All the pieces’s greater in Texas — together with the ambition to remake increased training within the picture of the state legislature.
Over the previous a number of years, Texas has moved from griping about “woke campuses” to essentially restructuring the governance, curriculum, and tenure protections of its public universities. The cumulative impact just isn’t reform. It’s consolidation of energy. And the goal is the normal independence of upper training.
TL:DR — ship your youngsters to Texas public universities, and it’s like having the Texas legislature train your youngsters. In fact, by youngsters I imply adults who’ve a proper to a top-notch training, however I take advantage of the phrase youngsters as a result of Texas legislators appear hell-bent on infantilizing them.
Let’s stroll by what’s occurred.
The Finish Of DEI Places of work — Not That There Was DEI
In 2023, Texas enacted Senate Bill 17, which successfully dismantled range, fairness, and inclusion places of work at public universities. Establishments shuttered DEI divisions, laid off employees, and scrubbed web sites. College had been warned towards programming or hiring practices that is perhaps construed as DEI-adjacent.
Supporters framed the transfer as viewpoint neutrality. However eliminating administrative constructions that facilitate recruitment, retention, and compliance with civil rights norms doesn’t create neutrality. It shifts institutional energy away from skilled directors and towards political overseers.
And it’s not like DEI was an enormous factor in Texas ever. any publicly out there knowledge, college at Texas public universities (with uncommon exception, specifically HBCUs) are predominantly white, from elite colleges.
Tenure, On A Shorter Leash
In 2023, Texas additionally enacted laws concentrating on tenure at public universities. Whereas pitched as accountability reform, the legislation creates new layers of overview and authorizes governing boards — political appointees — to play a extra lively position in evaluating tenured college.
Tenure was by no means a lifetime assure of employment. It was (and is) a structural safety for educational freedom — the power to analysis, train, and communicate with out concern that political winds will decide your livelihood. In fact, it’s simple to focus on college by portray all of them as lazy communists hell-bent on destroying the system they’re part of (and but nonetheless someway being lazy).
Governing Boards As Political Devices
In 2025, the Texas Legislature enacted SB37, a chunk of laws that put core curriculum content material underneath political management whereas purging college governance.
Utilizing SB37 as a springboard, on the University of Texas System, the Texas A&M University System, the Texas Tech system, and the College of Houston, regents and directors have more and more asserted themselves in curriculum with out experience or basis.
Nevertheless it’s already been used to fireplace folks for concepts. Melissa McCoul, an A&M English professor who encountered an unfriendly pupil throughout a lesson in gender identification, was fired, regardless of a faculty panel ruling that she was wrongly fired. Prof. Thomas Alter was fired from Texas State College for allegedly inciting violence at *checks notes* a convention.
You may keep in mind that a number of professors throughout the nation had been fired for his or her private views about Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s TPUSA created a professor watchlist. Being on the watchlist usually comes with threats and harassment. And also you in all probability keep in mind that in Oklahoma a graduate pupil was relieved of teaching duties after giving zero factors to a pupil on an task. Briefly, it’s not simply Texas, however issues are greater in Texas.
Past firing folks for his or her private opinions and doing their jobs, Texas public universities have been working arduous to stifle and shrink applications and ideas Texas ultra-conservatives don’t like.
- College of Texas at Austin plans to “consolidate 4 departments, together with African and African Diaspora Research and Girls’s, Gender and Sexuality Research.”
- Texas Tech and Texas A&M have deployed curriculum limitations designed to forestall any discussion of race and gender. It closed its Women’s and Gender Studies applications. Martin Peterson, an A&M Philosophy professor, was advised to chop classes about Plato due to insurance policies limiting discussions of race and gender.
- College of Houston lately has issued “tips” (admin legislation professors — is it a tenet whether it is necessary?) that require college to conduct overview of their programs and certify a multilayered self-assessment. It consists of what is basically a pledge to not indoctrinate college students. Apparently a method UH Graduate College of Social Work has already proven its dedication to keep away from indoctrination is by canceling a course on “Confronting oppression and injustice.”
With respect to the College of Houston pledge, one can assume of some points. First, there’s no proof wherever that college are doing something of the type: educational literature doesn’t help the notion that college can indoctrinate anybody. Second, and extra problematic, is that the pledge exceeds what’s required by an already oppressive statute, SB37. By requiring the pledge, administration accuses the college of one thing that isn’t taking place and offers ammo to the folks with the flamethrowers. Third, administrative sycophantic overcompliance by itself simply reveals fealty: Please, take our lunch cash once more! Nevertheless it’s constitutionally problematic when it comes to how college and college students is perhaps silenced given the oppressive ambiance this can create. Fourth, genuflecting to legislators who aura farm by burning down increased training will solely result in worse oppression. To invoke Cory Doctorow, administration and regents are engaged within the enshittification of Texas universities.
No matter state college is capitulating for the sake of bonus factors, regents and directors clarify: anticipate legislative preferences, self-censor accordingly, and anticipate to be fired the minute a pupil makes you well-known. Some are intentionally complicit with the objectives of these holding the flame-throwers. Some are simply individuals who assume when you maintain giving the bully lunch cash you cease getting bullied.
Past that, the overall vibe being despatched to college is to only surrender. As a result of even making an attempt to show what you assume is required compels you to enter a rube-Goldbergesque overview course of, as this Texas Tech chart reveals:
The TL;DR of that chart: Surrender hope.
Regulation colleges have been (up to now) comparatively insulated, however I don’t anticipate that to proceed. Will programs disappear? Will there be dangers to instructing employment discrimination? Are some areas of Con Regulation harmful to show now, similar to Bostock or Skrmetti?
And does one assume it should simply contain gender? Historical past reveals us that highly effective folks usually come after professors. Bear in mind the try to fireplace Oklahoma professors who studied earthquakes associated to fracking? And up to date occasions in Louisiana associated to atmosphere and “Most cancers Alley” show the tremendous pressures professors could face.
Regulation College Accreditation
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that on this assault on increased training is one other potential lure for legislation colleges: The elimination of the ABA as an accrediting physique. After 4 a long time, the Texas Supreme Court issued an order that primarily eliminates the ABA as an accrediting physique for Texas legislation colleges. The ABA, as an apart, has been underneath assault by some, together with the FTC chair, for having “an extended historical past of leftist advocacy” (actually? — even the Antitrust Part?) in addition to assaults on the Trump-Vance administration (specifically, wanting a rule of legislation).
I refuse to be put in an ungainly place of defending a monopoly — one which, opposite to the FTC chair’s opinion, doesn’t have an extended historical past of leftist something (lookup National Lawyers Guild). However I’m involved that as states get on this bandwagon there will probably be 50 monopolies that create labor market limitations better than those who exist already within the authorized career. Regulation colleges searching for to adjust to 50 state necessities would possible be unable to take action.
Why This Issues Past Texas
Texas is dwelling to flagship establishments like the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, and the University of Houston. When a state as massive as Texas recalibrates its relationship to educational governance, the consequences ripple nationally. You see these results in Ohio, Oklahoma, Florida, and elsewhere. And never simply in “crimson” states.
It impacts college students. College recruitment turns into tougher. Out-of-state students hesitate to come back right here, even for conferences. Students already right here seek to leave. You may say “good!” Till you notice that the very people who find themselves destroying the system would be the first to ship their youngsters exterior the system they’re destroying.
If the aim is to make Texas universities extra politically compliant, these reforms are completely designed to create sycophantic, anti-intellectual establishments. However they exchange establishments that had been as soon as nice halls of studying, analysis, and educational development of society. Texas has taken a flamethrower and destroyed that, and regents and college directors appear all too comfortable to assist burn the place down.
There are First Modification points lurking right here, significantly if enforcement drifts into viewpoint discrimination or retaliation for protected speech. Public universities are state actors. They can’t punish college for constitutionally protected expression. Nevertheless it looks like what Texas public universities are doing is discovering methods to fireplace college by making them stroll tightropes of pledges and curriculum overview.
Conclusion: Goodbye, Good Universities
As soon as increased training turns into an enviornment for direct partisan restructuring, each change in political energy invitations one other structural overhaul. Universities stop to be stabilizing establishments and turn out to be spoils methods.
That’s not reform. That’s catastrophe. And I foresee the following Texas legislative session including extra gasoline to the fireplace.
PS: I didn’t listing the Texas legislators who’re getting their kicks tearing down increased training. Some have been employed by Texas universities! I don’t assist folks aura farm on the expense of the general public good.
LawProfBlawg is an nameless legislation professor. Observe him on X/Twitter/no matter (@lawprofblawg). He’s additionally on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads relying on his temper. E-mail him at [email protected]. The views of this weblog publish don’t signify the views of his employer, his employer’s authorities, his Dean, his colleagues, his household, or himself.
