Fighting UT Austin’s Crackdowns on Protests and DEI

BY KARMA R. CHÁVEZ AND LAUREN GUTTERMAN

This publish is a part of a weblog collection, organized by Annelise Orleck, that can concentrate on current crackdowns on protests at US faculty and college campuses towards Israel’s conflict on Gaza. You may learn the primary publish and an introduction to the collection right here.

Like many campuses through the spring of 2024, the College of Texas at Austin was the location of essential scholar, school, and group pro-Palestine protests and the location of intense police and administrative crackdowns. Not like many different giant campuses although, ours additionally transpired the identical semester that Texas S.B. 17—a legislation that banned variety, fairness, and inclusion (DEI) workplaces, officers, and issues in hiring—went into impact. The confluence of those two political phenomena left these of us invested in free speech, educational freedom, shared governance, and due course of reeling. However it additionally presents essential classes for our battles going ahead.

Along with our native AAUP chapter, our campus is house to a student-led Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) and the newly fashioned College and Employees for Justice in Palestine (FSJP), each affiliated with nationwide organizations. Whereas PSC has at all times led academic and occasional protest occasions on campus, its exercise understandably ramped up following the occasions of October 7, 2023. FSJP fashioned later within the fall with a mission to supply academic actions, maintain the administration accountable, and, most significantly, to assist the scholars in PSC.

Inside only a few days of October 7, UT Austin’s administration confirmed its unwillingness to assist Palestinian college students and their allies. This was demonstrated after males claiming to have been members of the Israeli Protection Forces accosted and threatened college students attending an on-campus PSC-led teach-in on October 12. Regardless of video proof of the occasion, the college refused to reply. Just a few weeks later two instructing assistants had been requested by college students of their social work class on psychological well being to handle the psychological well being wants of Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab college students. As we’ve written elsewhere, when the TAs despatched a professor-approved message to the category, a scholar complained, and in lower than forty-eight hours, the TAs had been faraway from their instructing posts and instructed they’d not be reappointed as TAs the next semester. The UT Austin AAUP chapter’s leaders intervened, citing procedural considerations. College students kicked off a spherical of protests. 4 college students had been disciplined after they delivered a letter to Dean Allan Cole, who had dismissed the TAs. Over the course of some months, the college rejected the TAs’ formal grievances and upheld their dismissal.

In each these incidents through the fall of 2023, members of the AAUP chapter and FSJP expressed concern, together with to the president, concerning the standing of free speech, educational freedom, and due course of on the college. Moreover, on condition that the college had issued two statements expressing assist for Jewish college students and concern about antisemitism whereas neglecting to exhibit the identical concern for Palestinians, we had particular fear concerning the studying circumstances for Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim college students on campus.

The spring started with PSC- and FSJP-led protests, teach-ins, and different academic occasions, usually carried out in partnership with a big selection of coalitional companions from the campus and group. Whereas the college continued to refuse to handle the harassment on October 12, PSC and its allies continued to construct momentum. However on March 27, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an government order requiring universities and schools to evaluate and replace their free speech insurance policies and guarantee teams like PSC are disciplined, probably to the purpose of expulsion, for violating them. As well as, Abbott required establishments of upper training to incorporate of their free speech insurance policies the state’s definition of antisemitism, which conflates critiques of Zionism with antisemitism. The direct risk to PSC, which is explicitly not antisemitic, was particularly worrying to AAUP, FSJP, and our allies.

Whereas pro-Palestinian repression on campus was rising, the college’s leaders had been taking steps to adjust to the state’s new anti-DEI legislation, which went into impact on January 1, 2024. They dismantled packages and companies for marginalized college students throughout campus and moved employees members into completely different positions unrelated to DEI. Regardless of these important institutional modifications, on April 2, greater than sixty UT Austin employees who had formally held DEI positions acquired discover that they had been fired. The overwhelming majority of these receiving pink slips had been folks of shade. The college’s preliminary announcement of the firings provided imprecise explanations associated to redundancies, however President Jay Hartzell later instructed school that the firings had been made in response to exterior political stress. Emboldened by the state authorities, Hartzell didn’t again down on his resolution regardless of repeated makes an attempt to ask for accountability.

In the meantime the nationwide motion for Palestine on campuses was in full swing, and in the course of April different universities like Columbia would announce the Fashionable College for Gaza, which on many campuses manifested in college students making encampments in public areas on campus. UT’s PSC didn’t point out an encampment in its announcement of its April 24 occasion. It referred to as for a walkout of sophistication, adopted by a gathering on the south garden to incorporate teach-ins, research breaks, inventive actions, and pizza. Nevertheless, the evening earlier than UT’s Fashionable College was set to launch, officers with the Workplace of the Dean of College students reached out to the registered scholar group to allow them to know that their occasion the following day can be canceled. Within the justification, officers wrote that UT “won’t enable this campus to be ‘taken’ and protestors to derail our mission in ways in which teams affiliated together with your nationwide group have achieved elsewhere.”

Nonetheless, on April 24 round 11:30 a.m., scholar organizers and protesters convened as deliberate, and inside minutes they had been surrounded by state troopers on the Speedway Mall. As proven in intensive video proof, police trapped college students into an space with no exits. Pupil organizers may be seen in movies explaining to police that they’re attempting to adjust to the dispersal order and asserting to protesters that they should go away. However arrests began virtually instantly with out provocation. By the tip of the day fifty-seven folks had been arrested, and numerous others had been traumatized by the expertise.

Virtually instantly, the AAUP chapter’s leaders started drafting a petition of no confidence in President Hartzell. The cumulative results of the intensive use of police pressure and arrests in addition to the unjust firings of DEI employees had been an excessive amount of. FSJP organized an emergency protest for April 25 to name consideration to the injustices of the day prior to this and to maintain all eyes on Gaza, which was the unique function of launching a Fashionable College on our campus.

Within the subsequent days, greater than 650 school signed the petition of no confidence, however UT’s school council refused to place the matter up for a proper vote. Following the occasions of April 24, the college issued PSC a short lived suspension of its standing as a registered scholar group. Whereas supporters of the coed motion on campus and locally debated the most effective methods for response, two occasions had been scheduled for April 29. The primary was a FSJP-organized vigil to honor Palestinian lecturers killed in Israeli’s “scholasticide” in Gaza, a time period referring to Israel’s full destruction of academic infrastructure, together with destroying universities and slaughtering tons of of professors and college students. For an hour within the sizzling Texas solar, some forty school stood silently in regalia, holding the title of a murdered Palestinian colleague. College students handed out pamphlets explaining the that means of our vigil to passersby. Instantly after, the Texas State Staff Union rallied to maintain consideration on the fired former DEI employees. As that rally was ending, a gaggle of individuals chanted and inspired attendees to affix them on the South Garden of campus.

Inside minutes of their arrival on the garden, state troopers on bikes descended on campus. PSC had not organized this protest, and a number of other of its members sat with FSJP members on the sidelines watching the aggressive show of policing unfold as soon as once more. By the tip of the day, seventy-nine folks had been arrested. Remaining protesters stayed late into the day, dealing with pepper spray and flash bombs, chanting “Who killed Uvalde? You killed Uvalde!” into the faces of the various police forces on campus.

UT’s president remained defiant. In a later assembly for the college council, he defended his actions and claimed he would militarize campus once more if the scenario, in his thoughts, warranted it. The college council refused to cross a decision demanding accountability and supporting the scholars. It will definitely handed a watered-down decision asking for explanations however, considerably, demanding amnesty for scholar protesters and campus group members. This is able to not occur. Within the meantime, fifty-one Republican members of the Texas State Home of Representatives despatched President Hartzell a signed letter, cc’ing the manager committee of the UT Austin AAUP, supporting him and telling us to resign.

Travis County Lawyer Delia Garza not solely dropped trespassing fees towards all of the protesters but in addition chastised the president for this misuse of state assets. Nonetheless, the college continued with disciplinary proceedings towards the arrested college students and issued a combative assertion attacking Garza. College organized to function advisers to the arrested college students throughout their disciplinary proceedings. Nevertheless, the college used an unprecedented course of purportedly to streamline the self-discipline. The Workplace of the Dean of College students required college students to answer a collection of doubtless incriminating questions supposedly meant to make college students mirror on their participation and apologize for it. This was particularly worrisome on condition that the county legal professional has two years to rethink and refile the felony fees. College students acquired punishments starting from probation to deferred suspension or outright suspension.

In the course of the summer season, as these proceedings unfolded, the college additionally rewrote its protest and free speech insurance policies, including a number of clauses that give administrative leaders better authority each to restrict expressive exercise and to forestall college students from congregating in varied areas on campus, amongst different questionable modifications that make it tougher to exhibit. Because the semester began, the dean of scholars introduced a brand new workplace, Occasion Readiness and Response, hiring a former police officer to helm it. Though mounted state troopers had been on campus October 7, 2024, in anticipation of occasions which will have transpired, the PSC deliberate a “research in” and a College students for a Democratic Society “communicate out” on the fountain went off with out incident. Regardless of a small police presence and surveillance from employees with the Workplace of the Dean of College students, the remainder of the week’s occasions went off with out incident.

UT Austin’s AAUP chapter and FSJP have a number of severe considerations about what has occurred to this point in 2024. Amongst them embody doubtlessly unconstitutional free speech insurance policies, insurance policies that severely affect the flexibility for Palestinians and their allies to have educational freedom and practices that recommend an extra disintegration of shared governance and due course of.

The occasions of 2024 additionally deliver to gentle a number of essential classes that needs to be taken very critically by the AAUP and allied organizations on campuses nationwide. It goes with out saying that Texas is a extra repressive state than many others by which our members could reside. Nonetheless, we concern that Texas is supposed to be the gold customary for reactionary college directors and right-wing state legislators. That is affirmed by the variety of states which have proposed anti-DEI laws and antisemitism and free speech insurance policies that mirror these adopted in Texas. That is additionally affirmed by the truth that regardless of the final political persuasion of a given campus, college directors across the nation are in dialog with each other and are adopting one another’s insurance policies and techniques.

An important lesson is that school should be organized to handle the grave threats dealing with our campuses. The content material of every chapter’s group should embody not less than the next:

1) a coordinated effort to assist college students (and school and employees) who face disciplinary proceedings or termination for his or her constitutionally protected actions or those that work (or labored) in jobs which are beneath risk because of bans on issues like DEI;

2) creating subcommittees tasked with turning into intimately accustomed to college insurance policies in order that school can shortly and precisely reply when modifications happen or when universities act in methods which may be in battle with present insurance policies;

3) sturdy academic actions on protest, free speech, educational freedom, due course of, and shared governance should be held all through campus in order that school perceive their rights and the rights of scholars and employees (our communities should be knowledgeable in order that the chilling impact doesn’t do the work that insurance policies in any other case would); and

4) important efforts to make sure that school don’t cower within the face of college repression. The refusal to cower should entail

persevering with to speak about college repression and its impacts on college students, school and employees and speaking to and organizing with college students (they’ll accuse us of indoctrinating college students whether or not we speak to them or not, so this is a chance to construct energy—plus, everyone knows we will’t even get college students to learn a syllabus!);
instructing precisely what we deem is related to show in any given class, even when it makes us and others uncomfortable; and
issuing statements and different paperwork into the general public file to ensure our discontent is thought.

It’s definitely unclear whether or not any of those actions will proper the present course of upper training. As states search to rewrite tenure legal guidelines (like Texas’s S.B. 18), which make it simpler to fireside school, our concern is warranted. However what the spring’s pro-Palestine protests and the outsized police response make abundantly clear is that on the subject of the values that we as AAUP members maintain expensive, and on the subject of the lives and livelihoods of our colleagues in Gaza, we’re within the battle of our lives. Something lower than a principled, full-frontal response will inevitably fail.

Karma R. Chávez and Lauren Gutterman are members of the UT Austin AAUP government committee and cofounders of UT Austin College and Employees for Justice in Palestine.