When University Leaders Go Silent: Free Speech Is Not a Gag Order on University Leaders
by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
October 13, 2026
We do get some insights from an earlier blog post (Valenzuela, 2026), Neutrality on Shaky Ground: Who Gets to Speak at UT?, in which I raised serious questions about the University of Texas at Austin's commitment to institutional neutrality, particularly when it comes to whose voices are welcomed, whose events receive institutional assistance, and whose expression is burdened by administrative obstacles.
That earlier discussion centered on the striking differences in how the university appeared to handle speaking engagements involving conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and left-wing political streamer Hasan Piker. I questioned the shifting explanations, changing sponsorship designations, and apparent inconsistencies in the application of university policies. My concern was never whether either speaker had a right to express his views. Both did. Rather, it was whether a public university could credibly claim institutional neutrality while seemingly applying different standards to different political viewpoints.
Now, the October 12 Austin American-Statesman report by Lily Kepner and Faith Bugenhagen, "Debate ended after UT guest speaker uses racist and homophobic slurs, creating backlash," raises an even more disturbing question: What happens when university leaders invoke free speech to explain their silence while students are left feeling unsafe, humiliated, and abandoned by the very institution entrusted with their education?
The incident involved far-right provocateur Myron Gaines, who appeared at an event organized by Uncensored America. According to the Statesman, Gaines repeatedly directed racist, sexist, and homophobic insults toward members of the audience, including UT students. The confrontation escalated to the point that university police shut down the event before its scheduled conclusion.
But what happened afterward is perhaps just as troubling.
UT spokesperson Mike Rosen defended the university's response by emphasizing its commitment to free speech and student safety. Yet when asked about the actual content of Gaines's remarks, he declined to comment.
Think about that.
A speaker comes to one of the nation's leading public universities and directs degrading racial and sexual insults at students. Black students publicly express fear and outrage. A mother contacts university leadership because she is frightened for her daughter's safety. And the administration cannot bring itself to unequivocally condemn the racism and bigotry that precipitated the controversy.
Where is the leadership? Where is the moral clarity? And what, precisely, does student safety mean to this administration?
Let us be absolutely clear: The First Amendment protects offensive, even hateful, speech in many circumstances. Public universities cannot prohibit speakers simply because administrators or students find their views reprehensible. These constitutional protections are essential to academic freedom and democratic life.
But protecting someone's legal right to speak does not require institutional silence in the face of racism, misogyny, or homophobia.
Free speech is not a gag order on university presidents.
University leaders have a First Amendment right to speak, too. More importantly, they have an ethical and educational responsibility to articulate the values of the institutions they lead. They can defend constitutional protections while simultaneously affirming that racism, bigotry, and the deliberate degradation of students are fundamentally incompatible with the university's educational mission.
The Statesman provides an especially revealing historical comparison.
In 2017, when white supremacist, Islamophobic, and anti-immigrant messages appeared on the UT campus, then-President Greg Fenves did not hide behind constitutional language or retreat into bureaucratic silence. He publicly condemned the messages and convened a town hall to address the campus climate.
Fenves understood something the current administration appears to have forgotten: The obligation to protect free expression does not absolve university leaders of the responsibility to exercise moral judgment.
What has changed?
Why was it possible for a university president in 2017 to condemn racist expression unequivocally, while in 2026 students are left pleading for similar leadership? These questions become even more urgent when placed alongside the concerns I raised in my October 7 blog.
There, I questioned whether institutional neutrality was becoming less a consistent governing principle than a mechanism through which university power determines whose speech receives assistance and whose encounters resistance. Who gets access to university facilities? Who bears extraordinary security costs? Who benefits from institutional sponsorship or intervention? And whose presence on campus is treated as controversial, burdensome, or threatening?
The latest controversy exposes another dimension of this problem.
University leaders appear prepared to exercise extensive authority over university curricula, academic departments, campus demonstrations, and the procedural arrangements surrounding public events. Yet when students ask those same leaders to condemn overt racism, the administration suddenly seems unwilling to exercise its authority to speak.
This is a deeply troubling contradiction.
We are witnessing the restructuring and elimination of academic programs that generations of students and faculty fought to establish. African and African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American and Latina/o Studies have been directly affected by institutional decisions that raise fundamental questions about whose histories, experiences, and intellectual traditions deserve a permanent home at the university.
Meanwhile, the Statesman reports that Black students are drawing connections between these institutional decisions and their experiences of racial hostility on campus.
They are right to ask whether these developments are related.
This is not to suggest that every administrative decision has the same purpose or that the university bears responsibility for every hateful statement made by an invited speaker. Rather, it is to recognize that students experience these developments cumulatively—and in an increasingly hostile and dismissive context.
They are watching programs disappear, hearing public expressions of contempt directed toward members of their communities, and observing an administration that appears reluctant to defend them with any corresponding clarity.
What message does this send?
For UT senior Gorgeous Monroe, the university's response left her feeling that the institution was not standing with its own students. The Texas Black Students Alliance described the incident as something far more serious than an ordinary disagreement, saying it left Black students feeling less safe. The newly formed Texas Unapologetically Black organization likewise expressed alarm about the normalization of racist rhetoric.
And then there is Brandy Gaither, the mother of a Black UT student, who contacted university leaders because she feared for her daughter's safety.
These expressions of fear should alarm every member of the university community.
We should not dismiss them as oversensitivity, political disagreement, or the inevitable discomfort that accompanies free expression. They represent a breakdown of trust between students and the institution responsible for their education.
A university cannot credibly claim to prioritize student safety if it treats students' expressions of fear as secondary to managing institutional liability and public controversy.
Of course, safety cannot mean insulation from every offensive or disturbing idea. Universities must remain places where difficult arguments can be made, conventional beliefs challenged, and competing viewpoints vigorously debated.
But there is an enormous difference between encountering challenging ideas and being personally subjected to racial humiliation. And there is an equally important difference between acknowledging that hateful speech may be constitutionally protected and responding as though university leaders have nothing meaningful to say about it.
Safety is not merely the absence of physical violence. It also involves knowing that the university takes threats and harassment seriously, that students have access to appropriate institutional support, and that university leaders recognize their dignity as integral to the educational environment.
This is not a demand for censorship. It is a demand for leadership.
Indeed, what makes the current situation especially disturbing is that President Jim Davis has spoken publicly about the importance of civics education, civil debate, and positive values. According to the Statesman, he has acknowledged that individuals may have the right to say cruel things on a university campus while expressing hope that a revised core curriculum will cultivate more constructive civic engagement.
But how can a university credibly teach civility while its own leaders appear unwilling to model it?
What kind of civic education are students receiving when the institution's practices communicate that some perspectives enjoy access and support while others encounter obstacles, and that expressions of racial hatred may elicit little more than procedural explanations?
Students learn democracy not only through what appears in their textbooks but through how institutions exercise power, enforce rules, respond to injustice, and treat the people entrusted to their care.
This is precisely why the elimination of programs such as African and African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American and Latina/o Studies matters so profoundly. These fields emerged from generations of struggle against the exclusion of communities whose histories and experiences were systematically marginalized within the university itself.
They were never simply about adding diversity to an otherwise complete curriculum. They represented demands for intellectual recognition, institutional accountability, and equal educational opportunity.
Now, as students again organize to defend their dignity and belonging, we are reminded of how unfinished that struggle remains.
There is something particularly painful about watching young people arrive at a university full of intellectual promise only to discover that they must fight to be recognized as fully belonging to the institution they have chosen.
And there is something profoundly disappointing about an administration that appears more willing to manage the controversy surrounding racism than to confront its corrosive effects on campus life.
President Davis and the university's senior leadership owe students and the larger community more than carefully calibrated statements about constitutional obligations.
They owe them an unequivocal condemnation of the racist, sexist, and homophobic rhetoric documented at this event. They owe students a meaningful opportunity to be heard and a transparent explanation of how the university will address targeted harassment and threats within constitutional limits. They owe the public an accounting of how university policies governing speech, facilities, security, and institutional support are applied across viewpoints.
And they owe the entire university community a demonstration that academic freedom, constitutional rights, and equal educational opportunity are not competing commitments but mutually reinforcing responsibilities.
None of these obligations requires abandoning the First Amendment. On the contrary, they demand taking it seriously.
It is possible to defend the rights of people whose speech we despise while publicly challenging the racism and bigotry they express. It is possible to preserve viewpoint neutrality in the administration of university policies without pretending that all speech reflects the values of the institution. It is possible to protect intellectual freedom while making absolutely clear that students should never have to question whether their university regards their humanity as negotiable.
This should not be controversial.
The students speaking out deserve our gratitude, our attention, and our support. Their activism reflects precisely the kind of democratic courage that universities claim to cultivate. They are demanding accountability, institutional consistency, and the simple recognition that their safety and dignity matter. But students should not have to carry this burden alone.
When students feel unsafe, parents fear for their children's well-being, and racist abuse is met with institutional silence, the problem extends far beyond one offensive speaker or one campus event. It reveals a crisis of moral leadership.
And when the same university has demonstrated a willingness to exercise institutional power over so many other dimensions of academic life, the silence becomes all the more difficult to defend. UT Austin cannot claim the mantle of institutional neutrality while allowing that principle to become an excuse for selective enforcement, opaque decision-making, or moral disengagement.
Nor can it credibly prepare students for democratic citizenship if its own leaders fail to demonstrate the courage, consistency, and accountability that democracy requires. The First Amendment protects the freedom to speak. It does not relieve university presidents of the responsibility to lead.
And right now, the students of the University of Texas at Austin deserve far better.
Reference
Kepner, L., & Bugenhagen, F. (2026, October 12). Debate ended after UT guest speaker uses racist and homophobic slurs, creating backlash. Austin American-Statesman. https://www.statesman.com/news/education/article/ut-debate-myron-gaines-sexist-racist-slurs-22468982.php
Valenzuela, A. (2026, October 7). Neutrality on shaky ground: Who gets to speak at UT? Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2026/10/neutrality-on-shaky-ground-who-gets-to.html
UT students, parents and Black student groups are questioning the decision to allow a far-right speaker on campus amid concerns about racist speech at UT.
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Members of the UT campus community begin their march from the UT Tower to the Texas State Capitol ahead of a Texas Senate Education Committee hearing on campus free speech and a DEI ban in 2024. Two years later, Black student organizations are speaking against a far-right speaker's recent racist remarks on campus and condemning the university for creating a climate where that speech is allowed. |
