Gianrico Farrugia, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mayo Clinic

Fredric Meyer MD, Dean, Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine,

Michael Powell, Chair, Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees

June 15,2023

Dear Drs. Farrugia and Meyer and Mr. Powell:

The undersigned, all physicians and scientists employed at academic health centers, write to protest in no uncertain terms the infringements on freedom of speech that the Mayo Clinic has imposed on our colleague Professor Michael Joyner MD. We also object to the punishments meted out to Dr. Joyner, which have included financial penalties.

Dr. Joyner, a faculty member at a medical school that avows a commitment to academic freedom and to free expression, did not exceed the limits of his expertise in any of his statements to the press that led to these sanctions. At no time did he claim to be speaking for the Mayo Clinic, and his remarks were well within the mainstream of the range of scientific opinion on topics in which he is expert.

The censuring and disciplining of a faculty member at a university, an institution whose very mission depends upon the free exchange of ideas, is especially galling. In 1994, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) asserted that faculty members should be able “to express their professional opinions without fear of reprisal,” and in 1999, the AAUP clarified that academic freedom extends to medical school faculty as well, stating that “institutions of academic medicine should respect and foster conditions that are essential to freedom of learning, freedom of teaching and freedom of expression”

Fully consistent with these ideas, the Mayo Clinic, which has sued the IRS successfully to obtain the tax status of an “educational institution,” has a “Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom Policy” which commits the institution to promoting “freedom of expression, which includes the right to discuss and present scholarly opinions and conclusions without fear of retribution or retaliation if those opinions and conclusions conflict with those of the faculty or institution.”

Few medical (or any) institutions in the US have garnered as much respect and admiration as the Mayo Clinic. Placing academic freedom in jeopardy is certain to tarnish Mayo’s reputation among the many who have always thought of Mayo as a beacon of scientific integrity. In persecuting one of its most senior and valuable professors, Mayo is sending a terrible message not only to its other faculty, but also to other institutions in academic medicine. If a leading medical school and academic medical center can suppress the speech of an internationally recognized faculty member, imagine how much easier it will become for less well-known institutions to penalize younger and less established faculty members.

Worse yet, how can anyone now believe anything any doctor from Mayo says? These Mayo administrative actions will lead to concerns that the public statements of Mayo doctors are intended to support Mayo’s reputational and business interests rather than to reflect the doctor’s honest view of scientific evidence. Mayo is inflicting a major injury to its reputation upon itself.

We urge the Mayo Clinic to rescind its constraints on the free speech of faculty members in general, and on Dr. Joyner in particular, and to revoke the penalties and constraints it has imposed on him. We also request that Mayo make a sincere and public commitment to fully adhere to its own written principles of respect for academic freedom.

These views are our own and do not represent those of our affiliated universities and organizations.

Nigel Paneth MD MPH

Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine

Jeffrey S. Flier, MD

Higginson Professor of Medicine and Physiology, and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard Medical School

Liise-anne Pirofski MD

Selma and Dr. Jacques Mitrani Chair in Biomedical Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Nicholas Christakis MD PhD MPH

Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, Yale University

Arturo Casadevall MD PhD MS

Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins University

Douglas R. Seals PhD

Distinguished Professor of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado Boulder

Donald W Landry MD PhD

Hamilton Southworth Professor of Medicine, Columbia University

Benjamin Levine

Professor of Medicine, Distinguished Professorship in Exercise Science, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Donald R. Dengel, PhD

Henry L. Taylor-Arthur S. Leon Professorship in Exercise Science and Health Enhancement, University of Minnesota

Shmuel Shoham MD

Professor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University

Marc P. Kaufman PhD

Research Associate Director, Heart and Vascular Institute

Professor of Medicine, Penn State College of Medicine

Barbara J. Morgan, PhD

Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison

George A. Brooks PhD

Professor of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley

Isaac S. Kohane MD PhD

Professor of Medical Bioinformatics, Harvard Medical School

Jerome Dempsey

Professor Emeritus, Population Health Sciences, Director, John Rankin Laboratory of Pulmonary Medicine

Roger Cohen, MD

Professor of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

T.H. Reynolds, PhD

Professor and Chair, Department of Health and Human Physiological Sciences, Skidmore College

Michael Egnor MD

Professor of Neurological Surgery and Pediatrics, Renaissance School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook New York

Jeffrey M. Jones MD, PhD

Professor Emeritus, Medicine/Infectious Diseases, Univ. Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

Bill Farquhar, PhD

Professor, Department of Kinesiology & Applied Physiology

University of Delaware

Margaret S. Chisolm, MD

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

James Hagberg, PhD

Professor of Kinesiology, Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health, University of Maryland

Kevin P. Davy, PhD

Professor of Nutrition and Physiology, Director of Translational Obesity Research Interdisciplinary Program, Virginia Tech

Phil Ainslie, PhD

Professor and Chair, Centre for Heart, Lung and Vascular health, University of British Columbia, Canada

Andrea Hasenstaub, PhD

Associate Professor of Otolaryngology, University of California, San Francisco

Jeffrey P. Henderson MD PhD

Associate Professor of Medicine and Molecular Microbiology, Washington University, St. Louis

Alexander Friedman MD MPH

Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Elizabeth Gaufberg MD MPH

Associate Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Lachlan Forrow, MD

Senior Fellow, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics

David A. Kareken, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Neurology, Indiana University School of Medicine

Allon Friedman, MD

Professor of Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine

Glenn McConell PhD

Emeritus Professor, Victoria University, Australia

Irene S. Davis, PhD, PT, FACSM, FAPTA, FASB

Professor, School of Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Sciences

Morsani College of Medicine

University of South Florida