With an important exception, this post is similar to the following related ones from last week:
What’s important here is that the story below on what is happening right now at the University of North Texas Denton is that it appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education, widely recognized as one of the most authoritative resources for those of us in higher education. Thankfully, it exposes Texas to a national audience for being authoritarian. This must shock folks in higher education nationally.
I want to call out something that is even more sinister, namely, that the anti-DEI movement—as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis names—is an agenda for "white reparations."
Check it out for yourselves in this August 11, 2023 piece authored by Josh Santos titled, "Florida Announces Reparations for Descendants of Slave Owners." DeSantis delivered this message in an obscure speech he delivered in Wyoming, expressing that Florida plans to compensate descendants of slave owners with large lump-sum payments for labor lost after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
Yes, you read this correctly—for descendants of slave owners to restore their lost pride in white heritage since Abraham Lincoln did them wrong. Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave.
I'm reading an excellent book right now that I urge others to read as it is an excellent history of President Lincoln and the events leading up to the Civil War and beyond. It's titled "How the South Won the Civil War" by renowned scholar Dr. Heather Cox Richardson. I'm in the middle of reading it on Audible. It's illuminating, to say the least.
The good thing is that the underlying sentiment is fully exposed, however historically inaccurate, viscerally nauseous, and insufferably patronizing.
In addition to developments at UNT Denton, folks in Texas really need to pay attention to Florida because what they do in higher education shows up here. Glad that this issue is getting the attention it deserves.
-Angela Valenzuela
Faculty members at the University of North Texas at Denton fear their teaching and research on topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion will be curtailed by their own university’s interpretation of a state law targeting DEI efforts — and, in one college, they say it already has.
Texas attracted national attention last year by passing Senate Bill 17, which went into effect in January and bans diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, training, and statements at the state’s public universities. While the bill’s text carves out exemptions for teaching and research, faculty members on the Denton campus were surprised to find out last month that the university’s Integrity & Compliance offices would, in fact, be monitoring those areas to ensure they didn’t run afoul of the law. It’s a striking development in a state where legislative attacks on DEI have already resulted in widespread uncertainty about what teaching and scholarship is and is not permissible, and created a chilling effect for some faculty members who fear professional repercussions.
The news at North Texas came in an October presentation to the Faculty Senate by Clay Simmons, the university’s chief integrity officer, who said his office was in turn relying on the University of North Texas system’s general counsel’s interpretation of Senate Bill 17. With state funding at risk if the university is seen as breaking the law, Simmons explained, extra scrutiny was necessary. But several faculty members told The Chronicle that they saw the university’s interpretation of the law’s language as overly broad, and as guided by the “spirit” of the law as opposed to its actual language.
In his presentation, Simmons said that the university’s “tolerance for violations” of Senate Bill 17 “is pretty low, mainly because of that intense scrutiny that we’re receiving by the legislature.” He added: “There are also interest groups that are out there going around with hidden cameras trying to catch people doing things that they’re not supposed to do anymore underneath that law.” (This year, administrators at multiple Texas institutions landed in hot water after being captured on undercover video by a right-wing news group.) Then, Simmons added, there was the question of state funding. Losing that money, he said, “would be an existential issue for the university.” (In the 2024 fiscal year, 21 percent of the Denton campus’s revenue came from state appropriations.)
‘A Very Stringent Read’
Given those threats, Simmons said at the meeting, “we’re very cautious about how we approach these topics, and we’re trying to take a very stringent read of the law.” Teaching and research, he acknowledged, were not restricted under Senate Bill 17. “However, in true legal fashion, there are exceptions to the exception,” he said, explaining that classroom lessons on DEI-related topics “must be limited to the elements of the course” and that activities listed on a syllabus must be linked to a course objective.
Research, meanwhile, “must meet the definition of true research,” as described in the university’s research-misconduct policy, Simmons said. “The identity-based aspects must be essential to the research,” he said. “So if you’re doing research on homelessness, you have to be very careful if you’re going to focus on a certain identity within homelessness. So if you’re looking at LGBTQ homeless individuals, then you’ll have to make sure that that is narrowly tailored within the scope of work.” (Kelley Reese, a university spokesperson, said that Simmons and other university administrators were unavailable to speak to The Chronicle. “Faculty members are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication or presentation of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties and the requirements of UNT policy,” Reese said in a statement to The Chronicle. They are also, she said, “entitled to freedom in teaching and discussing their subject and in the selection of textbooks and other materials for their courses, and as noted in the UNT academic freedom and responsibility policy, they should not introduce controversial matter that has no relation to their subject into the curriculum.”)
Adam Briggle, a professor and director of graduate studies in the philosophy department, asked in the October meeting whether a paper on the rights of transgender people, published in a peer-reviewed journal, would be permissible. His work is often flagged by the university’s Institutional Review Board, Briggle explained, for not contributing to “generalizable knowledge,” as dictated by federal guidelines on human-subjects research. For the same reason, Simmons responded, such work would not be exempt from Senate Bill 17.
“If this gets to a point where an entire discipline isn’t free to publish stuff,” Briggle said, “then we need the university to have our back.”
“That is above my pay grade,” Simmons replied. “I’m the chief compliance officer, and so my job is to ensure compliance with the law. If the university would like to push back on legislation that’s been enacted, that would be a decision for, probably, the board to make.”
Later that month, Simmons sent an email to the Faculty Senate clarifying that policy. Senate Bill 17, he wrote, does not apply to research that meets the university’s definition:
“a systematic investigation, including development, testing, evaluation, or publication to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge,” including scholarly activities and creative works. But Briggle told The Chronicle that he and other faculty members found Simmons’s memo only compounded their confusion, in part because it was not clear how “generalizable knowledge” would be defined, or by whom. In Reese’s statement to The Chronicle, she said the bill “does not apply to research, scholarly activity, creative works, and course instruction.
“There is no review of generalizable knowledge.”
Briggle and his colleagues condemn what they see as a too-cautious interpretation of the law. “This is precisely what the Texas Legislature wanted,” he told The Chronicle, “to scare people so much that they will be hesitant to do the sorts of things, or talk about the sorts of ideas, that the legislature doesn’t like.” The result, Briggle added, has been “intentional silencing” on campus. “You look around at faculty meetings now and people are wondering, What can we put in the syllabus? Where can I publish my stuff?”
Briggle said he’d like his institution to “draw a very clear line and just make it abundantly clear that academic freedom means that we’re allowed to teach and research whatever we want.” Instead, “we just keep retreating.”
Changes Underway
In the College of Education, changes to courses are already underway, according to documents shared with The Chronicle. Administrators in that college have, this semester, made 130 changes to undergraduate courses and 78 to graduate courses — including to course titles, descriptions, and syllabi — to bring them into compliance. For example, an associate dean suggested changing one graduate course’s title from “Race, Class and Gender Issues in Education” to “Critical Inquiry in Education,” and removing references to race, class, and gender in the course’s description.
The changes were initiated when College of Education administrators learned in early October of a set of legislative charges from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, among them a mandate for the state Subcommittee on Higher Education to “examine programs and certificates at higher education institutions that maintain discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies,” according to the North Texas Daily, the student newspaper. The college’s interim dean and associate dean then conferred with Simmons’s office and decided to modify course names and descriptions because they are “public-facing,” as a professor described it in an email to colleagues that the North Texas Daily obtained.
Brian McFarlin, the associate dean for undergraduate studies and research, who made the course changes, indicated that he was sympathetic to faculty concerns about them, according to an email sent by Lok-Sze Wong, an assistant professor of teacher education, to her colleagues. “He would feel similarly [upset] if he were in [faculty members’] shoes,” she wrote. (McFarlin was not made available for an interview with The Chronicle.)
To date, none of the university’s other colleges and schools have been subject to such changes. Reese, the university spokesperson, denied any connection between Senate Bill 17 and the changes in the College of Education, which she said were the result of a state- mandated review to align with state teacher-education standards.
Check out The Chronicle’s latest diversity, equity, and inclusion coverage
The course changes, faculty members told The Chronicle, were based on reviews of content posted to the Canvas learning-management system for each course, though it was not clear to them who was conducting those reviews. And because of the shifting standards for compliance, “the dean asked people to change things in their courses well into the semester,” said one faculty member, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. One colleague, the faculty member said, had to remove optional readings from their Canvas site.
Thus far, the faculty member said, all of their colleagues have agreed to the changes, if not happily. “In a couple of meetings,” they said, “it has been made clear that if we do not comply, we will face disciplinary action, including termination.” (Reese said that the law “does not establish consequences for individual noncompliance,” and that the university plans to respond to violations of Senate Bill 17 as it does any other law, “with additional education and training and the appropriate policies.”)
Meanwhile, the impacts on research are already being felt. According to the faculty member in the College of Education, one prestigious grant from the Spencer Foundation has been delayed until it’s determined to be in compliance with Senate Bill 17. As a result, they said, “we’re already putting in jeopardy relationships with major funders across the nation.” Those in the College of Education were also told that they will not receive travel funds to present research at conferences that deal with race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation. If scholars choose to pay out-of-pocket to attend such conferences, the faculty member added, they must say that they are not representing the university. (Reese, meanwhile, said that faculty members can get travel funding to engage in activities “whereby scholarly and professional stature are demonstrated and may be appraised.” She denied any delay concerning the Spencer Foundation grant.)
“The stars aligned” for the university to make the College of Education a guinea pig of sorts, the faculty member said. The teacher-education program was recently placed on probation for the second straight year, after too many students failed to pass their examinations. Faculty members have speculated that this made the college especially leery of crossing the line. Syllabi from the college have also been posted online by Parents Defending Education, which describes itself as “a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas.”
Also criticizing the administration’s actions was Brian L. Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. That body, Evans said in an emailed statement, “expresses utmost concern” over North Texas’ “censoring course
content,” given what he called a “clear exception for academic course instruction” in Senate Bill 17. The course changes, he said, violate the university’s academic-freedom and shared-governance policies.
Determining Compliance
Simmons, the chief integrity officer, said at the Faculty Senate meeting last month that faculty members with questions about whether their course material or research complies with the law should consult with their departmental and school leaders. “The reason for that is that not only are we looking at legal risks that are presented with some of these activities, but we’re also looking at the political risk that comes along with a lot of these,” he said. “Sometimes things will be legal, but a dean just isn’t comfortable going quite that far into that territory, and will be more prone to want to change it or modify it, or rethink the whole idea. It just depends on your particular chain of command as to what they’re comfortable with.” Those concerns, Simmons said, would then be forwarded to his office by the dean. (Reese, though, said that if individual faculty members had questions about how the system’s guidance on Senate Bill 17 applied to their work, they should turn to Simmons’s office.)
Simmons’s presentation also pointed to a “Trust Line” run through the risk-and-compliance software company OneTrust, through which people could report potential violations. Reese did not respond to a question about whether any such complaints have yet been lodged.
In the meantime, several faculty members told The Chronicle, they’re left to question whether the university’s interpretation of the law will continue to shift, and whether their work will be implicated. Tracy Everbach, a professor of journalism, said she’s particularly concerned about a course she teaches called “Race, Gender, and the Media,” which draws on her 20 years of scholarship in those areas.“Am I going to be told, ‘None of your work counts anymore. You can’t teach that class. Your research is obliterated’?” Everbach said. “My mind leaps there. I haven’t been told anything like that, but I know that these kinds of fears and discussions are going on among faculty, and no one really can tell us.”
Read other items in this The Assault on DEI package.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
The good thing is that the underlying sentiment is fully exposed, however historically inaccurate, viscerally nauseous, and insufferably patronizing.
In addition to developments at UNT Denton, folks in Texas really need to pay attention to Florida because what they do in higher education shows up here. Glad that this issue is getting the attention it deserves.
-Angela Valenzuela
A Texas University Tells Professors Their Teaching and Research Will Be Under ‘Intense Scrutiny’
By Megan Zahneis November 13, 2024 | Chronicle of Higher Education
Faculty
Faculty members at the University of North Texas at Denton fear their teaching and research on topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion will be curtailed by their own university’s interpretation of a state law targeting DEI efforts — and, in one college, they say it already has.
Texas attracted national attention last year by passing Senate Bill 17, which went into effect in January and bans diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, training, and statements at the state’s public universities. While the bill’s text carves out exemptions for teaching and research, faculty members on the Denton campus were surprised to find out last month that the university’s Integrity & Compliance offices would, in fact, be monitoring those areas to ensure they didn’t run afoul of the law. It’s a striking development in a state where legislative attacks on DEI have already resulted in widespread uncertainty about what teaching and scholarship is and is not permissible, and created a chilling effect for some faculty members who fear professional repercussions.
The news at North Texas came in an October presentation to the Faculty Senate by Clay Simmons, the university’s chief integrity officer, who said his office was in turn relying on the University of North Texas system’s general counsel’s interpretation of Senate Bill 17. With state funding at risk if the university is seen as breaking the law, Simmons explained, extra scrutiny was necessary. But several faculty members told The Chronicle that they saw the university’s interpretation of the law’s language as overly broad, and as guided by the “spirit” of the law as opposed to its actual language.
In his presentation, Simmons said that the university’s “tolerance for violations” of Senate Bill 17 “is pretty low, mainly because of that intense scrutiny that we’re receiving by the legislature.” He added: “There are also interest groups that are out there going around with hidden cameras trying to catch people doing things that they’re not supposed to do anymore underneath that law.” (This year, administrators at multiple Texas institutions landed in hot water after being captured on undercover video by a right-wing news group.) Then, Simmons added, there was the question of state funding. Losing that money, he said, “would be an existential issue for the university.” (In the 2024 fiscal year, 21 percent of the Denton campus’s revenue came from state appropriations.)
‘A Very Stringent Read’
Given those threats, Simmons said at the meeting, “we’re very cautious about how we approach these topics, and we’re trying to take a very stringent read of the law.” Teaching and research, he acknowledged, were not restricted under Senate Bill 17. “However, in true legal fashion, there are exceptions to the exception,” he said, explaining that classroom lessons on DEI-related topics “must be limited to the elements of the course” and that activities listed on a syllabus must be linked to a course objective.
Research, meanwhile, “must meet the definition of true research,” as described in the university’s research-misconduct policy, Simmons said. “The identity-based aspects must be essential to the research,” he said. “So if you’re doing research on homelessness, you have to be very careful if you’re going to focus on a certain identity within homelessness. So if you’re looking at LGBTQ homeless individuals, then you’ll have to make sure that that is narrowly tailored within the scope of work.” (Kelley Reese, a university spokesperson, said that Simmons and other university administrators were unavailable to speak to The Chronicle. “Faculty members are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication or presentation of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties and the requirements of UNT policy,” Reese said in a statement to The Chronicle. They are also, she said, “entitled to freedom in teaching and discussing their subject and in the selection of textbooks and other materials for their courses, and as noted in the UNT academic freedom and responsibility policy, they should not introduce controversial matter that has no relation to their subject into the curriculum.”)
Adam Briggle, a professor and director of graduate studies in the philosophy department, asked in the October meeting whether a paper on the rights of transgender people, published in a peer-reviewed journal, would be permissible. His work is often flagged by the university’s Institutional Review Board, Briggle explained, for not contributing to “generalizable knowledge,” as dictated by federal guidelines on human-subjects research. For the same reason, Simmons responded, such work would not be exempt from Senate Bill 17.
“If this gets to a point where an entire discipline isn’t free to publish stuff,” Briggle said, “then we need the university to have our back.”
“That is above my pay grade,” Simmons replied. “I’m the chief compliance officer, and so my job is to ensure compliance with the law. If the university would like to push back on legislation that’s been enacted, that would be a decision for, probably, the board to make.”
Later that month, Simmons sent an email to the Faculty Senate clarifying that policy. Senate Bill 17, he wrote, does not apply to research that meets the university’s definition:
“a systematic investigation, including development, testing, evaluation, or publication to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge,” including scholarly activities and creative works. But Briggle told The Chronicle that he and other faculty members found Simmons’s memo only compounded their confusion, in part because it was not clear how “generalizable knowledge” would be defined, or by whom. In Reese’s statement to The Chronicle, she said the bill “does not apply to research, scholarly activity, creative works, and course instruction.
“There is no review of generalizable knowledge.”
Briggle and his colleagues condemn what they see as a too-cautious interpretation of the law. “This is precisely what the Texas Legislature wanted,” he told The Chronicle, “to scare people so much that they will be hesitant to do the sorts of things, or talk about the sorts of ideas, that the legislature doesn’t like.” The result, Briggle added, has been “intentional silencing” on campus. “You look around at faculty meetings now and people are wondering, What can we put in the syllabus? Where can I publish my stuff?”
Briggle said he’d like his institution to “draw a very clear line and just make it abundantly clear that academic freedom means that we’re allowed to teach and research whatever we want.” Instead, “we just keep retreating.”
Changes Underway
In the College of Education, changes to courses are already underway, according to documents shared with The Chronicle. Administrators in that college have, this semester, made 130 changes to undergraduate courses and 78 to graduate courses — including to course titles, descriptions, and syllabi — to bring them into compliance. For example, an associate dean suggested changing one graduate course’s title from “Race, Class and Gender Issues in Education” to “Critical Inquiry in Education,” and removing references to race, class, and gender in the course’s description.
The changes were initiated when College of Education administrators learned in early October of a set of legislative charges from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, among them a mandate for the state Subcommittee on Higher Education to “examine programs and certificates at higher education institutions that maintain discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies,” according to the North Texas Daily, the student newspaper. The college’s interim dean and associate dean then conferred with Simmons’s office and decided to modify course names and descriptions because they are “public-facing,” as a professor described it in an email to colleagues that the North Texas Daily obtained.
Brian McFarlin, the associate dean for undergraduate studies and research, who made the course changes, indicated that he was sympathetic to faculty concerns about them, according to an email sent by Lok-Sze Wong, an assistant professor of teacher education, to her colleagues. “He would feel similarly [upset] if he were in [faculty members’] shoes,” she wrote. (McFarlin was not made available for an interview with The Chronicle.)
To date, none of the university’s other colleges and schools have been subject to such changes. Reese, the university spokesperson, denied any connection between Senate Bill 17 and the changes in the College of Education, which she said were the result of a state- mandated review to align with state teacher-education standards.
Check out The Chronicle’s latest diversity, equity, and inclusion coverage
The course changes, faculty members told The Chronicle, were based on reviews of content posted to the Canvas learning-management system for each course, though it was not clear to them who was conducting those reviews. And because of the shifting standards for compliance, “the dean asked people to change things in their courses well into the semester,” said one faculty member, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. One colleague, the faculty member said, had to remove optional readings from their Canvas site.
Thus far, the faculty member said, all of their colleagues have agreed to the changes, if not happily. “In a couple of meetings,” they said, “it has been made clear that if we do not comply, we will face disciplinary action, including termination.” (Reese said that the law “does not establish consequences for individual noncompliance,” and that the university plans to respond to violations of Senate Bill 17 as it does any other law, “with additional education and training and the appropriate policies.”)
Meanwhile, the impacts on research are already being felt. According to the faculty member in the College of Education, one prestigious grant from the Spencer Foundation has been delayed until it’s determined to be in compliance with Senate Bill 17. As a result, they said, “we’re already putting in jeopardy relationships with major funders across the nation.” Those in the College of Education were also told that they will not receive travel funds to present research at conferences that deal with race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation. If scholars choose to pay out-of-pocket to attend such conferences, the faculty member added, they must say that they are not representing the university. (Reese, meanwhile, said that faculty members can get travel funding to engage in activities “whereby scholarly and professional stature are demonstrated and may be appraised.” She denied any delay concerning the Spencer Foundation grant.)
“The stars aligned” for the university to make the College of Education a guinea pig of sorts, the faculty member said. The teacher-education program was recently placed on probation for the second straight year, after too many students failed to pass their examinations. Faculty members have speculated that this made the college especially leery of crossing the line. Syllabi from the college have also been posted online by Parents Defending Education, which describes itself as “a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas.”
Also criticizing the administration’s actions was Brian L. Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. That body, Evans said in an emailed statement, “expresses utmost concern” over North Texas’ “censoring course
content,” given what he called a “clear exception for academic course instruction” in Senate Bill 17. The course changes, he said, violate the university’s academic-freedom and shared-governance policies.
Determining Compliance
Simmons, the chief integrity officer, said at the Faculty Senate meeting last month that faculty members with questions about whether their course material or research complies with the law should consult with their departmental and school leaders. “The reason for that is that not only are we looking at legal risks that are presented with some of these activities, but we’re also looking at the political risk that comes along with a lot of these,” he said. “Sometimes things will be legal, but a dean just isn’t comfortable going quite that far into that territory, and will be more prone to want to change it or modify it, or rethink the whole idea. It just depends on your particular chain of command as to what they’re comfortable with.” Those concerns, Simmons said, would then be forwarded to his office by the dean. (Reese, though, said that if individual faculty members had questions about how the system’s guidance on Senate Bill 17 applied to their work, they should turn to Simmons’s office.)
Simmons’s presentation also pointed to a “Trust Line” run through the risk-and-compliance software company OneTrust, through which people could report potential violations. Reese did not respond to a question about whether any such complaints have yet been lodged.
In the meantime, several faculty members told The Chronicle, they’re left to question whether the university’s interpretation of the law will continue to shift, and whether their work will be implicated. Tracy Everbach, a professor of journalism, said she’s particularly concerned about a course she teaches called “Race, Gender, and the Media,” which draws on her 20 years of scholarship in those areas.“Am I going to be told, ‘None of your work counts anymore. You can’t teach that class. Your research is obliterated’?” Everbach said. “My mind leaps there. I haven’t been told anything like that, but I know that these kinds of fears and discussions are going on among faculty, and no one really can tell us.”
Read other items in this The Assault on DEI package.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
I don’t normally comment, but I have to make an exception here: Angela, please label the Josh Santos piece as satire. Regardless of intention, we have to make it clear that the voices promoting democracy and equity do not amplify the same type of propaganda and misinformation tactics that authoritarians and reactionaries utilize to divide us as a nation. Even if ridiculous stories sound plausible, we always have to do our due diligence to ensure the truth is on our side.
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