In recent years, the Republican leadership of Texashas waged a sort of war of wordsagainst public education, whether it be grade school or college. Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick have been most vocal with their views that too many schools have “gone woke.”
Since Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 17, a bill that banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts on state-funded college campuses following the last legislative session in 2023, that war has only grown. The campus protests of 2024 ignited by the Hamas-Israeli war added fuel to the fire for the politicians who have viewed pro-Palestine demonstrations as antisemitic activities.
In the current session taking place in Austin, a bill aims to continue the conservative-led battle. Senate Bill 1489, authored by Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston, would empower university administrators and governor-appointed regents with more authority over the curriculum taught at Texas universities, which higher-ed experts fear will discourage academic freedom and open discussion.
SB 1489 proposes an amendment to the Texas Education Code which would make it so that “only the governing board of an institution of higher education may establish or authorize the establishment of a faculty [senate],” and that the scope of the senates would be limited to exclusively an advisory group that may not “take action on behalf of the institution, including approving personnel action or conducting an investigation.”
The bill states that the goal of higher education is to transmit culture, extend knowledge and protect intellectual exploration. Universities that fail to adhere to the state’s new standards of what these terms mean would have their senates dissolved by October 2025 if this bill passes.
The Observer reached out to Bettencourt’s office for additional comment, but they did not respond to our inquiry.
Shared governance is the widely recognized university standard in place since the 1940s that faculty and administrators should work together to effectively make decisions and lead their institutions collaboratively while adhering to democratic principles. We spoke to a number of university faculty members who made clear they were speaking to us about their views as individuals and not as official representatives of their respective schools.
Joseph Valesco, president of the Texas Council of Faculty Senates and communications professor at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, said that shared governance allows universities to pull from a valuable base of expert advice at no cost to the school while allowing these faculty experts to have a voice in the direction of their institutions.
Teresa Klein is a psychology professor at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and the vice president of the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), said that the voice of faculty is valuable because it is the professors and researchers themselves who interact with the student body on a day-to-day basis. This c onstant interaction allows them to make decisions that improve student learning outcomes.
“Faculty may not be the experts on keeping the lights on and fundraising, but when it comes to our students and our subjects, we are the experts and our voices can and have been used to better universities,” Klein said.
Valesco added that the primary effect of SB 1489 would be the concentration of authority in the state and the campus administrators that directly interact with it and are in some cases appointed by them, as seen in the case of university regents, who are in most cases appointed by the governor. As far as he sees it, such centralization could stifle faculty discourse out of concerns for job safety.
Ravi Prakash, a computer science professor at University of Texas at Dallas who has served on his faculty senate for 20 years across multiple elected terms, said the proposals within the bill seem to be targeting a threat that does not exist. Senates already act as advisory bodies, and the bulk of a senate’s work is bureaucratic deliberation instead of bombastic politics.
Prakash said that nearly every concern the bill raises has been addressed for years within the established rules of order used by academic senates.
“I have a feeling that the assumptions being made by the people who are advancing this bill about how faculty senates operate are based on information that is perhaps not complete,” he said.
Prakash said that the top Texas schools attract expert talent that has long been able to effectively advise universities at no extra cost, but high performing scholars, however, would likely be more hesitant to come to Texas schools if they believed the state wouldn’t allow them to express themselves or determine their own curriculum.
“If we are going to attract the leading experts in a given field and then tell them that what you get to teach or research will be decided by people who have no expertise in the field,” Prakash said. “Then the [professors] that we currently have will leave in a hurry because there are universities all over the world who’re trying to recruit them away from us … so this is self-defeating.”
Leonard Bright, a professor of public service and administration at A&M, said that universities work best if there is a partnership between the administration and the faculty, but SB 1489 actively erodes that partnership by attacking it.
“Society is going to lose when the freedom and independence of our experts is dependent on them walking in line with the opinions of those with political power,” Bright said.
Brian Evans, president of the Texas chapter of AAUP and engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that he found the vagueness of the document itself to be disturbing. He feels that it leaves the door open for extreme micromanagement, spontaneous dissolutions of the senate and administrative overreach. Evans said that the bill places faculty at the whims of administrators, who are prone to overcompliance when under state pressure because of their need for public state funds.
“[SB 1489] would greatly restrict the faculty senates ability to be a safeguard for free speech, for the freedom to learn, and the freedom to teach on campus,” Evans said.
Texas students are already expressing concern over this proposal. Alexander De Jesus-Colon, a UT Dallas political science master’s student and lead student organizer of Texas Students for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, said he fears this attack on one branch of shared governance is a warning of increased attacks against both students and faculty.
“If you start going after one branch of shared governance like the academic senate and try getting rid of their power, then what’s not to say that staff, for example, might be next,” Jesus-Colon said. “What about student governments, which are generally occupied in dealing with the issues left in the aftermath of [the DEI ban].”
Jesus-Colon said that SB 1489 does not exist in a vacuum and is heavily influenced by the Nov. 11, 2024, hearing on higher education that focused on faculty senates and governance and DEI. Jesus-Colon said he found the accusations made against academic senates concerning. The subcommittee repeatedly came back to the issue of votes of no confidence during their questioning of professors and university administrators on Nov. 11.
“They argue as if the [academic] senates are just trying to take control of the university away from administrators,” Jesus-Colon said. “During the November meeting we saw how the speakers advocated for faculty to be bent to the will of the state, with phrases like ’not a faculty senate, but the Texas senate’ being thrown around. It is indicative of a new era of policy where states want harder control of the ideals of their students through a deconstruction of academic freedom and regent control of the curriculum.”
Evans said that last legislative session, it was very clear that there was a wide range of topics that legislators wanted out of the classroom: everything from racism and equity to social justice and socioeconomic disparities. During this session, Evans said that it seems that legislators are attempting to go beyond just dictating acceptable topics, but instead prescribing what should be taught.
“If I compare the last session to this session, the last legislative session through the bills that passed, to me, expressed that the Legislature was telling professors to ‘shut up and teach,’” Evans said. “This, this time around, the bills that have been filed to me send a message to professors that they should ‘shut up and teach, and we’ll tell you what to teach.’”
