AAUP National
by Irene Mulvey
February 19, 2022
In a Friday, February 18, press conference, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick pledged to destroy academic tenure in public higher education in the state, using a recently passed resolution by the UT Austin Faculty Council affirming academic freedom in curricular decisions as pretext for the move. His speech was so littered with disingenuous political theater and blatant falsehoods that the AAUP feels compelled to respond.
Patrick put forth a straw man definition of critical race theory to demonstrate his support for a movement that seeks to maintain white supremacist ideology in an increasingly multi-racial democracy. To be clear, the premise of Patrick’s argument—his description of CRT—is glaringly wrong. His solution—to abolish tenure—reveals his wider purpose: to silence critics and censor honest discussions about race and racism in classrooms. The resulting damage to the reputation of the UT system as well as to the recruitment and retention of faculty and students in the state, if Patrick's threat is fullfilled, will be devastating.