Texas lawmakers are scrutinizing university professors’ influence. Here's how faculty shape their universities.

Friends,

Here is an important piece by Kate McGee of the Texas Tribune.  It provides a great description of what faculty senates (or councils) do—and why faculty governance is essential in higher education institutions.

As the 2025 legislative session begins, there is growing concern that lawmakers will seek to reduce faculty influence "over campus culture and curriculum"—ostensibly taught by "woke" professors like myself, I presume.

Geez, whatever in the world is wrong to want students to think critically about the world around them? They, too, want to make a better world. And what's wrong with teaching them to question assumptions, consider perspectives different from their own, or develop a deeper understanding of complex societal issues—like racial, ethnic, class, and gender inequalities, that are not going to magically disappear simply by silencing this discourse?

And what's wrong with advocating for inclusivity and social justice or creating a more welcoming and equitable environment for students from diverse backgrounds? Mounds of research show that promoting diversity in academic settings prepares students to better navigate a globalized, multicultural, and multilingual world. This is great for business, too.

Conservatives remarkably wonder what the need is for ostensibly "woke" professors when what we need instead is so-called "intellectual diversity." Well, how the heck do we, as universities, achieve their goal of intellectual diversity in learning environments that are monocultural, monolingual, and comprised of the atomized individuals they prize?

Such heralded "individuals," who are ostensibly "intellectually diverse," focus on personal autonomy and self-interest rather than engaging in shared social responsibilities and relationships. When have weaker social bonds and diminished empathy toward others ever been a positive prescription for society—especially in a post-pandemic moment when many youth and young adults long for connection and a sense of common purpose that promotes the public good?

The proof is in the pudding. Our "woke professors" are in high demand because they enrich the educational experience, encourage critical engagement with the world, and foster a more inclusive and socially responsible academic community. If anything, more like us are needed in our overwhelmingly conservative university environments. We contribute to the intellectual vitality and vibrancy that our institutions still need today.

I just read this April 7, 2023 piece by Jabari Simama titled, "In Defense of ‘Woke" that I encourage all to read. In particular, she asks us to "stop allowing right-wing conservatives to appropriate and redefine terms like 'wokeness.'" I couldn't agree more.

Moreover, this narrative of "woke" professors does not equal "woke" universities. Far from it. Rest assured, my conservative friends, that we may differ in our views, but we can still engage in respectful dialogue and work toward common understanding. 

It's regrettable that far-right legislators are swinging a sledgehammer to crack a nut—and much to the detriment of the entire research, teaching, and learning enterprise. We must turn this narrative on its head before it's too late.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas Legislature 2025

Texas lawmakers are scrutinizing university professors’ influence. Here's how faculty shape their universities.

Faculty senates have long played a key role in developing curriculum and protecting open inquiry. State leaders have also accused them of liberal indoctrination.

By Kate McGee

Dec. 6, 20245 AM Central

Conservative Texas lawmakers and power brokers in recent years have criticized university professors for being “woke” activists who indoctrinate college students with far-left teachings and ideas.

Now, as state lawmakers head back to the Capitol for the 2025 legislative session, they could limit the influence faculty have over campus culture and curriculum. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants lawmakers to recommend potential changes to the roles of faculty senates, which traditionally take the lead on developing curriculum — and ensuring professors have the academic freedom to teach and research their subject areas without fear of political interference.

But conservatives say university curriculum has been infused with ideologies that have helped take higher education in Texas in an overly liberal direction.

“If we're going to refocus our universities on their mission of open inquiry and freedom of speech, we've got to take a look at the curriculum and who's controlling it,” Sherry Sylvester, a fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, told state senators in November.

Some Texas professors, though, fear the Republican-controlled Legislature could undermine a long-standing balance of power at universities that’s meant to protect higher education from politicization. Their concerns are that without a proper voice on campus, and a guarantee that faculty have control over their teaching and research, faculty might leave Texas or be less likely to take a job at a Texas university, research would be imperiled, and there would be no checks and balances on university leadership.

“There’s very clearly an ideological based attack against higher education and more specifically against faculty,” said Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, a private institution in Dallas. “A place where faculty are most noticeable is a faculty senate.”

Here’s a look at faculty senates in Texas and the role they play in higher education.

What faculty senates do

Faculty senates are made up of professors from across a university. The body approves academic policies, curriculum design, faculty hiring and evaluation, and other issues that impact the academic mission. They also relay university-wide news and plans back to their colleagues.. The senates often meet monthly and invite guests from the administration to speak directly to faculty on university issues.

“They provide a critical advisory voice on so many things we do on campus,” Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh recently told reporters. “The faculty senate does work that is fundamentally important to what we do as a university.”

Faculty at many Texas universities elect a professor in their specific college to serve as a representative on the senate. Faculty will typically elect a chair or co-chairs for a one or two year term. Other faculty members can serve on specific committees that provide recommendations to leadership on specific issues, such as budget, research or facility planning.

Faculty say that it’s vital that they have a voice in the decision making processes and that university boards of regents listen to those on the ground when making decisions that impact their work.

“At a Fortune 500 company, you wouldn't want the CEO to make every single decision,” said Harris, the SMU professor. “They don’t have time. People close to the product line or business aspect are best able to do that. The same thing is true here. You want your faculty who teach undergrads to make policy [about undergrads]. They know the issues there better.”

Bill Carroll served as president of the University of Texas at Arlington’s faculty senate four years ago. He said administrators often haven’t taught in a classroom in years and rely on current faculty to share their experiences that can help shape decision-making.

“The faculty senate can provide that input and that information to administration so they can understand how the faculty are perceiving things and understand what faculty needs to do their job in an effective way,” he said.

How faculty senates fit into a university’s power structure

Public universities and university systems are overseen by boards of regents, who are appointed by the governor. Those boards hire university presidents, who serve as a CEO of the institution.

While there is nothing in state law that specifies how faculty senates should be organized or function, many universities have adopted rules based on the American Association of University Professors’ guidance that faculty have academic freedom in the classroom and in research.

They also rely on the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities to guide how boards, presidents and faculty senates interact to operate the university. This statement was developed by national organizations that represent faculty, university presidents and governing boards. The statement spells out who should handle each sector of university operations.

“It's not something that was just drawn up by faculty saying, 'Here is our best practice, deal with it,’” said Joey Velasco, president of the Texas Council of Faculty Senates who also teaches at Sul Ross State University in Far West Texas. “It really was a joint effort.”

Faculty should be responsible for curriculum, methods of instruction and research, the statement reads. If the governing board or university president ultimately makes a decision that goes against the faculty’s wishes, that statement urges the board or president to communicate those reasons with the faculty.

“It’s through open dialogue and mutual respect and a shared vision that faculty, administrators and governing boards can ensure their institutions continue to thrive,” Velasco said.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has routinely criticized faculty senates

Faculty senates found themselves in Patrick’s crosshairs three years ago when he boldly declared he wanted to end tenure for new faculty hires at Texas’ public universities. It was a radical legislative priority condemned by faculty groups across the country.

At the time, Patrick was honest about his motivations: he was angry at The Faculty Council at the University of Texas at Austin. The elected group of faculty had passed a nonbinding resolution reaffirming their right to teach critical race theory in the college classroom after the state banned its teaching in K-12 schools. In the statement, faculty at UT-Austin said they will “stand firm against any and all encroachment on faculty authority including by the legislature or the Board of Regents.”

Patrick called the professors “Loony Marxists” on social media and accused them of poisoning the minds of college students with such teaching. Ending tenure would make it easier to terminate or punish faculty who were teaching these ideas.

Patrick ultimately was unable to outright ban tenure at Texas’ public universities. But Harris said it’s clear that the Faculty Council “poked the bear.”

“I do wonder, were it not for that, would it have been as much on the radar,” Harris said, though he feels like the wave of similar actions at universities in other states, such as Florida, would’ve led Texas to take similar routes.

Faculty senates can formally voice a lack of confidence in university leadership 

Faculty senates largely garner the most attention outside the university when they issue a vote of no confidence in a school leader. These votes are non binding, but are meant as a way for faculty to express their discontent with the direction a president is taking the school. Sometimes, they can lead to the resignation of a university leader. Other times, they’re completely ignored.

Last year, most faculty members at West Texas A&M University in Canyon said they lost confidence in the president for a variety of issues, including his decision to cancel a student drag show on campus. Nothing happened after the vote and Walter Wendler remained president.

At Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, faculty took a vote of no confidence in the leadership of former President Scott Gordon after he accepted an $85,000 pay bump amid a COVID-19 budget shortfall. In that case, the board of regents stood behind Gordon despite the no confidence vote. Still, he stepped down six months later.

Nationally, a Chronicle of Higher Education analysis found that a president ends up leaving office within a year of a no-confidence vote about half of the time.

This spring, more than 600 faculty at UT-Austin signed a letter stating they had no confidence in President Jay Hartzell’s leadership after police arrested a swath of pro-Palestinian demonstrators protesting the war in Gaza. However, that letter came from the UT-Austin chapter of the American Association of University Professors, not the Faculty Council.

Other states have moved to limit faculty power

Across the country, other states have sought to curtail the power and freedoms of faculty. The Arizona Legislature passed a law that would reduce the power of faculty senates. The bill eliminated language in the state that says the faculty “shall participate in” or “share responsibility” for academic and personnel decisions. Instead, professors could only “consult with” university leaders on decisions. Arizona’s Democratic governor vetoed the bill.

When Florida passed a higher education bill that banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public institutions last year, it also included language that said public university presidents and administrators are not bound by faculty recommendations or opinions in hiring decisions.

In Texas, at a November state Senate Higher Education Subcommittee meeting, Sylvestor, with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, suggested that the Legislature require all faculty senate votes to be public, all meetings be open to the public and live streamed, and all curriculum changes made public.

Many faculty senates at Texas universities already livestream their meetings and post agendas and minutes online. Velasco with the Texas Council for Faculty Senates said many votes are taken publicly, too. But there are instances when private voting is better, he said, such as when faculty vote whether to award tenure.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M University, Texas Council of Faculty Senates, Texas Public Policy Foundation, University of Texas at Arlington, University of Texas at Austin and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Free Speech Movement at Sixty and Today’s Unfree Universities by Robert Cohen, AAUP

Friends,

This excellent piece by Robert Cohen on the Free Speech Movement (FSM) and its parallels to issues of protest and free speech on our college campuses today is definitely one to chew on over the holidays.

The FSM's 1964 victory set a precedent for student activism and free speech in higher education while highlighting enduring issues in university governance together with tensions between institutional authority and student autonomy.

I like Cohen's comparison of the events of Spring 2024, to those of 1969, commenting that today's "arrest rate is shocking," considering that the campus protests in 1969 were much more militant despite fewer numbers of protesters in 2024 than in 1969—translating into 3,000 students arrested last spring compared to approximately 4,000 in 1969 when a number of college campuses were literally on fire.

Notably, Dr. Carol Christ, the chancellor of UC Berkeley, honored the university's free speech legacy and refused to arrest or evict the protesters. Are you listening university administrators? Why resort to such impunity when student protests could be addressed through dialogue and negotiation? It is deeply troubling that this approach is not the standard practice to begin with at the University of Texas at Austin and at all college campuses everywhere.

As was true then and is now, we can draw on the critique of iconic activist Mario Savio, who condemned the "managed autocracy" — an erosion of administrative support for free speech and a persistent issue of centralized, undemocratic governance. This challenge is further compounded by the efforts of an activist billionaire class bent on suppressing student and faculty activism.

What this class doesn't seem to know or want to know is that students' free speech will benefit them in the long run. Why? Because a virtuous and robust education is not just about acquiring knowledge but about enriching one's life and contributing meaningfully to the community. This is precisely what our youth and faculty are doing when they stand up for free speech.

The disproportionate crackdown on recent demonstrations should alarm us as a society, signaling a troubling shift in university priorities that places order and control above the Constitutional principle of freedom of expression that is a bedrock of any free society.

As faculty, we must clearly continue to not just defend our students, but ally with them. This is what is happening in Texas right now with AAUP, Texas AFT, the Texas Legislative Education Equity Coalition, LULAC, NAACP, the LDF, and Black Brown Dialogues on Policy at the forefront.

Clearly, this struggle demands sustained vigilance, collective solidarity, and an unwavering commitment to the principles of equality and freedom that universities are meant to uphold.

-Angela Valenzuela
The Free Speech Movement at Sixty and Today’s Unfree Universities

Can speech be free when billionaires buy influence on campus?

By Robert Cohen | AAUP | Published as a preview to the winter 2025 issue. The full issue will be published in February 2025.

Just over sixty years ago, Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement (FSM) won a historic victory for student free speech rights after a semester of protest, including the most extensive use of civil disobedience on campus and the largest mass arrest (of more than seven hundred students) to that point in American history. It took a thirty-two-hour nonviolent blockade around a police car, multiple student sit-ins in the campus administration building, a strike by students and teaching assistants, mountains of leaflets, exhausting political organizing, and repeated attempts at negotiations to convince the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, to endorse the principle that the university must stop restricting the content of speech or advocacy—after which freedom of speech on campus finally became official university policy.

The FSM’s legacy on freedom of speech was visible last spring in the response of UC Berkeley’s chancellor, Carol Christ, to the anti–Gaza war encampment on Sproul Plaza, long a hub of student activism on campus. Mindful of Berkeley’s free speech tradition, Christ—who has a photo of Mario Savio, the FSM’s famed orator, on her office wall—refused to use police force to evict or arrest the protesters. Instead, she ended the protest through negotiations, a path that few college presidents took.

It is sobering to reflect on the fact that Berkeley, along with Brown University, Northwestern University, San Francisco State University, and a handful of other campuses, was an outlier in respecting student free speech. Indeed, the eviction of protesters from encampments nationwide brought with it a campus arrest rate comparable to that found on college campuses at the height of the antiwar movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. More than three thousand protesters were arrested in mostly nonviolent anti–Gaza war protests on more than one hundred campuses across the United States in April and May 2024.

This arrest rate is shocking when one considers that, at their peak the Vietnam War era, campus protests were much more militant, disruptive, and violent than the protests last spring. During the spring of 1969, for example, there had been more than eighty bombings, attempted bombings, and acts of arson on college campuses. Yet during the six months of that turbulent semester, the total number of arrests on campus nationally was just over four thousand. In fact, only the most violent month of student protest in American history, May 1970, provoked by the explosion of anger over the Cambodia invasion and the massacres at Kent State University and Jackson State University, saw an arrest rate exceeding that of April and May 2024. But when one considers that more than four million students were involved in protest activity in May 1970, and that the arrest rate on campus peaked at about 3,600 that month, one’s chances of being arrested even at these far more militant protests were much slighter than they were at the encampments last spring, which mobilized thousands, not millions, of students.

All of this suggests an erosion of support for free speech in university leadership. While college administrations in the Vietnam era used police force as a last resort in the face of major campus disruptions, this past spring administrators used police as a first resort to suppress student protests even when those protesters—encamped outdoors on campus plazas or lawns—did not commit major disruptions of the university and its educational functions.

Last spring’s free speech crisis on campus shows that no victory for free speech, even one as famed as the FSM’s, can be assumed to have had a permanent national impact. The pressures on university leaders to suppress dissent, especially when it is viewed as radical and unpopular—as is virtually always the case with leftist-led student movements—are often difficult for even the most principled campus leaders to resist. Compounding this problem is a deeper truth about the FSM and the larger student movement of the 1960s that is rarely discussed: Despite all their mass organizing and triumphs on specific demands, such as liberalizing campus regulations, diversifying the curriculum, and ending some connections between the university and the military-industrial complex, student movements have generally lacked the power to restructure and democratize university governance. Thus, to this day, students are largely disenfranchised when it comes to campus decision-making, and it is this lack of a voice or a vote on university policy that forces students to hold demonstrations, to build encampments, and even to engage in civil disobedience if they want to be heard on any major university policy.

This issue is at least as old as the FSM itself. Soon after the free speech dispute erupted at Berkeley at the start of the fall 1964 semester, FSM organizers became concerned about the undemocratic nature of the university and how such important policies as campus rules concerning political advocacy were determined unilaterally by campus administrators, who were influenced not by the university community, its students and faculty, so much as by outside forces, especially wealthy business leaders and powerful politicians. Student activists’ awareness of this reality grew out of experience, as they had seen how criticism of their demonstrations and sit-ins targeting racially discriminatory employers in the Bay Area, especially criticism from conservative business leaders, media, and politicians, contributed to the administration’s decision in September 1964 to close the university’s free speech area at the main campus entrance—the action that ignited the Free Speech Movement.

Managed Autocracy

The most famous speech given by the movement’s eloquent orator, Mario Savio, much like the “I have a dream” segment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington speech, is remembered for its most moving lines: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” These lines from Savio’s speech helped inspire more than a thousand students to join the FSM’s culminating sit-in at the Berkeley administration building on December 2, 1964, and over the years have been quoted in numerous documentaries, feature films, protest songs, and history textbooks.

Less well remembered but equally important and relevant today are the words Savio spoke just before this dramatic call to resistance, where he explained the source of the oppression that he was urging students to resist: a tyrannical university administration and its corporate overlords. “We have,” Savio said, “an autocracy which runs this university. It’s managed!” He likened the university administration to a soulless corporation, whose president, Clark Kerr, was a tool of UC’s reactionary board of regents:

We were told the following: “If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the regents in his telephone conversation, why didn’t he make some public statement to that effect?” And the answer we received, from a well-meaning liberal, was the following. He said, “Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?” That’s the answer! Now, I ask you to consider: if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I’ll tell you something: the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we’re the raw materials! But we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to . . . have any process upon us, don’t mean to be made into any product, don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the university, be they the government, be they industry . . . be they anyone! We’re human beings!’”

Savio punctured the myth of a university as an institution where freedom, political equality, and community prevailed. He urged students to assert their humanity and overcome their powerlessness through protest and solidarity—putting their bodies on the line by joining what would on that December day prove to be the FSM’s most massive and successful sit-in on behalf of free speech.

This was, for Savio, not a new line of criticism of the university. He had offered scathing criticism of the regents and the UC administration’s undemocratic nature from the early stages of the free speech controversy at Cal. During the movement’s first free speech sit-in, back in late September, Savio debated historian Thomas Barnes, an assistant dean, who had sought to justify the closing of Cal’s free speech area on the grounds that it helped preserve the university’s political neutrality. Savio argued that Barnes’s claims about UC’s political neutrality were ludicrous. The “board of regents,” Savio remarked, had “quite a bit of control over the university. . . .

We ought to ask who they are. . . . Who are the board of regents? Well, they are a pretty damned reactionary bunch of people!” The board of regents, far to the right of students and faculty, was unrepresentative of the university community; the board was also, in Savio’s view, unrepresentative of the general population of California. “There are groups in this country, like laborers, for example, like Negroes—laborers usually. . . . These people, see, I don’t think they have a community of interests with the Bank of California,” so they had no representative on the board. “On the board of regents, please note, the only academic representative—and it’s questionable in what sense he’s an academic representative—is President Clark Kerr. The only one. There are no representatives of the faculty.” So, when you consider the conservatism and elitist composition of the board, the claim that it runs a university that is “neutral politically,” Savio concluded, is “obviously false. . . . It’s the most politically unneutral organization that I’ve had personal contact with. It’s really an organization that serves the interests and represents the establishment of the United States.”

In this same debate with Barnes, Savio objected to the privatistic manner in which the university administration asserted its authority, despite the fact that Cal was supposedly a public institution. Savio, like most other activists involved in the free speech battle, noticed and was offended by the plaques embedded in the grounds of the entrances to the Berkeley campus, which read, “Property of the Regents of the University of California. Permission to enter or pass over is revocable at any time.” It was this authority, this regental property right over the university grounds, that gave the board the power to impose even the most arbitrary restrictions on campus speech, such as the requirement that outside speakers wait seventy-two hours before they could be authorized to address a campus audience. Savio in his debate with Barnes cited this rule as being based on “a distinction between students and nonstudents that has no basis except harassment.” Why seventy-two hours for nonstudents? With his recent experience in mind as a volunteer in Mississippi Freedom Summer, Savio explored the meaning of seventy-two hours for that freedom struggle: “Let’s say, for example—and this touches me very deeply—in McComb, Mississippi, some children are killed in the bombing of a church. . . . Let’s say that we have someone that’s come up from Mississippi . . . and he wanted to speak here, and he had to wait seventy-two hours in order to speak. And everybody will have forgotten about those children, because, you know when you’re Black in Mississippi no one gives a damn. Seventy-two hours later and the whole issue would be dead.” And in the nuclear age, having to wait seventy-two hours to hear a speaker criticizing the use of US military force abroad—in places like Vietnam—could, Savio insisted, prove fatal, because “by that time it is all over. You know, we could all be dead.”

For Savio, then, a key part of the problem was that the regents looked upon the university as “a private organization run by a small group,” a rich and powerful elite: “The regents have taken a position that they have virtually unlimited control over the private property which is the University of California.” Savio urged that people “look at the university here not as the private property of [millionaire board of regents chair] Edward Carter. Let’s say instead that we look upon it [democratically] as a little city.” If they did so, the seventy-two-hour rule for nonstudent speakers, the barring of political advocacy on campus, and the closing of the free speech area would be clearly seen by all as unconstitutional outrages. As Savio explained at the first FSM sit-in, using this democratic lens and the city of Berkeley as an example, “Let’s say that the mayor of Berkeley announced that citizens of Berkeley could speak on any issue they wanted to . . . but placed the following restriction upon nonresidents from Berkeley: that they could not do so unless they obtained permission from the city of Berkeley and did so seventy-two hours before they wanted to speak. You know there’d be a huge hue and cry going up: ‘Incredible violation of the First Amendment! Unbelievable violation of the Fourteenth!’ . . . Anybody who wants to say anything on this campus, just like anybody on the city street, should have the right to do so. . . . [enjoying] complete freedom of speech.”

Though the Vietnam War had not escalated yet, and the 1960s mass student movement against the war had yet to emerge to demand an end to university complicity with that war, Savio in this early FSM speech was already criticizing the university’s role in the US war machine. In fact, he cited the University of California’s role in the nuclear arms race as proof that the university was politically both unneutral and undemocratic. As Savio put it, “Now note—extremely important—the University of California is directly involved in making newer and better atom bombs. Whether this is good or bad, don’t you think . . . in the spirit of political neutrality, either they should not be involved or there should be some democratic control of the way they’re being involved?” 

Donor Rebellions

There is nothing outdated about Savio’s critique of the undemocratic nature of university governance and the overweening influence of a rich and powerful elite in that governing structure. His insight that the university is managed like a hierarchical corporation rather than a city of free citizens is as relevant in the present academic year as it was in 1964. It was, after all, the billionaire donor class and super-wealthy university boards of trustees that used their wealth and power to pressure universities to suppress the protest movement against the war in Gaza. Most damaging in this regard was the role of billionaire investor Bill Ackman, a major donor to Harvard University, who soon after the start of the Gaza war expressed outrage that Harvard President Claudine Gay was failing to repress the campus antiwar movement, which he equated with antisemitism and terrorism. Ackman spearheaded a campaign, supported by “a growing list of frustrated Harvard donors,” including billionaire Len Blavatnik, to force Gay from office. When President Gay—along with her counterparts from the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—fared poorly in her December 2023 congressional testimony, her botched defense of free speech was misread as indifference to advocacy of anti-Jewish genocide, and she resigned in January 2024. Prominent Harvard faculty had sought to save Gay, but they lacked the power to do so, since, as Savio would have put it, faculty members are “just a bunch of employees.” As Harvard law professor Ben Adelson noted, “We can’t function as a university if we’re answerable to random rich guys and the mobs they mobilize over Twitter.”

The same fate befell Penn President Liz Magill, whose ouster came even more quickly (four days after her congressional testimony) than Gay’s. Magill’s fall was engineered by a daunting coalition of the rich and powerful. Wall Street CEO Ross Stevens threatened to revoke his $100 million donation to Penn unless Magill resigned. Magill, as The New York Times documented, “faced a rebellion” led by the board of Wharton, Penn’s prestigious business school, and including “a growing coalition of donors, politicians, and business leaders” who demanded that she step down. As at Harvard, the faculty and the student body at Penn proved powerless to save their president.

To say that this plutocratic purge of Ivy League presidents had a chilling effect on free speech nationally is an understatement. The US higher education system is hierarchical, and Harvard is at the top in prestige and wealth. If the president of Harvard could lose her job for being insufficiently repressive of the anti–Gaza war protests, no college or university president could feel safe in tolerating a movement that was so abhorrent to the donor class and their allies in Congress. And so, few did. When the antiwar encampments spread to colleges and universities across the country last spring, administrators were usually quick to suppress them with evictions and arrests, even though most of the encampments were nonviolent and only minimally disruptive.

Leading the way was Columbia University, whose president, Minouche Shafik, was determined not to meet the same fate as her counterparts at Harvard and Penn. She gave congressional testimony in mid-April that was largely dismissive of free speech and academic freedom concerns and took a hard line against the antiwar protesters. The day after her testimony, she authorized the eviction of the encampment on a Columbia campus lawn, resulting in more than one hundred arrests. This action set a precedent followed by many other campus administrations, including mine at New York University, which called in two hundred riot police to evict and arrest more than a hundred nonviolent protesters on the plaza in front of our business school. Even such hard-line policies did not, however, end the pressure. After the mass arrests at Columbia, the right-wing speaker of the US House of Representatives and a congressional delegation came to the Columbia campus to demand that Shafik resign for supposedly not doing enough to quash a protest movement they denounced as hateful and antisemitic. This was followed by billionaire Robert Kraft’s announcement that he would no longer donate funds to Columbia because of its failure to protect Jewish students from the antiwar movement’s alleged antisemitism.

Donors and trustees also used their power and wealth to attack the few college presidents who chose negotiation over repression. For example, after Brown University President Christina Paxson ended the antiwar encampment on her campus by agreeing to have Brown’s trustees consider the protesters’ demand that the university cut its financial ties with Israel, real estate mogul Barry Sternlicht denounced her action. Sternlicht, who had donated $20 million to Brown, said he would no longer support the university financially. From a governance standpoint, Sternlicht’s position attests to how profoundly undemocratic the donor mindset has become. After all, President Paxson had not agreed to divest. She merely agreed to give the students’ divestment arguments a hearing. By Sternlicht’s logic, students not only lack decision-making power but also must be barred even from meeting with university policymakers to present proposals regarding investment policy.

This is not to say that the donors’ concerns about antisemitism were groundless. There were antisemitic incidents on campus, and the protest movement was often insensitive about how its anti-Zionist slogans could offend and upset Jewish students and faculty with deep emotional ties to Israel. The encampments on many campuses tended to be relatively small affairs with a few hundred students, isolated and unable to reach out effectively to the majority of students on their campuses. And the militants on the few campuses that did see some 1960s-style escalations into building occupations tended to do so without the kind of outreach needed to enlist mass student support, leaving the movement weaker and more isolated after the protests ended with arrests.

The FSM, by contrast, had been characterized by mass outreach, concerned itself with building majority student support for demands, adopted slogans that were unifying rather than divisive, and used civil disobedience in ways that mobilized masses of students. This contrast struck me with particular force on my campus, where, soon after the Gaza war started, the NYU administration closed the student union’s enormous marble stairway—formerly a site for political rallies—to all protest events (and to any use at all). This action was very similar to the provocation at Berkeley in 1964, where the closing of the free speech area united students, from the socialists on the left to the Goldwater supporters on the right, who worked together to organize the FSM and win their right to political advocacy on campus. But since anti-Zionist and Zionist students today are engaged in political warfare with each other, they would not dream of uniting on behalf of free speech. And so that stairway at NYU remains closed, and campuses remain too divided to challenge the actions of their repressive administrations. Yet for all its flaws, the antiwar movement did—as President Biden himself noted in his speech at Morehouse College—raise public awareness of the Gaza tragedy and press him to hear the voices of students outraged by the bloodshed.

On the issue of free speech itself, one heard precious little from the donors (or the campus administrators) who were so eager to silence the protesters last spring. They seemed to assume that, based on their wealth and past donations, they ought to be able to play the role of censors on campus. They also seem unaware of how one-sided their viewpoints are. The donors never mentioned Islamophobic incidents on campus or incidents like the violent assault on an antiwar encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, by self-proclaimed Zionists. Though properly critical of the movement’s failure to acknowledge Hamas’s war crimes, the donors were silent when it came to the massive civilian deaths and suffering inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza by Israeli bombings. It is easy, but not accurate, to assume that criticism of the war-making of the Jewish state is inherently antisemitic, since in Israel itself such criticism and mass protest have been ongoing—and Jewish students have been prominent in the antiwar movement on American campuses. Whether it comes from the Left or the Right, from Zionists or anti-Zionists, calls to repress political speech as hateful can endanger the free exchange of ideas. As divided as many campuses are over the Gaza war, the university communities themselves are better qualified to promote dialogue and healing, to the extent that it is possible, than are donors with their one-sided political agenda.

Tests for Free Speech

Despite their many differences, the FSM and the anti–Gaza war movement, like virtually all student movements in American history, share at least one thing: unpopularity with the general public. When it comes to generational relations, students can’t catch a break because their elders, bound by an enduring cultural conservatism, expect them to play their prescribed role, doing their academic work, obeying the rules, respecting authority. The public’s response to student activism often amounts to telling students to “shut up and study.” The Free Speech Movement, despite its commitment to the bedrock constitutional value of freedom of speech and to nonviolence, was often depicted as subversive and riotous, and so was opposed by the majority of the California electorate. And the anti–Gaza war movement, though sparked by humanitarian concern about the massive civilian casualties in Gaza and mostly nonviolent, is often depicted as antisemitic and supportive of terrorism. And on several campuses, radicals in the antiwar movement, wedded to Palestinian nationalism and romanticizing resistance to Israeli oppression, further alienated the public by coming across as un-American when they took down the stars and stripes and hoisted in its place the Palestinian flag.

Student movements are thus a kind of canary in the coal mine for the right to freedom of speech, because the true test of free speech rests with our treatment not of popular ideas but of ideas and movements that are unpopular, that raise difficult questions, that challenge the status quo. And whether it is the Berkeley student activists who mounted protests against racially discriminatory employers in 1964, using what much of the conservative American public viewed as frighteningly anarchistic civil disobedience tactics in both that struggle and in their campus crusade for free speech rights, or the anti-Gaza war movement in 2024, such questions and challenges can provoke disdain and repression. Viewed side by side, both the FSM and today’s antiwar movement also reveal that, as Savio pointed out long ago, the undemocratic mode of university governance endures. It is as dysfunctional today as it was in 1964. And it remains set up in such a way that, in the halls of power on campus, money talks, but students do not—which is why in 2024 they were on the march again, out in the campus plazas and on the lawns raising their voices, demonstrating, demanding to be heard.

Postscript

The conditions for free speech and academic freedom have deteriorated further since this essay was written last summer, with sweeping bans on campus encampments put in place; time, place, and manner regulations tightened; and disciplinary actions initiated that effectively suppressed the anti–Gaza war movement on most campuses. In fact, a session the author organized on the campus free speech crises of 1964 and 2024, planned for fall 2024 in commemoration of the FSM’s sixtieth anniversary, was banned from New York University’s Bobst Library by the NYU administration.

Robert Cohen is a professor of social studies and history at New York University, biographer of Mario Savio, and the 2024–25 senior fellow of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. His most recent book is Confronting Jim Crow: Race, Memory, and the University of Georgia in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2024).

UT is becoming the face of Texas’ higher education failures. That must change, The Daily Texan Editorial Board

Friends:

I am glad that the Daily Texan Editorial Board is weighing in on findings from a recent survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which shows that faculty are deeply concerned about the condition of higher education in Texas. 

The short of it is that while our institutions must comply with Texas legislative mandates, they must also heed the concerns of their faculty. Without either shared governance or ensuring basic protections, how can higher education institutions hope to attract and retain the very talent that upholds their prestige?

Failing to listen to its faculty risks making UT Austin and all Texas higher education a symbol of Texas' shortcomings and failures. I truly hope that this message reaches Texas universities statewide, including UT Austin, so that our leaders can grasp what is at stake.

My intention is to foster a constructive dialogue that leads to positive change. I believe that by working together in a spirit of shared governance, we can overcome these challenges and continue to thrive despite ongoing legislative animus.

-Angela Valenzuela

UT is becoming the face of Texas’ higher education failures. That must change.
The Daily Texan Editorial Board

October 10, 2024

The recent publication of a survey of Texas faculty is as clear-cut as it is concerning.

According to a Sept. 5 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) survey, Texas faculty are dissatisfied with the conditions and direction of higher education in Texas. 61% of those surveyed would not recommend Texas for a faculty position to out-of-state colleagues, and 26.3% plan to interview elsewhere next year. Top concerns for faculty include the state’s political climate, academic freedom, salary, and diversity, equity and inclusion issues.

As one of Texas’ flagship institutions and a top 10 public university, UT represents the Texas education system internationally. UT can’t afford to neglect its faculty without risking long-term damage to its reputation and academic standing. At the time of publication, UT did not respond to a request for comment.

In his Sept. 18 State of the University Address, President Jay Hartzell said he, the provost and the deans will be working on “how, across the entire academic enterprise, we attract more elite faculty and students.”

Faculty is essential to the success of any university. But as it stands, we are failing ours. If UT wants to recruit and retain top-tier faculty, UT must prioritize their satisfaction and address key issues impacting their success. UT has a responsibility to protect academic freedom, and this begins with protecting faculty well-being.

According to the AAUP survey, the failure to address faculty concerns may result in a decreased retention of faculty, loss of academic talent and damage to the quality of higher education.

“These findings serve as a wake-up call for policymakers, administrators, employers, and other concerned citizens, emphasizing the urgent need to address the concerns raised by faculty members,” the survey said.

Intellectual debate and dialogue allow students and faculty to build upon each other’s independent analysis and critical thinking. State legislation constantly challenges the boundaries of academic freedom. Increasing limitations on academic freedom can have hefty implications not just on our education but on our political structure.

“(Faculty) are worried that people outside the University are going to be telling us what we can and can’t teach, what we have to say and what we can’t say in the classroom,” said Daniel Brinks, a professor in the School of Law and chair of the government department. “That will be a problem for students’ ability to learn, faculty’s ability to teach and do research, and the University’s ability to be an authentic academic institution.”

Senate Bill 17 has had lasting impacts on faculty perceptions of academic freedom. The University’s over-compliance with SB 17, including firing certain staff members without justification, raises concerns about UT’s commitment to faculty well-being amid the enactment of legislative changes.

“There’s a chilling effect … with Senate Bill 17, which banned DEI programs and practices, but it also put in there some pretty severe penalties,” said Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of AAUP. “If you are a faculty member perceived to be giving a training on diversity, equity and inclusion, you can face disciplinary action, including being terminated or dismissed.”

Additionally, SB 18 was intended to ban tenure at Texas public universities. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick proposed the bill because he felt professors at UT use the stability their tenure provides to “poison the minds of our next generation,” as he wrote in a Feb. 18, 2022 statement.

“These professors claim ‘academic freedom’ and hide behind their tenure to continue blatantly advancing their agenda of societal division,” Patrick wrote in a statement released April 20, 2023.

The bill was modified to keep tenured professors — with caveats. However, they can still be let go at the University’s discretion.

SB 18 may disproportionately impact untenured faculty who speak publicly on identity-related issues. The bill instills fear, making professors weary that a progressive curriculum would get them fired. If UT wants professors to continue to foster discourse in their classrooms, they must actively seek to protect tenure and ensure the stability of faculty.

“(AAUP) felt that SB 18 would potentially erode the protections of tenure … the whole reason there’s tenure is to protect academic freedom,” said Andrea Gore, a professor in the College of Pharmacy and Vice President of UT Austin’s chapter of AAUP. “If we didn’t have something that told us our jobs are going to be secure if we tackle difficult topics, we might not tackle those topics, and that would be a huge disservice to the students of the state of Texas.”

Forums exist for faculty to air their grievances, including the Faculty Council, but rarely does faculty input result in actual change. For example, the Council released a July 12 report criticizing UT’s handling of pro-Palestian demonstrations, and the council openly condemned President Hartzell’s mass layoffs following SB 17, which they said were made “without consultation of Faculty Council Leadership or other faculty leaders, in violation of shared governance practices, and without due process.”

In neither case did UT change or reverse its course of action despite callouts from faculty. If faculty cannot make change at UT, they may look for employment somewhere they can.

“Faculty Council, to me, is mostly a propaganda machine … it gives a veneer of a democratically-run institution,” said Stuart Reichler, an associate professor of practice in the College of Natural Sciences. “The reality is that the President and the other top administrators at the University decide what does and doesn’t happen.”

UT does have a requirement to adjust its practices according to the Texas legislature, but it also has a responsibility to recognize and act on the pleas of those it employs. If we can’t provide the basic protections our faculty deserves, how can we expect to attract and retain faculty members who contribute so to the prestige of UT Austin?

The University will soon become the face of Texas’ higher education failures unless it starts truly listening to its faculty.

The editorial board is composed of associate editors Tenley Jackson, Tanya Narwekar, Ava Saunders and Anjali Shenoy and editor-in-chief McKenzie Henningsen.

The Right-Wingification of UT: Texas targets liberal enemies within one of the top U.S. schools by Brant Bingamon, Nov. 22, 2024

Friends,

Today's piece by Brant Bingamon of the Austin Chronicle is a gem. At the heart of the critique of how the attack on DEI and curriculum are playing out at the University of Texas at Austin regards the creation of the conservative School of Civic Leadership at UT that mirrors Stanford's Hoover Institute, Arizona State University's School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, and Princeton's James Madison Program.

Faculty's opposition is rooted in the notion of how it undermines academia by enabling state lawmakers and wealthy donors to impose political agendas. They contend UT's academic structure—where programs evolve into institutes, departments, and schools—is organically built by professors and anchored in established disciplines and research and where schools exist for a reason. Schools aren’t meant to be top-down projects driven by political or financial interests without disfiguring the mission and purpose of academia.

"They aren’t top-down enterprises created in one legislative biennium by politicians and oligarchs," Bingamon notes.

University of Texas Anthropology professor Craig Campbell argues that portraying most faculty as progressive activists is misleading, noting that professors are trained to think beyond simple left-right politics and "many are politically agnostic." He added that complaints about a lack of intellectual diversity are a "fake problem" that reflects a psychological projection from the right that works to provide "cover for ideologically committed, far-right faculty who are not intellectually honest,” he said. He adds, “Universities are a pain for extremist governments, because they’re full of people who are committed to careful exploration of the world and how things work and function – stuff that doesn’t jibe with the fantasies the politicians are trying to create or the policies they want to enact.”

Regarding faculty like Drs. Karma Chavez, Pauline Strong, Andrea Gore, Lauren Gutterman, Brian Evans, Emilio Zamora, myself, and others, I shudder to think of where we and our fellow faculty and students would be without their advocacy. It only makes our universities better. Thank God, as well, for a bold, free, and independent press—and for blogs, too! 😊

Still chewing on this piece and hope you will, too.

-Angela Valenzuela

P.S. I just donated to the Austin Chronicle. Especially for those of us in Austin, please consider it as part of your holiday giving.

The Right-Wingification of UT
Texas targets liberal enemies within one of the top U.S. schools
By Brant Bingamon, Fri., Nov. 22, 2024



Chris Rufo stood before an audience of 50 at the University of Texas in a dark suit, with a trimmed beard, appearing something like a tech bro, relaxed, faintly sneering. It was November of last year and Rufo had been invited to speak at the Salem Center, UT’s new right-wing think tank headquartered in Rowling Hall, an immaculate 458,000-square-foot building erected in 2018 at a cost of $172 million.

As he began, Rufo commanded his listeners to disbelieve their senses, to not see the wealth surrounding them, to not feel the safety of the bubble that is the University of Texas at Austin. He declared, instead, that UT and public universities throughout the country are frightening, dangerous places.

“I think people from across the political spectrum would acknowledge a sense of anxiety,” he said. “A sense of fear. A sense of foreboding. Something has gone quite wrong.”

Rufo isn’t the only right-wing culture warrior pushing this message, but he’s one of the most influential. An inspiration to Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Texas Republicans Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ken Paxton, Rufo rose to prominence by innovating the campaign against critical race theory, a formerly obscure academic theory whipped into a message of white supremacy. He also fights against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and tenure.

At the Salem Center, Rufo unrolled a 30-minute attack on higher education, claiming that universities no longer prioritize the teaching of the classics, that professors no longer contemplate beauty and truth. He complained about African American studies, Latino studies, Asian American studies, Native American studies, and LGBTQ studies, saying, “If it’s got 'studies’ after it, it’s probably a pseudo-discipline.” He concluded by calling for a politically motivated assault, “a protracted siege,” of universities like the one in which he spoke.

Then he took questions. Pauline Strong, the director of UT’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, approached the microphone. Strong has taught at UT for 31 years. She is the president of the UT chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a national group founded in 1915 to support academic freedom, tenure, joint decision making between university faculty and administrators, and due process.

Strong told Rufo she believed in intellectual diversity but didn’t hear a commitment to the principle from him. She said her hero is John Dewey, the pragmatist philosopher who advocated for academic freedom and neutrality in higher learning. She asked if Rufo supported those values.

Rufo stiffened. The muscles in his face froze. He spoke and his words came fast, pitched a half-step higher. He said it would have been better if Dewey had never been born. He said that adhering to Dewey’s values creates “an academic life that drifts into witchcraft, into phrenology, into gender studies.” He said academics like Strong who believe in Dewey, “frankly, deserve what’s coming.”

Perhaps Rufo imagined he was being discreet by leaving “what’s coming” vague. But professors paying attention to Texas politics know exactly what it means. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has, over the last four years, called for the elimination of tenure, for restricting students’ free speech, and for mandating what professors can teach. Patrick has also pushed for the elimination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities. And, in the case of these programs, “what’s coming” is already here. Texas outlawed DEI in January.

The attacks against higher education have hurt faculty morale. There is anecdotal evidence that they are beginning to damage UT’s ability to attract high-quality professors. An August survey of 950 Texas faculty conducted by the AAUP revealed that two-thirds would not recommend Texas universities to their out-of-state colleagues. More than a quarter plan to interview for jobs elsewhere this year. A similar number have already done so. Half said they have noticed fewer, and less qualified, applicants for open positions. The top reason cited by those looking to leave is the state’s political climate. Anxieties about academic freedom, DEI attacks, access to reproductive care, LGBTQ+ issues, and tenure also made the list.

Strong told us that faculty who teach African American studies, Latina/o studies, Asian American studies, Native American and Indigenous studies, and LGBTQ studies are some of the most discouraged. Some have fought Dan Patrick’s attacks in previous legislative sessions and are doing so again, now that the Texas Senate is preparing to meet in January. But most faculty are staying silent, unaware of the threats or performing the equivalent of a tactical retreat. As one professor who didn’t want to be named said, “Jobs are on the line. Programs are on the line.”

So although Rufo’s speech last year was, at times, ridiculous, there was truth in his opener. There is fear at UT. There is foreboding. Something has gone quite wrong.

“There’s a great deal of anxiety among faculty, especially in the College of Liberal Arts,” Strong told us. “There is a great deal of pain. We feel that our research and teaching enterprises are under sustained attack.”

DEI & Pro-Palestinian Protests

Rufo’s talk was partly a victory lap. Six months earlier, Texas Republicans had borrowed model legislation he’d written to create Senate Bill 17, a bill abolishing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in Texas’ public universities.

The SB 17 ban went into effect in January, prohibiting universities from considering diversity in hiring decisions and from conducting DEI training. At UT, administrators dismantled the Multicultural Engagement Center, the Gender and Sexuality Center, and the Fearless Leadership Institute (a professional development program for African American and Hispanic women). The university also moved dozens of employees, most of them in the Division of Diversity and Campus Engagement, to non-DEI work. “We’re going to respect the law,” UT System Chairman Kevin Eltife said at the time. “We’re not going to look for loopholes.”



Republicans weren’t satisfied. In March, SB 17’s author, state Sen. Brandon Creighton, threatened to withhold state funding from the university if administrators didn’t prove they had eradicated DEI. A week later, UT’s president, Jay Hartzell, announced that he had fired dozens of employees who had previously worked at the Division of Diversity and Campus Engagement. Most of them were people of color. He later implied that the administration had gone beyond the letter of the law to satisfy Republicans, saying the “legislative climate toward higher education” was “moving.”

Andrea Gore, a pharmacology professor who has taught at UT for 22 years, believes the fired staffers were sacrificial lambs. “They were not doing DEI jobs anymore,” Gore said. “They all had new job assignments that were documented in writing. They got fired because they had done DEI jobs.”

The firings shocked faculty, but three weeks later a different controversy broke out – the university’s crackdown on students protesting Israel’s war on Palestine.

Ashanté Reese, a professor of African and African Diaspora Studies, rushed to the campus on April 24 after learning that scores of state troopers, assisted by UT and Austin police, were confronting a group of about 200 students on the university’s South Lawn, in the shadow of the Tower. Reese spoke to the officers, trying to de-escalate the situation. It didn’t work. Officers in riot gear surrounded the protesters and repeatedly rammed into them, arresting 57.

Reese felt she came near being arrested herself. “I was doing, in the moment, what I thought was the right thing, and I still believe was the right thing,” she said. “But it was a really traumatic experience. It was traumatic to know that the people on the campus that pay you to do your job then also call the police on you for doing your job.”

A week later, a group calling itself Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine held a silent vigil on the steps of the Tower to support the students and protest Israel’s killing of Palestinian professors and its destruction of universities. As the vigil ended, students formed again on the South Lawn. Again, they were surrounded by police in riot gear. Another 79 were arrested.

The charges against the protesters – trespassing on their campus – were dropped by Travis County officials. UT took the opposite approach. Members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, which had organized the first protest, were threatened with suspension. One of the PSC’s leaders, Ammer Qaddumi, was suspended for a year. The group itself was banned from campus.

This summer, UT drafted new rules allowing its staff to shut down demonstrations in public areas like the South Mall “in some instances.” It also rewrote its free speech policy to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, a logical fallacy that silences anyone who would speak out on Israel’s war.

As Karma Chávez, the chair of the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, said, “it’s very clear who is being targeted.” Chávez co-authored a summation of the DEI and protest controversies in October, urging professors to continue speaking out about the university’s actions and teaching what they deem relevant in their classes.

“We are in the fight of our lives,” she concluded. “Anything less than a principled, full-frontal response will inevitably fail.”

Faculty Lose Faith in the Administration

Many faculty denounced the firings and crackdowns: 650 of UT’s approximately 3,700 faculty signed a letter drafted by the UT chapter of the American Association of University Professors expressing no confidence in President Jay Hartzell. “He has violated our trust,” the letter stated. “The University is no longer a safe and welcoming place.”

The Faculty Council also weighed in. The Faculty Council is a group of about four dozen professors elected by staff and instructors from the colleges and schools within UT. Andrea Gore, the 22-year professor at the School of Pharmacy, chaired the council from 2015-2016. Gore said that historically it has partnered with administrators to jointly make decisions on hiring and policy, a practice known as shared governance.

“We talk to them: 'Here’s what’s on our mind,’” Gore said. “They listen to us. We’ve been able to talk about important and often difficult things, and we’ve also always been involved in choosing the leaders of the university.”

The Faculty Council condemned the DEI firings as politically motivated. It passed a resolution asking the administration why it invited state troopers onto campus. It demanded UT grant amnesty to the arrested students. But some, like Gore, think the Council’s responses were too restrained.

Gore believes the restraint can be traced back to an erosion in shared governance that began with Jay Hartzell’s appointment as president by the Board of Regents in 2020. “There was no faculty input or an opportunity for due diligence,” Gore said of the appointment. “It’s unlikely the outcome would have been different, but the process of exclusion set a dangerous precedent.”



The professors we spoke with said that since Hartzell’s appointment there have been a number of poorly explained retirements and replacements in top leadership positions, from provost – basically a second-in-command to the president – to vice presidents and deans.

Soncia Reagins-Lilly resigned as the head of student affairs in January, after the DEI ban went into effect. Reagins-Lilly is one of three Black VPs who have left UT since Hartzell assumed office. No Black VPs remain.

Emily Reagan, VP of marketing and communications, resigned in August, after more than 20 communications staffers were laid off in a reorganization which Reagan described as necessary for the university to focus on “managing reputational issues and crises” – a seeming reference to negative publicity from the Palestinian protests.

Provost Sharon Wood also resigned in August, with just a week’s notice. Resignations in positions like provost are typically announced a year in advance, our sources told us, to let faculty weigh in on a replacement and provide time for a smooth transition. The professors assume that Wood was pressured into resigning and that her decision to leave immediately was a form of protest. Her departure came days after she and Hartzell were named as defendants in a lawsuit by Ammer Qaddumi.

Eve Stephens, UT’s chief of police, resigned in September. Stephens had been sworn in just a year earlier following a highly successful 24-year career at the Austin Police Department. A to Z Sports reporter Brian Davis, a former UT communications employee, reported that Stephens was pressured into resigning. Faculty speculate that her response to the Palestinian protests was not aggressive enough for UT administrators.

But for professors like Karma Chávez, the most troubling change has been that of Ann Stevens, who was told in September that she would not be allowed to serve a second term as dean of the College of Liberal Arts. COLA is the heart of UT-Austin, as liberal arts programs are at universities throughout the world. It is UT’s largest college, with 800 faculty serving a fifth of the university’s students. Its professors teach subjects that right-wingers like Chris Rufo champion – economics, English literature, European history – and it houses the centers and study programs they despise – African diaspora studies, LGBTQ studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women’s studies, Native American and Indigenous studies.

Stevens is one of UT’s most highly regarded leaders. “She is a very, very, very successful dean,” Chávez said. “She’s someone that I disagreed with on the regular – we have locked horns in all sorts of ways. But she’s also a very principled leader, and I really respected her work as dean. And I think all of the department chairs felt that way.”

Stevens’ firing – which is what it’s being called – was announced by letter, something that professors say is unprecedented. Her response was equally unprecedented. Stevens explained in an email to faculty that Hartzell told her she “did not have a grand enough vision for the college,” something she disputed. Despite her restrained language and refusal to talk to the press, faculty view Stevens’ message as a protest against the university’s top-down decision making.

The recent firings and resignations have professors wondering if Texas’ right-wing politicians are dictating to Hartzell who to hire and fire. “Our understanding is basically there’s no firewall between Jay Hartzell and the governor and the chancellors,” said Craig Campbell, an anthropology professor who’s taught at UT for 15 years. “I think he’s on board with them. I think he sees himself as a part of that mission.”

As resignations and replacements have increased, a less-understood personnel change has occurred at UT’s Legal Affairs division, which handles litigation for the university and consults on policy. Since 2018, Legal Affairs has hired the majority of its attorneys straight out of the office of Attorney General Ken Paxton, regarded as the most corrupt and partisan AG in the nation.

The change began with Jim Davis, who worked as Paxton’s deputy for three years before taking the helm of Legal Affairs in 2018. Last year, Davis was promoted to senior vice president and chief operating officer, one of the top positions in the university. Amanda Cochran-McCall, who served Paxton for four years, rising to become his chief of general litigation, replaced Davis at Legal Affairs. Cochran-McCall’s second-in-command, Adam Biggs, previously worked as Paxton’s deputy for over four years. Of the 10 other employees featured on UT’s Legal Affairs web page, internet searches reveal that at least six formerly worked for Paxton.

The Trouble With Tenure

The DEI ban was one of three attacks on Texas public universities in the 2023 legislative session. Another, SB 16, was essentially a gag order prohibiting professors from teaching critical race theory. It died in the House of Representatives. The third attack, SB 18, was originally a bill to end tenure for professors at Texas universities. The version of SB 18 that got passed didn’t abolish tenure but expanded the grounds for which tenured faculty can be fired.

Tenure is essentially a lifetime appointment for a professor. It protects those who achieve it from being fired except for cause. It was introduced in U.S. universities in the early 1900s and is considered integral to academic freedom, because it allows professors to teach controversial subjects and pursue controversial research without fear of losing their jobs.

“In an ideal world, every job would have tenure attached to it, so that you were hard to fire as long as you’re doing your job,” Karma Chávez said. “In the university context, tenure means you can chase the data wherever it takes you, you can chase the primary sources wherever that takes you. You don’t have to worry about being pressured by political forces, whether that’s your department chair, your university president, or your governor.”

Research is the raw material that, when properly processed, produces facts, knowledge. The creation and transmission of knowledge is the reason universities exist. Some research creates money, the professors we spoke with said, and some creates controversy. But even controversial research is useful. For example, after each legislative session, researchers collect data on newly enacted laws – in Texas, that could be bans on abortion, or books, or health care for trans kids – to find how the laws have impacted people’s lives. The facts that are gathered hopefully inform future policymaking.

Of course, some of that research, when processed and taught, offends Republicans. “A lot of the stuff that I teach is inherently controversial,” Chávez told us, “and it inherently ruptures what students have been taught to think about themselves, about their state, about U.S. history. But I teach from peer-reviewed scholarship. I also teach thought pieces that I may or may not agree with, but that are designed to get students thinking. And with tenure, I don’t worry that some student who disagrees with the politics of a particular piece is going to be able to come after my job. So, really, tenure is integral to being able to do teaching and researching.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has repeatedly criticized tenure. In announcing the passage of SB 18 in 2023, he wrote that tenured Texas professors “feel immune to oversight from the legislature” and “hide behind their tenure to continue blatantly advancing their agenda.” This year, Patrick has once again instructed Republicans to study the issue. With DEI already outlawed and critical race theory not getting as much attention as in the past, some professors believe Republicans will try to end tenure in this year’s legislative session.

Lauren Gutterman, an associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, doubts that UT’s leaders will be able to effectively push back against any such attack. Gutterman lost faith in the administration’s lobbying efforts in 2023, as Republicans prepared to pass the DEI ban. “SB 16, 17, and 18 were so upsetting, so frightening, and a direct attack on us,” Gutterman said. “And I felt like the message that we were getting from the administration was, 'We have it under control and everything’s gonna be fine.’ That’s part of the reason a lot of faculty chose not to really freak out about this legislation. And the president’s silence, his refusal to communicate directly with us, was really distressing.”

Andrea Gore warns that any changes to tenure will hurt the recruitment of first-class instructors, saying she has personally heard of two candidates who turned down job offers from UT in the last year because of the changes Texas Republicans have already made to tenure, which are minor compared with what they may do in 2025.

“It will take some time to see that we’re not getting the top scholars anymore,” Gore said. “Maybe we’re getting the next tier of scholars who are willing to accept working someplace where there’s a little bit more risk, because maybe they don’t have as many options. It’s not only the scholars who are in the area of ethnic studies. We’re also going to lose the scholars who are going to the business school or the law school or the engineering school.”

Gore said that threats to tenure have already begun to lower the quality of teaching, by persuading professors to skip controversial subjects. “I have a colleague who teaches a course that doesn’t sound very controversial at all, and she said, 'I’m not going to teach these lectures anymore, because I’m wondering if they’re going to trigger some sort of reaction that is going to cause somebody to report me.’ It’s shades of the McCarthy era.”

School of Civic Leadership

“There’s lots of rumors swirling at the moment because people are scared and we have a total lack of communication from the president,” Lauren Gutterman told us. “It just breeds all these different theories.”

One of the theories we heard is that the Legislature will seek to carve up the College of Liberal Arts in the upcoming session, starve some of its programs of funding, and feed others to the Red McCombs School of Business and its School of Civic Leadership.

The School of Civic Leadership is brand-new; it began offering classes this semester. The college was created in May of 2023 to house the Civitas Institute, which, in turn, was created the year before at the behest of Dan Patrick and several far-right billionaires, including Robert Rowling and Harlan Crow, the Dallas businessman who has helped corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Patrick and others have said the School of Civic Leadership is necessary to remedy UT’s lack of “intellectual diversity” – that is, its lack of right-wing professors and programs. It’s a claim conservatives are making across the country, one that has led to the creation of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the James Madison Program at Princeton, and the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, among others.

Faculty protested the creation of the new school, arguing that it violates the core tenets of academia by allowing state lawmakers and rich donors to spew their political agendas onto the campus. They say that UT’s hierarchy of instruction – its studies programs, which become institutes, which become departments, which become schools and colleges – is built from the ground up by professors, course by course, and represents identifiable disciplines and bodies of research. In other words, the schools are there for a reason. They aren’t top-down enterprises created in one legislative biennium by politicians and oligarchs.

The new dean of the School of Civic Leadership, Justin Dyer, denies the school is politically motivated and stresses it will focus on the country’s founding principles and the importance of free enterprise. A recent UT press release said it will teach the “intellectual inheritance of Western Civilization.”

“This is the way they frame it to make it palatable,” Campbell said, “which is to say, 'These are the classics. These are the great traditions. What can anyone say about Plato or Aristotle? These great thinkers have worked for us, so we need to hear them.’ That’s the bullshit candy coating. But the company they keep is damning. I mean, they’ve got John Yoo as a fellow. They’re in bed with some really fucking hideous, hideous people.”

Yoo is notorious as the attorney who wrote the so-called “Torture Memos” in 2002, providing the George W. Bush administration legal cover to torture people captured in Afghanistan and Iraq during the War on Terror. Other notorious figures associated with the School of Civic Leadership include Richard Hanania, who was employed by the school’s Salem Center in 2022 but was quietly let go after reports surfaced that he’d written extensively for white supremacist groups under a pen name. Chris Rufo is another controversial figure connected to Salem. Professor Mark Regnerus, a senior scholar at Salem, has published research arguing that gay people make poor parents. (Following one of Regnerus’ reports, 200 sociologists signed a letter questioning the integrity of the peer review process for his paper.)

Regnerus also teaches at UT’s school of sociology, which is part of the College of Liberal Arts. The faculty we spoke with say this is another problem with the School of Civic Leadership – it is redundant and will reduce funding for other schools which teach the same subjects, like economics, philosophy, and pretty much anything associated with “Western Civilization.”

“We have a classics department,” Karma Chávez said of COLA. “We have a government department that teaches classical liberalism, that teaches all of the Founding Fathers. We have a Thomas Jefferson Center. That material is already taught widely on this campus. And in fact, the original Civitas Institute was basically all populated by College of Liberal Arts faculty. Now the school is hiring its own folks, but many of them could easily be hired into the College of Liberal Arts.”

Chávez, paradoxically, teaches Chris Rufo’s material. “I think it’s important for students to see where this stuff is coming from,” she said. “If you look at Rufo’s reports, they don’t cite any peer-reviewed academic scholarship. They cite 'institute reports,’ they cite news articles, they cite himself, over and over. How’s that scholarship? How is anyone to take that seriously? So, sure, you want to bring in a controversial speaker as a conversation piece – okay. But what is the motivation behind that? Rufo has no credentials whatsoever. He is a pure ideologue. How is that a part of a university which is invested in the pursuit of knowledge?”

Campbell said it’s true there are few far-right professors at UT or on college campuses anywhere, but the idea that most are progressive activists is mistaken because professors are trained to think in more complex terms than right versus left and many are politically agnostic. Campbell added that the right’s complaint about intellectual diversity is a case of projection.

“Intellectual diversity is essentially a fake problem that is used to create cover for ideologically committed, far-right faculty who are not intellectually honest,” he said. “Universities are a pain for extremist governments, because they’re full of people who are committed to careful exploration of the world and how things work and function – stuff that doesn’t jibe with the fantasies the politicians are trying to create or the policies they want to enact.”

The End Game

Campbell has been hearing threats against the university by state Republicans ever since he arrived on campus in 2009. But this is the worst it’s ever felt.

“I remember my colleagues, the older colleagues, were always like, 'They rattle their sabers and then it all sort of works out.’ But it’s like boiling frogs. It’s been this slow degradation of programs and funding. The faculty is very unhappy, suspicious, looking to get out, disinvesting. It makes it a terrible environment. We’re not program-building, we’re just constantly trying to keep people calm.”

Campbell said the anthropology department has lost several of its top scholars in the last two years and others want to leave. But tenure has been ebbing across the country, while universities continue to churn out Ph.D.s. So the job market is tight. Tenure-track positions at good universities can attract hundreds of applicants. It’s not as easy to leave as it once was.

For faculty who aren’t leaving, it should be a simple decision to get politically active, to speak out against the attacks, even if they aren’t directly affected by them. But there are good reasons not to. Some younger professors have crushing student debt and can’t afford to endanger their jobs. Others want to protect the research they’re doing or the programs they’ve built. Many aren’t from Texas and aren’t invested. For those who don’t already have tenure it’s very risky to speak out.

And then there are the professors who love the university and love their students. And among them are some, like Lauren Gutterman, who couldn’t fade into the background if they wanted to.

“I don’t feel that I have the luxury of retreating because I do queer history, right?” Gutterman said. “And so it doesn’t matter if I’m loud or not, or visible or not. I will always be a target. So I don’t think I have anything to gain from silence.”

Gutterman is planning to once again testify at committee hearings in the Capitol. She hopes to have colleagues at her side. “We now know what SB 17 did to our campus, so we understand how this incredibly broad and vague legislation can enact real harm on our students and our campus and our peers,” she said. “So I hope and I expect that more people will be mobilized. But at the same time, fear is really powerful and I’m sure that some people will continue to feel that the best way to protect themselves is to be quiet.”

Reese told us she will testify before lawmakers this session and believes other faculty will too. “We’re trying to be in solidarity and community with as many people as possible, even if we don’t all think the same and don’t all have the same objectives or approaches to activism. At some point, at the heart of things, it’s like, 'Do I believe that what is happening is unjust? And if the answer is yes, then people are like, 'We just have to do something about it.’”

The professors we spoke with are some of the top scholars at UT. They’ve published influential papers in peer-reviewed journals, they speak at international conferences, they have secured multimillion-dollar grants for research, they are leaders in their respective departments. They have built careers and programs here and don’t want to abandon what they’ve created. “Take Karma [Chávez], you know?” Campbell said. “She’s been doing so much institution-building. So the idea that you’re gonna let the state take this over, they can fuck right off, you know?”

This fall, Chávez is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Latina/o studies department that she has put together piece by piece. The department is regarded as one of the best of its kind, if not the best, in the nation. With its recognized success, Chávez could find a job elsewhere but wants to stay in Texas. “I love it here,” she said. “I want to build my life here. I think there’s so much history and culture here. And the politics are hard, but I’m learning to live with that. And the weather, I actually love. People shit on Texas all the time, but I’m definitely not one of those.”

Chávez said her father was a union worker and she thinks of the current struggle as a labor battle. As a queer person of mixed race and a feminist, she believes she has to fight. “People like me are explicitly or implicitly the targets of a lot of these attacks, and the kind of research and teaching that I do is explicitly at the center of this. So I feel it’s important to fight. But I also feel like it starts here, and then it’s going to go elsewhere. And so it’s not just a personal investment. It’s a bigger investment into this thing called Higher Education.”

Chávez has been quoted in other publications frequently over the last couple of years. She said she speaks out because other professors won’t. “Somebody has to talk about what’s happening. Somebody has to be willing to say it out loud and not worry so much about what it’s going to mean for their job,” she said. “I’ve decided that I’ll be one of those people.”

Book Announcement: "Achieving Equal Educational Opportunity for Students of Color," by Dr. Richard R. Valencia

Friends:

So glad to see my colleague, Dr. Richard Valencia, coming out with this book titled Achieving Equal Educational Opportunity for Students of Color published by Teachers College Press. Hot off the press.

No matter what happens in politics, structural racism, forces of exclusion, and educational opportunity drive educational outcomes in America. I look forward to reading it.

-Angela Valenzuela