The Academic Freedom Alliance released a public letter to the Mayo Clinic regarding the sanctions that it has imposed on Dr. Michael Joyner for his comments made in the media regarding transgender athletes and COVID. The Mayo Clinic claims to respect the academic freedom of its scholars but failed utterly in this case.
Dr. Joyner's comments included in a New York Times article on the controversy surrounding the transgender college swimmer Lia Thomas were completely anodyne and well within the bounds of what would be protected under any reasonable free expression policy at an academic institution. From the NYT article:
Michael J. Joyner, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., studies the physiology of male and female athletes. He sees in competitive swimming a petri dish. It is a century old, and the sexes follow similar practice and nutrition regimens.
Since prepubescent girls grow faster than boys, they have a competitive advantage early on. Puberty washes away that advantage. "You see the divergence immediately as the testosterone surges into the boys," Dr. Joyner said. "There are dramatic differences in performances."
. . . .
"There are social aspects to sport, but physiology and biology underpin it," Dr. Joyner noted. "Testosterone is the 800-pound gorilla."
