When Aspiring Authoritarians Seize Faculty Power

Over the past two years, a wave of legislation has targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at colleges across the nation. Since January 2023 The Chronicle has tracked anti-DEI legislation, finding changes at 213 campuses in 33 states. This has created a chaotic atmosphere at many colleges, because it is often unclear what activities are prohibited. Among the most common targets are diversity offices, mandatory diversity trainings, and the use of diversity statements in hiring.

In May 2023, as part of this wave, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 17, which prohibits colleges in Texas from maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion offices. The law also bans DEI trainings and statements and prohibits hiring practices that give preference to applicants on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. So, as a philosophy and religion professor at the University of North Texas, I was not surprised to receive word last December that our Pride Alliance chapter and the Multicultural Center had effectively been eliminated.

This year, though, things took a concerning turn. Over the summer, my department’s chapter of the Minorities and Philosophy organization was terminated. In September, the Faculty Senate was informed that our committees on the status of women, LGBT members, and faculty of color had been dissolved. We were neither informed nor consulted on this decision.

At an October Faculty Senate meeting, my concern turned into full-blown alarm when our chief compliance officer, Clay Simmons, told us that SB 17 applies to teaching and research. I was shocked, not only because this seemed like a clear breach of academic freedom, but also because SB 17 explicitly exempts “academic-course instruction” and “scholarly research.” Simmons relayed to us, however, that classroom lessons that touch DEI topics have to be appropriately “limited” and that research on such topics “must meet the definition of true research,” and the topic must “be essential to the research.”

This presentation sparked a wave of confusion among faculty across campus. The confusion is compounded when UNT’s online “SB 17 Decision Tool” gives one answer about whether an activity is compliant, and the Integrity and Compliance Office itself gives the opposite answer — a frequent occurrence. On top of this, our student paper recently broke the news that the College of Education had changed the titles and descriptions of dozens of courses. This was apparently in reaction to political pressure from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, although the university’s provost, Michael McPherson, stated at the November Faculty Senate meeting that the course changes were not politically motivated.

McPherson also contradicted what Simmons had said a month earlier, by saying that SB 17 does not apply to research and teaching. This has done little to calm nerves, however, especially since the Texas Legislature now has its eyes set on pushing anti-DEI legislation further by explicitly targeting classroom instruction. This is a red line that must not be crossed. Faculty in Texas and across the nation need to be ready to defend our core ideals of academic freedom and open inquiry.

What I have learned from the situation on my campus is that defending academic integrity and autonomy is a battle that will have to be waged on at least two fronts: one inside and one outside of the academy.

First, we have to resist overcompliance on the part of university administration and legal counsel. I sympathize with our administrators and lawyers — they are in an unenviable position. As Simmons told us, UNT is under “intense scrutiny” by the Legislature. Indeed, Texas legislators have publicly engaged in saber rattling, threatening “potential freezing of university funding and legal actions” for colleges that are noncompliant. As a result, as Simmons said, our legal counsel’s risk tolerance is “very low.” To lose state funding, he continued, would be an “existential issue.”

That is no excuse, however, for what the historian Timothy D. Snyder, in On Tyranny, calls “anticipatory obedience.” Snyder argues that a key lesson from 20th-century authoritarianism is “don’t hand over the power you have before you have to.” UNT’s overcompliance feels precisely like we are conceding our power — our academic authority over teaching and research — in advance to aspiring authoritarians in Austin, Tex. Our administration cheerfully assures us that we are not abandoning our values as an institution of higher education. The necessity of such assurances, though, should alarm any faculty who hear them. As we creep into self-censorship, that is precisely what we are doing: not speaking truth to power, but letting power tell us what truths we can pursue.

Faculty members cannot cede their authority to bureaucrats who overinterpret the law. Laws like SB 17 have already chilled conversations around race, class, and gender in the classroom and with fellow faculty. Students ask meekly, “Are you sure we are allowed to talk about this?” Faculty members worry about hidden cameras in the classroom. Fears and uncertainties around such laws are bad enough without preemptively sacrificing our power to freely and responsibly pursue ideas in the classroom and in our scholarship.

The second battle line is outside of the academy. We are under the same assault as other institutions that form what the writer Jonathan Rauch calls our “constitution of knowledge.” Such institutions include intelligence and other government agencies, courts, and the media, where the same acid is eating away at the autonomy necessary to pursue truth in an atmosphere free from political pressure. Indeed, alarming signs of anticipatory obedience are already taking shape in the media as the owners of both The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times prohibited their editorial boards from publishing endorsements of then presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Other countries, like Hungary and the Philippines, have seen authoritarian regimes arise through a process of media and academic “capture,” where independent sources of knowledge and critical thought are neutralized.

Are we going to let politicians decide what counts as “true research”? Are we going to allow them to tell us when a classroom activity is appropriately “limited”? We are drifting in that direction. UNT has an Orwellian “Compliance Trust Line,” where anyone can file an allegation that some university activity violates SB 17. Given their maximally broad interpretation of the law, legal counsel is likely to cancel the activity (they have already canceled over 100 activities on campus). I fear that soon we will see the entire university dancing to whatever tune the politicians call — abdicating any intellectual authority we still possess as long as our state funding keeps flowing.

The self-censoring climate that is taking shape reminds me of a summer I spent as a guest lecturer at a university in China. In every classroom there were cameras monitored by members of the Communist Party, and it was understood that some things should not be spoken. The irony, of course, is that our climate of silence has been brought to us by supposed champions of free speech. Bans on DEI like SB 17 have been spearheaded by the Manhattan Institute and other conservative think tanks. In their legislative roadmap, the Manhattan Institute states that the purpose of DEI bans is to ensure that colleges have “intellectual diversity” and “academic freedom and integrity” to pursue truth and knowledge “without being transformed into factories of ideological conformity.”

If those behind laws like SB 17 really meant what they say, then they should join me in resisting a climate of silence and self-censorship. Instead, Texas State Sen. Brandon Creighton — a Republican and the author of SB 17 — is pushing in the opposite direction. In a recent hearing, he argued that DEI bans should now target “curriculum and course content.” Given that conservative legislators nationwide have coordinated on such efforts, it’s reasonable to suspect a similar development could soon be coming to your state.

“DEI” is becoming a nebulous bogeyman that can stand in for any kind of idea that politicians don’t like. In true doublespeak, the champions of “academic freedom” are trying to turn colleges into “factories of ideological conformity.” We cannot let them get away with it.