Days of rage: A U.T. professor and state trooper collide

Reporter’s Notebook: Kit O’Connell reflects on pro-Palestinian protests on UT-Austin’s campus last spring. Their commentary is accompanied by a video of the incident never before released to the public.

On a blistering April day I arrived at the University of Texas at Austin last year, after receiving a tip that more Gaza protests were breaking out at UT’s South Mall. I didn’t know then that a well-regarded professor whom I previously interviewed was about to have a life-changing altercation that would land him in jail and end his UT career.

Five days before, students had gathered in that grassy, open area to oppose Israel’s bombing campaign. Dozens of Department of Public Safety State Troopers, under orders from Governor Greg Abbott and with support of then-UT Austin president Jay Hartzell, had aggressively broken up the protest. Then, on April 29, the students were back; this time, they planned to pitch tents and form a protest encampment.

Richard Heyman had taught urban geography at UT Austin since 2006. In recent interviews for the Austin Free Press, Heyman had shared his skeptical views with me on Austin’s HOME ordinance, drastic building-code reforms that the city council was then fast tracking to approval.

When I arrived on campus around noon, there weren’t any tents yet but students had gathered on the mall, holding workshops about the destruction in Gaza. I briefly sat with a small group under a tree. They were folding and cutting single pieces of paper into simple brochures called zines. Nearby, about a dozen faculty and staff stood on the steps by the clock tower, holding signs objecting to Israeli bombs destroying Palestinian universities, libraries and other educational facilities. It had been more than six months since Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,195 people and taking 251 hostage. That attack provoked a retaliation so severe the United Nations ruled that it met the definition of genocide. Protests were erupting on college campuses all over the country.

Coincidentally, Heyman was attending an unrelated campus rally on behalf of Texas State Employees Union members who had lost their jobs after the state-mandated closure of DEI-related offices and services on campus.

“I had no knowledge or any information about the student protest that was about to take place,” Heyman told me, in a phone interview. “Right at the end of the union rally … we heard there was some kind of commotion coming from the South Mall.”

As Heyman began walking in our direction with other faculty and staff, I saw a squad of state troopers, supported by Austin Police, flood onto the campus, some in riot helmets. They outnumbered the students who had pitched their tents moments before. In response, the students used banners and overturned tables, which had been holding packaged food and bottled water, as simple barricades. Other students linked hands, protecting the group in the center with their tents.

It would be the start of a tense standoff in the sun. Arrests slowly began. Other protesters collapsed from the heat. Street Medics Austin, in matching pink t-shirts, offered first aid.

Heyman and the other faculty members began demanding that the troopers stop arresting students. They were far from alone, as more students poured out of nearby buildings. In the chaos, I didn’t realize Heyman was there until later, when I found a photo on my camera showing him standing near the troopers.

“The crowd was getting more upset at what was going on,” Heyman said, “because it was a peaceful protest and the police were not responding peacefully, and so people were chanting louder and yelling.”

The Department of Public Safety did not respond to my requests for comment on this story. Trooper body camera footage released to CBS News shows Heyman swearing at the officers and telling them they “don’t belong here.” On the video, the trooper then approaches Heyman and shoves him.

“I was totally stunned because there was no warning,” recalled Heyman of the shove. “I wasn’t engaging [directly] with him at all, I don’t remember talking to him beforehand or anything and there had been no orders to disperse.”

Heyman provided Austin Free Press with video of the event shot by a bystander that shows a verbally agitated Heyman confronting the officer who shoved him, pointing in his face and yelling to others nearby: “He pushed me out of the blue. I didn’t do anything. I’m a professor here.”

Heyman told me he wanted to make it clear he had a legitimate reason to be on campus.

In the video, Heyman can be seen raising his water bottle in his right hand as he points at the officer with his left. In the warrant later issued for his arrest, the trooper said he felt threatened by the way Heyman held the water bottle. Heyman insisted that his posture was defensive.

“I thought he was going to hurt me, and I was trying to have that not happen,” he told me. “I didn’t intend to threaten or hurt anybody, I was just trying to defend myself.”

The video then shows the officer shoving Heyman again. As Heyman fell backwards, he grabbed hold of the officer’s bicycle for balance. The state says Heyman broke a $62 bicycle bell.

Heyman was due at an Austin City Hall meeting about the HOME initiative. Officers did not detain him that day, even as they arrested students and piled them into police vans for transport to jail. The campus overflowed with outrage. Dozens of young people blocked the vans from leaving, until police deployed flashbangs and pepper spray to clear their path.

Heyman said he planned on filing a complaint against the officer. More than a week later, several police vehicles surrounded him while he was driving near his home. Troopers took him into custody; Heyman spent the day in Travis County Jail.

“When I got home later that night and checked my email,” he said, “that was when I learned that I had also been fired that same day.”

UT officials declined my request for comment.

Heyman faced a misdemeanor charge of interfering with public duties until a judge dropped that charge in January. At that point, his lawyer authorized him to release the bystander video to Austin Free Press.

Police arrested more than 100 people over two days of protests. Anne Lewis, a UT radio, television and film professor, and an executive board member of the Texas State Employees Union, was on campus that day. Speaking for herself, Lewis said that Heyman’s firing was unusual, even though he was a contract employee.

“You can just be fired at the drop of a hat as a contract worker, they just don’t renew your contract.” She noted, however, that he’d already been scheduled for classes in the fall. Lewis said she believes he was targeted for his actions, a move she called “McCarthyite.”

“He deserves an apology from the university,” Lewis said. “His firing was unjustified, and he should be reinstated.”

Cursing at the police is protected by the First Amendment, whether you agree with it or not. Violence is not. As a journalist covering protests, I’ve observed many arrests. I’ve often reflected on the fact that while police can be violent with protesters and face few if any consequences, protesters must react calmly to every provocation.

Today, Heyman works part-time as a researcher for the City of Austin’s Equity Office. He said he hasn’t yet decided whether to take legal action over his arrest or firing. Repercussions of last spring’s protests also are being felt elsewhere. In New York City, Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil faces potential deportation by the Trump Administration because he served as a prominent organizer of campus protests against Israeli bombings in Gaza.

Kit O’Connell is a GLAAD Media Award-nominated freelance journalist and the former Digital Editor of Texas Observer magazine. They live in Austin with their spouse and two cats.