Fired for Doing Journalism? Inside the Crackdown on Student Press at UT Dallas

For ScheerPost’s Academic Freedom Project, we are looking to speak with both professors and student journalists covering what’s happening on their campuses and the attacks on the freedoms we hold dear. We understand there is a distinction between academic freedom, freedom of the press, and the First Amendment — but all are vital to a free press and a free campus, where curiosity and inquiry can thrive. Those principles are the foundation of academic freedom.We recently had the chance to sit down with a remarkable editor, Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, editor-in-chief of The Retrograde. He was formerly the editor of The Mercury, the student newspaper at University of Texas at Dallas, until he and his staff were fired and the paper was shut down.Gregorio will be writing for us soon. In the meantime, you can find his work at the Dallas Observer and at The Retrograde. For more on the story of his firing and the broader attack on student press freedom, see reporting from the Columbia Journalism Review.As CJR reports, student newspapers at several U.S. universities are clashing with administrations over editorial control. Incidents including adviser firings, print bans, and censorship claims have drawn national attention and raised alarm about press freedom on campus. In response, some students have launched independent publications, while legal and advocacy groups push back against restrictions — underscoring broader threats to free expression in higher education.In Gregorio case after covering campus protests, administrative overreach, and the violent police raid on a student encampment, Gregorio and his management team were fired. What has followed was a ban on newsstands, escalating state legislation restricting campus speech, and a broader crackdown on student journalism across Texas and the country.From a so-called “10 p.m. bedtime” for the First Amendment to threats against investigative reporting, this conversation explores what happens when universities operate more like corporations than institutions of inquiry — and what it means for the future of academic freedom, student protest, and the survival of independent campus press.Is this the death of student journalism — or the beginning of something more rebellious and resilient?