| On Nov. 11, 2024, the Texas Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education will consider the following interim charges: |
| Higher Education – “Faculty Senates”: Review and analyze the structures and governance in higher education, focusing on the role of “faculty senates,” and like groups, in representing faculty interests to higher education institution administrations. Make recommendations to establish guidelines for the role and representation of faculty by “faculty senates,” and like groups, at higher education institutions in Texas. Stopping DEI to Strengthen the Texas Workforce: Examine programs and certificates at higher education institutions that maintain discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. Expose how these programs and their curriculum are damaging and not aligned with state workforce demands. Make recommendations for any needed reforms to ensure universities are appropriately educating students to meet workforce needs. |
In their public consideration of the above-mentioned charges for the forthcoming legislative session, the predominantly white majority of the Texas Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education proposes to continue undermining civil rights and academic freedom on Texas college campuses, carrying forward initiatives that were passed by a predominantly white majority of the legislature during the previous session.
Last session the Subcommittee undermined civil rights practices, along with time-honored principles of faculty professional self-regulation in Texas. These measures (SB 17 and SB 18) were advanced by the Subcommittee despite overwhelming public testimony in opposition, and despite strenuous objections from the floor. Here we go again.
The forthcoming attacks on faculty senates and programs that teach civil rights principles and practices will broadcast a clarion signal to self-respecting scholars across all fields of study that their professional self-regulation is not respected in Texas. And the Subcommittee’s work will confirm the stereotypical image of Texas before the world as a geography hostile to the scholarship or culture of civil rights, whether on public campuses or in private establishments.
It is difficult to overestimate the harmful effects of the Subcommittee’s proposed legislative assaults on faculty senates or civil rights, but you may be assured that the impact of your work upon campus life in Texas is already having chilling and demoralizing effects upon students, faculty and staff, which your forthcoming initiatives will inevitably exacerbate.
Martin Luther King Jr. argued in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that an unjust law “distorts the soul and damages the personality.” Damage and distortion are well underway on Texas college campuses as a result of SB 17 (anti civil rights); meanwhile, faculty are feeling unsafe to do much about it as a result of SB 18 (anti tenure) and because of well-publicized legislative threats to defund public institutions that dare to carry out proscribed civil rights practices. Going forward, your proposed attacks on faculty senates and civil rights education will only aggravate the ongoing damage and distortion.
King also argued in his “Letter” that an “unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because it did not have the unhampered right to do so.” The record of testimony, debates, and votes for SB 17 and SB 18 reflect a predominantly white bias in their creation, advancement, and promulgation. One well-respected authority in the civil rights community of Texas testified for the record that they were not invited to the table. Likewise, the proposed legislative charge against civil rights education cannot have been developed out of respect for minority rights.
It would be a much better thing if the Subcommittee would call for the repeal of last session’s SB 17 and SB 18 and terminate this year’s proposed assaults on faculty senates and civil rights. Historically speaking, SB 17 and SB 18 have marked the beginning of an era that should be ended at the earliest possible date.
Texas Civil Rights Review 