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As a law student at the University of Texas at Austin, Sam Jefferson worked in the school’s diversity office. Jefferson said he learned firsthand just how essential the offices are to the success of students from underrepresented groups.
Now it’s on the brink of being eliminated by a Texas bill that would bar public colleges from having diversity offices or officers.
“You’re talking about legislation that’s going to take away one of the only places that students can feel seen, heard, and acknowledged and helped,” said Jefferson, who just graduated.
Monday marks the end of a Texas legislative session in which higher ed played a starring role. Lawmakers made substantial investments in public higher ed, boosting funding for community colleges and creating an endowment to support emerging research universities. Yet many lawmakers also disparaged colleges’ diversity programs and tenure policies, leading to marathon hearings in which students, faculty, and alumni protested vehemently.
Over the weekend, Texas lawmakers passed final versions of Senate Bill 17, which would prohibit diversity offices starting in 2024, and SB 18, which would make changes in tenure. Both are sponsored by Sen. Charles Creighton, a Republican. The bills now await the signature of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.
A spokeswoman for the University of Texas Board of Regents didn’t respond to a request for comment. Texas colleges, like other institutions across the country, have generally declined to comment on pending legislation.
Proponents of banning DEI efforts say requiring students, faculty, and staff to sign diversity statements or participate in DEI programming produces a “chilling effect” on campus. “Many of these programs have been weaponized to compel speech instead of protecting free speech,” Creighton said in April. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Tenure elimination has been a key point of emphasis for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, who said the institution allows professors to “live inside a bubble” in a statement last month. “Over the past year, it has become abundantly clear that some tenured faculty at Texas universities feel immune to oversight from the legislature and their respective board of regents,” Patrick said.
The bills have undergone changes since being introduced in March. Senate Bill 18 originally proposed banning tenure entirely, and the Texas Senate endorsed that idea, but the drastic shift didn’t have traction in the House. Revisions in Senate Bill 17 carved out more exceptions that allow public colleges to describe efforts to serve diverse students if required by federal agencies or institutional accreditors.
Still, many students and faculty in Texas say that the legislation remains harmful — and that even the deliberations about banning tenure and DEI this spring were damaging to their campuses.
If Senate Bill 17 becomes law, diversity administrators will be out of a job in six months. Last week, one diversity officer announced her departure. Carol Sumner, vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Texas Tech University, will take a similar job at Northern Illinois University.
“It’s not just that these things will have an impact on student life,” Jefferson, the law graduate, said. “It’s that they already have.”
‘Our Larger Campus Family’
Banning DEI offices would affect not only students of color, but also veterans, LGBTQ+ students, and disabled students, four Texas students told The Chronicle.
“DEI isn’t just about enrollment,” said Jordan Nellums, a graduate student at UT-Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “It’s about OK, how can we make sure that this student group feels comfortable enough on this campus — that way they can become part of our larger campus family.”
Kat Williams, another UT-Austin grad student, said she waited for over 14 hours to speak against the diversity-office ban in April. “I didn’t really have 14 hours to waste that day, but it happened anyway,” Williams said.
Williams said she doesn’t believe diversity programs and policies make students feel uncomfortable speaking their minds in the classroom, as critics allege.
“At least in my experience as an instructor, that’s not the case whatsoever,” Williams said. “If somebody has an unpopular opinion, they still get voiced quite frequently.”
Alexander De Jesus-Colon, a senior at the University of Texas at Dallas, said he went to the campus’s Galerstein Gender Center as early as last year to discuss the situation on campus. He was told that the center was already preparing to shut down if the Texas Legislature voted to ban such offices.
Since then, he has become involved in organizing against the legislation with the group Texas Students for DEI. He said legislators have refused to hear student voices.
“Nobody wants to listen to us,” De Jesus-Colon said. “These legislators, they’re busy passing bills that they’re not even fully aware of the consequences of what they’re doing.”
At least 34 bills have been introduced in 20 states that would curb colleges’ DEI efforts, according to The Chronicle’s DEI Legislation Tracker.
For Jefferson, the legislation in Texas is reminiscent of strategies wielded by Florida legislators. This month, Florida became the first state in the country to bar public colleges from spending money on diversity efforts.
“The whole Texas-Florida competition to see who can battle ‘wokeness’ is hilarious,” Jefferson said. “It’s not about the schools — it’s about these political forums.”
Step Toward Eliminating Tenure
While some on campuses say the tenure bill could have dealt a worse blow to higher ed, others remain worried.
The final version, which would take effect in September if it becomes law, defines tenure in state law as “the entitlement of a faculty member of an institution of higher education to continue in the faculty member’s academic position unless dismissed by the institution for good.”
The legislation also articulates reasons that tenured professors could be fired, such as “professional incompetence” and “violating university policies,” which some faculty members see as vague. What’s more, they see requiring performance evaluations every six years as a stepping stone to eliminating tenure entirely.
The uncertainty around faculty-job protections is making life difficult for people like Daniel M. Brinks.
The chair of the government department at UT-Austin, Brinks has had eight different job candidates turn down offers and cite the state’s political environment as a factor, he said.
Brinks also said that junior faculty members are particularly worried about the future of tenure, while other professors have canceled upcoming courses because of the likelihood that they could come under scrutiny.
“That bill alone could essentially destroy the notion of a national-level research university,” Brinks said of the tenure bill.
Even though the legislation doesn’t ban tenure outright, Brinks said, many faculty members still fear that another bill is “right around the corner.”
“It signals both a general willingness to interfere with the internal governance of public universities and maybe even, more importantly, hostility to the things that we do and the way that we do them,” Brinks said.
Students are noticing those impacts, too. De Jesus-Colon said several professors have shared with him that they are preparing to face consequences for teaching topics that some Republican lawmakers don’t like.
Williams, who teaches a course on rhetoric that covers concepts including Indigenous liberation, the Black prophetic tradition, queer pride, and fatphobia, worries that her class material could become a target.
The bill banning diversity efforts states that it doesn’t apply to course instruction or research. But in recent months, public-college leaders have often played it safe in political climates that appear hostile toward courses about race and gender — directing professors to, for instance, “proceed cautiously” if teaching about reproductive health.
Until she receives an order or instruction from a supervisor, chair, or dean, Williams said, she doesn’t plan to stop teaching the course because her students enjoy learning the material. The few that don’t, Williams noted, “still say what’s on their mind.”
Should she be directed to stop or change her mode of instruction, Williams said, she isn’t sure how she would respond.
“What would I even teach at that point?” Williams said. “If they can’t learn that at a public institution, where are they supposed to go?”
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