After 35 years at UT Austin, I hardly recognize my university, by UT-Professor Lisa L. Moore, Ph.D.

 Friends,

I’ve been part of the University of Texas at Austin over two decades, and like Dr. Lisa L. Moore, I have watched with heartbreak as the institution we love is dismantled piece by piece. What once felt unshakable—academic freedom, shared governance, a life of the mind—has been eroded by fear and political intrusion.

Dr. Moore's words capture what so many of us feel: grief, anger, and a deep determination to remember who we are. This isn’t only about a university; it’s about the survival of truth itself.

I, too, through this blog, am always expressing my views as a private citizen.

-Angela Valenzuela

After 35 years at UT Austin, I hardly recognize my university

What was once a beacon of access and discovery is now fighting for its soul and mission as political attacks upend norms, rules and rights

By Lisa L. Moore, Guest columnist | Austin American-StatesmanOct 10, 2025

Recent events at the University of Texas are not just attacks on higher education, Professor
Lisa L. Moore writes. "They are attacks on every American’s First Amendment right to speak
freely, to question authority, to teach and to learn without fear," she said. American-Statesman file photo

It happened slowly, then all at once.
I’ve taught at the University of Texas at Austin for more than 30 years, and I’ve always been proud to do so. UT has long been both a top-tier university and one of the most accessible. While other states boast excellent public institutions — Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan — their in-state tuition can cost up to five times more than UT’s. The top students at every high school in Texas are guaranteed a spot at UT, meaning that each region sends its best and brightest to Austin.

UT powers the city’s and state’s economy, attracting innovators in technology, business and the arts. For almost 150 years, we’ve prepared Texans for meaningful work and purposeful lives.

Today, however, UT is being dismantled piece by piece. Those who see higher education as a threat are intervening directly — breaking norms, rules and even constitutional protections — in an effort to suppress and punish controversial opinions among our students and faculty. Since 2024, we’ve witnessed actions and threats in several areas, including:

Attacks on students and faculty

• Student affairs offices that helped thousands of Longhorns navigate college life were shuttered overnight.
• More than 60 staff members devoted to recruiting, retaining and graduating students were abruptly fired.
• Over a hundred students exercising their First Amendment rights at campus rallies were arrested — charges were later dismissed by the district attorney.
• Student conduct procedures were rewritten to make it harder to contest accusations, leading in some cases to suspension or expulsion.
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ALSO READ: I teach LGBTQ+ history. The University of Texas may soon ban my course.

Administrative overreach

• Nearly a dozen top administrators have been dismissed and replaced — without faculty input — by political appointees aligned with the governor’s agenda.
• The Faculty Council, once a vital advisory body, was dissolved overnight, ending regular communication between faculty and administration.

Curriculum and research control

• Instructors have been targeted online for teaching so-called “woke” subjects.
• Core curriculum courses are being audited by the politically appointed Board of Regents without faculty participation.
• Our provost published an article stating that humanities courses should give priority to a narrow range of topics: “classical Greek and Roman political thought, the European Enlightenment, and the American founding,” contradicting the mission of the university as a global thought leader.
• Prestigious departments — Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; African and African Diaspora Studies; Mexican American and Latino Studies — and related programs face potential closure, jeopardizing dozens of faculty and thousands of students and alumni.
• The UT Board of Regents, appointed by the governor, is “reviewing” gender studies courses to ensure they match unstated political priorities.
• A proposed federal “compact” would reward universities that suppress criticism of conservative ideas with priority grant funding — undermining the peer-review system that built U.S. research leadership.

ALSO READ: Trump’s ideological education pact threatens Texas autonomy

Meanwhile, alarming developments at other Texas universities have deepened the chill on free speech, showing how severe the consequences of dissent can be: violations of the First Amendment, disregard for due process and suspension of long-standing personnel protections.

• At Texas A&M, Gov. Greg Abbott’s intervention in a student complaint led to the removal of a department chair, a dean and a campus president — and to an instructor’s firing without due process.
• At Texas Tech, following the appointment of a political chancellor, faculty were instructed not to discuss gender except as “the male-female binary.”

These are not just attacks on UT or on higher education. They are attacks on every American’s First Amendment right to speak freely, to question authority, to teach and to learn without fear. The science of gender, the history of racism and other legitimate fields of inquiry are being treated as “thought crimes,” as if Orwell’s satire were state policy. People are losing their jobs for doing their jobs.

I speak only for myself, representing only my own broken heart rather than these broken institutions. This is no longer the profession I have served with joy for 35 years. We are being pushed to retreat from the hard-won knowledge and progress of generations. Yet, like the medieval monks and nuns who buried precious manuscripts to hide them from the kings who burned their abbeys, we will preserve this knowledge and progress for another time in the future. In the meantime, we know the truth, and that keeps us free.

Lisa L. Moore is a professor at The University of Texas at Austin. She is expressing her views as a private citizen.