispersing funds to silly woke programs. We were contacted and asked why we ceased contributing. As I wrote here, I replied we quit contributing when you decided to use our donations for foolish endeavors. In our case the university was conflicted in removing a rock that they thought might have racist implications. Seriously, it was a rock that had been on campus since the founding of the university. I further replied the donations would not resume until adults were in control, they would not continue until some of the current university administration were replaced.