‘Fear and hopelessness’: one in four professors in the US south are leaving Survey by AAUP shows nearly quarter of respondents are switching due to states’s politics

Friends,

I recently posted on this topic of faculty departure covered by Olivia Empson in The Guardian. Both address the same finding that roughly a quarter of respondents have already applied for jobs elsewhere since the start of 2023, with another quarter intending to begin a search (Evans & Heinzelman, 2024; also note a similar trend in the "2025 Faculty in the South" survey for faculty in Texas (AAUP, 2025).

This is not just a statistic—it is the lived reality of colleagues, friends, and students across our campuses.

Take the example of Heather Houser, who taught American literature and environmental humanities at the University of Texas at Austin for 14 years. Alarmed by the escalating political interference in higher education, she accepted a position at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. In her words:

“I still feel so much for my students and colleagues back in Texas. It’s hard to know what they’re enduring.”

And indeed, it gets harder with every departure.

I can’t help but wonder if Dr. Houser was a member of the AAUP, which in Texas is affiliated with the Texas American Federation of Teachers. Membership provides access to legal counsel and a platform to fight back. According to President Brian Evans of the Texas Conference of Texas AAUP-AFT, since summer 2024 faculty have secured nearly $1.25 million in settlements, with more than a dozen lawsuits still in the works.

Consider also Wendy Watson, who left the University of North Texas after 15 years to teach at Ball State. In Denton, courses like Gay Rights and the Constitution became impossible to sustain under the chilling shadow of Senate Bill 17 and related measures. Watson described the mood among faculty as one of “fear, frustration, and hopelessness.” Yet even she chose to leave—accepting a 25 percent pay cut and a demotion in rank—just to continue teaching elsewhere.

These stories highlight what is at stake. SB 17 and its legislative kin are not only dismantling DEI infrastructure; they are driving out the very educators most dedicated to preparing students for a pluralistic democracy. The result is a profound brain drain that threatens to weaken our universities, impoverish intellectual life, and diminish opportunities for generations of students.

As a Texas educator who has chosen to stay, I grieve these losses deeply. I grieve for my students, who deserve classrooms where inquiry is not policed and where their full humanity is affirmed. At the same time, I understand the agonizing decisions my colleagues have made. For many, leaving is not abandonment—it is an act of survival, a way to continue teaching and researching in environments where their work is not criminalized.

The sacrifices are immense: pay cuts, uprooted families, new languages and cultures, and the heartbreak of leaving behind beloved students and communities. Yet these departures also carry a stark warning: if lawmakers continue down this path, Texas and its sister states will lose the very people who make higher education strong.

For the record, SB 17 does not prohibit faculty from teaching about race, class, gender, or sexuality when these are part of one’s expertise. Academic freedom, the First Amendment, and due process still apply, though policies and enforcement vary by institution.

This is why it is critical for those of us who remain to know the policies that govern our work. When pressured to change a syllabus or avoid certain material, a simple response—“I need to review the policy before I can make any changes”—can buy time and signal resistance. Document everything: keep written notes, record disciplinary meetings when possible, and bring a colleague or AAUP member as a witness. Always follow up with a brief email summarizing your understanding of the meeting. And remember, you have the right to file a grievance.

What gives me hope is the growing strength of Texas AAUP-AFT, which, according to Dr. Evans, is adding 30–40 new members every day. This is a testament to faculty’s hunger for solidarity, advocacy, and protection.

Here is the link explaining why one should consider joining Texas AAUP-AFT: https://aaup-texas.org/blog/f/join-aaup-to-strengthen-faculty-voices-and-rights. Membership is available to all faculty members, adjunct professors, graduate instructors, researchers, and higher education professionals. Trust me, it's empowering.

We must continue to resist policies that silence scholarship and erase identities, while finding ways to sustain one another and nurture spaces of care, justice, and truth. The exodus of faculty is a tragedy. But those of us who remain—and those who fight from afar—can transform this grief into collective action.

We are not without power. In fact, our collective strength is both well organized and growing rapidly (Valenzuela, Unda, & Bernal, 2025). Together, we have the capacity to defend higher education as a space where knowledge is pursued freely, where students are affirmed in their full humanity, and where truth proves stronger than fear.

—Angela Valenzuela

References

American Association of University Professors. (2025, September 8). 2025 faculty in the South survey. Academe Blog. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/05/texas-faculty-university-political-climate-survey/

Evans, B. L., & Heintzelman, P. (2024, September 5). Large majority of Texas faculty express concern about higher education; More than a quarter consider leaving next year, survey finds [Press release]. Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors & Texas Faculty Association. https://aaup-utaustin.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/texas-faculty-survey-press-release-sept-2024.pdf

Strong, P. T. (2025, September 18). Manufactured outrage and the assault on academic freedom in Texas [Blog post]. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2025/09/manufactured-outrage-and-assault-on.html

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Bernal, J. M. (2025). Disrupting Colonial Logics: Transformational Resistance Against SB 17 and the Dismantling of DEI in Texas Higher Education. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Vol3-Issue1-03_DisruptingColonial.pdf

‘Fear and hopelessness’: one in four professors in the US south are leaving

Survey by American Association of Professors shows nearly 

quarter of respondents are switching due to states’s politics


University of Texas students walk through campus on the first day of classes in August 2025.Photograph: The Austin American-Statesman/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

Many professors in the US south, particularly in Florida, South Carolina and Texas, are considering leaving their state because of the impact the political climate is having on education, according to a new survey by the American Association of Professors.

Of those interviewed in the survey, roughly a quarter of respondents said they applied for a job in higher education in another state since the start of 2023.

Heather Houser worked as a professor in the English department, teaching American literature and environmental humanities, at the University of Texas at Austin for 14 years. Like the growing number of professors in the stronghold Republican state, she found the increasing government oversight on higher education alarming. Houser left Texas earlier this year for a new teaching position at The University of Antwerp in Belgium.

“I know a lot of people who’ve been on the job market for several years and they’d be gone by now if not for the factors that make it hard to leave,” Houser said. “It comes with sacrifices, and I still feel so much for my students and colleagues back in Texas. It’s hard to know what they’re enduring.”

Texas A&M University president resigns after ‘gender ideology’ controversy

Read more

The survey received responses from approximately 4,000 faculty members across the south and included other states, such as Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky, in its findings. About 25% of the professors in Texas who responded said they have applied for teaching roles in other states in the last two years, with another 25% saying they intend to start a search.

Last year, salary was the top reason as to why educators across the south were seeking employment elsewhere. In this year’s findings, however, “broad political climate” was the top motivator.

“I had been looking to leave UT Austin and Texas for many years,” Houser said, “part was just a desire for personal change, but much bigger was my concern about higher education and the direction it was going. I was worried that the ability to teach things I cared about like environmental or social justice would become increasingly hard or even discouraged.”

The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed a bill in 2023 that banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and initiatives in higher education institutions across the state.

Under the law, called SB17, these offices had to start closing from January 2024, and any initiatives that promoted groups of individuals based on race, ethnicity and gender were prohibited in universities. At the University of Texas at Austin, where Houser taught, this led to resource cancellations, office closures and staff firings.

Earlier this month, at Texas A&M, a children’s literature professor was fired after a video of a student objecting to course material about gender identity and sexuality went viral. The dean of the school’s college of arts and sciences and the head of the department were also removed from their roles, the university president, Mark Welsh III, confirmed in a statement.

The university passed an audit earlier in the year to ensure that the school was complying with a new state law banning DEI in public universities, according to Battalion, the student newspaper. The video put significant pressure on the school, primarily from external Republican politicians and officials.

“A lot of people want to leave, but a lot of people might not be able to look,” Houser said, speaking to how difficult it is to get a tenured professor job, especially in the humanities.

Houser received her job offer in Belgium back in summer 2024, before Trump was elected, but couldn’t see anything changing in the state or institution, so she decided to push forward with the move. And it didn’t come without sacrifice. Learning Dutch, taking a pay cut and understanding an entirely new system were just some of the challenges she is having to navigate.

Such is also the case for Wendy Watson, who left a role as a pre-law adviser and professor at the University of North Texas and moved to Ball State University in August this year, after 15 years of teaching there.

“The classes I taught that were most likely to eventually feel the sting of SB17 and the legislation sure to follow were Gay Rights and the Constitution and Jurisprudence,” Watson said. “You cannot teach a robust class on jurisprudence without addressing critical legal studies, critical race theory and critical gender theory. You just can’t.”

In private conversations with other faculty, Watson recounted describing what they all knew: that SB 17 was just the beginning.

“We would likely see specific classes taken out of the catalog. We had already seen our School of Education rewrite course descriptions for both undergrad and grad classes (without input from the faculty who taught those classes) to remove any reference to race, gender and queer identity,” said Watson. “Everyone I spoke with felt fear, frustration, and hopelessness.”

While Watson expressed positive feelings about leaving, the departure again came with immense sacrifice. A 25% pay cut was involved, as was moving from a role as a principal lecturer to an assistant and losing the ability to teach political science.

“If things feel bad for you now, they are likely to get much worse,” was Watson’s advice to other professors considering a similar out-of-state move. “I know it feels like giving up and abandoning your students, but it’s like the guidance on an aeroplane: put your own mask on first and then help those around you.”

Texas Professors Are Leaving—But the Crisis Is Bigger (and Deeper) Than Texas, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Texas Professors Are Leaving—But the Crisis Is Bigger (and Deeper) Than Texas

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 8, 2025

A recent report in The Texas Tribune describes what many of us working in higher education in Texas already know in our hearts: faculty are demoralized and, increasingly, they are leaving. Based on survey data gathered by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), more than one-quarter of professors in Texas say they have applied for academic positions elsewhere in the past two years, while another segment plan to do so soon. Nearly two-thirds indicated they would not recommend Texas as a place to pursue an academic career (Melhado, 2023). These numbers tell a story of deep unease—of contracts not renewed, of faculty afraid to speak openly in classrooms, of colleagues censoring themselves out of fear of retaliation.

Source: Texas Tribune, Credit Tamir Kalifa 

At the heart of this attrition is a direct assault on academic freedom, a principle that undergirds the very possibility of democratic life. State laws now ban diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and erode the stability of tenure, and faculty governance over such matters as curriculum and hiring. 

Legislation such as Senate Bill 37, which stripped power from faculty senates and centralized it in boards of regents appointed by political leaders, has undermined shared governance. This environment does more than stifle dissent; it recasts universities as instruments of control rather than spaces of inquiry.

Texas may be experiencing these dynamics most visibly, but the crisis is national—and increasingly global. Many U.S. scholars are not simply moving across state lines but are choosing to relocate abroad, seeking academic environments in Europe or Canada where intellectual freedom is more secure. Overlaying this migration is the threat of Project 2025, a sweeping policy blueprint crafted by conservative think tanks that aims to dismantle public institutions, including higher education, and remake them according to a narrow ideological vision. 

This project aligns with what has been called the Seven Mountains mandate, an agenda of religious nationalists who seek control over culture-shaping institutions—education foremost among them. Yes, read and understand this vitally important point.

This broader climate is fueled by the growth of Christian nationalism, a worldview that fuses political power with a narrow conception of religion. Surveys reveal its mainstream appeal: a majority of Republicans support declaring the U.S. a Christian nation, despite acknowledging its unconstitutionality; nearly half affirm the belief that God designated America as a promised land for European Christians. 

As McDaniel (2022) and others have noted, Christian nationalism is not merely a matter of private belief but a political project that seeks to restrict belonging to white, Christian, U.S.-born citizens, and to delegitimize pluralism. When viewed in this frame, Texas is not an outlier but part of a larger campaign to curtail higher education’s role as a site of critical thought and democratic practice.

I argue that these moves are part of what decolonial scholars call the colonial matrix of power—an effort to control knowledge, suppress difference, and reproduce racial and cultural hierarchies. Yet resistance is alive. Faculty who continue to mentor students of color, who teach histories others would erase, who publish research under difficult conditions, are engaging in what I and other scholars term "transformational resistance" (Valenzuela, Unda, & Bernal, 2025; also see Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001).

This is not resistance for its own sake but resistance that builds alternatives grounded in care, justice, and community. Every classroom where students feel seen, every syllabus that centers marginalized voices, is part of this work.

Why I stay. I would be dishonest if I said the thought of leaving hasn’t crossed my mind. Colleagues often ask why I remain in Texas when the hostility toward higher education—and toward scholars of color in particular—runs so deeply. 

My answer is simple: I stay because my students and community root me here. Texas’ future is unfolding in our classrooms, in our neighborhoods, and in our community schools. Plus, we all pay taxes, don't we? To walk away would be easier, perhaps even safer, but staying allows me to live the very praxis I teach: to resist, to reimagine, and to plant seeds of justice where they are most endangered.

That does not mean we accept this reality as inevitable. It means we fight back. We refuse to concede our classrooms, our research, or our governance structures to political agendas. We form alliances with communities and insist that public universities exist to serve the people of Texas, not to advance the ambitions of politicians or religious ideologues. We keep teaching, writing, and testifying because silence would only deepen the culture of fear.

The AAUP survey offers a sobering warning, but it is also a call to action. Without resistance, fear becomes normalized. With resistance—embodied through solidarity, courage, and imagination—we preserve the possibility of universities that are truly democratic and inclusive.

Just last week, after class, a student told me, “Thank you for making space for voices like mine. I didn’t think college was for people like me until now.” In that moment, the rancor from the Capitol receded, and what remained was the truth of why I stay: because these students are Texas, because their futures are worth fighting for, and because each act of teaching becomes an act of resistance and hope.

References

Gutteridge, N. & Ford, A. (2025, Sept. 5). Professors want to leave Texas because of tense political climate, survey says, Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/05/texas-faculty-university-political-climate-survey/

McDaniel, E. (2022, Nov. 6). Talk of 'Christian nationalism' is getting louder—but what does the term really mean? Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chron.com/politics/article/what-is-christian-nationalism-17563003.php

Melhado, W. (2023, September 7). Texas’ political environment driving faculty to leave, survey finds. Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/07/texas-higher-education-faculty-dei-tenure/

Solórzano, D. G., & Delgado Bernal, D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context, Urban Education, 36(3), 308–342.

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Bernal, J. M. Disrupting Colonial Logics: Transformational Resistance Against SB 17 and the Dismantling of DEI in Texas Higher Education. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Vol3-Issue1-03_DisruptingColonial.pdf