Dive Brief:
- Texas lawmakers are pressing ahead with efforts to ban faculty tenure and diversity offices in the state’s public colleges.
- This month, Texas Senate Republicans advanced bills that would prohibit tenure and diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, offices. The Senate’s Committee on Education approved the anti-tenure bill last week 9-3, with one lawmaker absent, while its Subcommittee on Higher Education moved the diversity office legislation to the full committee.
- The measures still must be voted on by the full Senate and the Texas House of Representatives.
Dive Insight:
As early as February 2022, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick began threatening to end faculty tenure for public colleges in the state, saying it shields poorly performing tenured professors from consequences for their actions. Patrick’s promise came after University of Texas at Austin professors publicly proclaimed their right to teach matters related to race and social justice.
Nationally, Republicans like Patrick have criticized instruction of such topics and DEI programs more broadly, arguing in part that they sow division and teach students to feel shame for racist acts they didn't perpetrate.
Texas is one of several states to introduce bills aiming to prohibit diversity efforts, as well as tenure.
The anti-tenure legislation would preserve tenure awarded to professors before Sept. 1 of this year, but would not allow public colleges to grant it after that date.
The bill to ban diversity offices is more expansive. It would block public institutions from using diversity statements in hiring, which asks candidates to explain their commitment to DEI initiatives. The legislation describes these statements as “ideological oaths.”
That legislation would also ban students, faculty and staff members from joining presidential search committees, which chafes against higher ed’s shared governance model. Traditionally, faculty play a major role in picking institutional chief executives.
The Texas wing of the American Association of University Professors has come out against both of these bills and is tracking several others it says would erode public education.
The Texas AAUP said the full Senate will likely vote on the anti-tenure bill this week.
