UT System nixes faculty senates, approves restrictions on campus protests

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The University of Texas System Board of Regents authorized campus presidents on Thursday to replace faculty senates with less independent versions of the bodies.

The decision is a turning point for the state’s largest university system that shifts academic and hiring decisions once left to faculty and university leaders into the hands of lawmakers and governor-appointed regents.

The move comes in response to a new state law requiring Texas universities to overhaul the faculty groups. But while other schools in the state have opted to reform existing bodies in collaboration with faculty, UT regents’ vote represents a hard reset in the relationship between faculty and their schools.

Regents also authorized major policy changes that will significantly limit free speech on campuses in response to pro-Palestinian protests last year.

The University of Texas at Austin has been the epicenter of clashes between state lawmakers and professors. In recent years, faculty have asserted their right to teach on issues of racial justice and condemned the former university president’s decision to involve police in responding to students peacefully protesting the Israel-Hamas war.

Those tensions helped lead to this year’s passage of two major higher ed laws that prompted the changes approved Thursday.

Senate Bill 37 requires regents to decide by Sept. 1 whether faculty senates — which advise university leaders on curricula, hiring and other academic matters — can continue to operate. The law caps the number of members a faculty senate can have at 60, allows university presidents to appoint up to half the members, and adds new transparency rules.

UT regents on Thursday authorized university presidents in the system to establish new advisory faculty groups to replace existing faculty senates. In a memo published in advance of the meeting, regents said they will “thoughtfully consider” whether to re-establish faculty senates under the new state law, but in the meantime, the new advisory faculty groups will perform their functions.

It is unclear how the new faculty advisory will look like, but the board said in the memo that they “may not consist solely of members of faculty senates or councils as they were constituted prior to Sept. 1.”

A university rule that predates SB 37 allowed UT-Austin’s Faculty Council to have 62 members or more elected by faculty, 20 of whom were at large and 40 from colleges and schools. Students, staff and administrators, including the university’s president, also served on the council, though staff and administrators could not vote. The council met every month, and its meetings were open to the public but not livestreamed.

Board Chair Kevin Eltife said before the vote on Thursday that deciding whether to re-establish faculty senates “is a responsibility this board takes very seriously.” He said some of its 14 institutions may have them and others may not.

“In the meantime, if there are issues the presidents wish to consult with faculty on, (this motion) will allow that to happen with appropriate notifications to and by the UT system,” he said.

Lorenzo Sadun, a UT-Austin math professor who has served on the faculty council off and on for nearly a decade, said he was “kind of angry” when he learned regents would not keep the council under SB 37. He said UT’s decision not to authorize faculty senates like other university systems have sends a troubling message.

“And the message I’m getting is that the tower doesn’t want to consult with the faculty. They want to tell the faculty what to do, and I think that’s sad,” he said.

Sadun said he worries about what will happen to the faculty council’s 25 committees, where most of the council’s work addressing the university’s needs took place. He served on the IT committee, which played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the university had to rapidly shift to online learning. He was also a member of the grievance committee, which he said helped set up an ombudsman’s office at the university and provided faculty a place to go if they felt they were being treated unfairly.

Breaking the partnership between administrators and faculty could have long-term consequences, he said.

“The university runs on faculty creativity, and if faculty aren't viewed as full partners in the endeavor, that’s going to suffer,” Sadum said.

The regents also approved on Thursday an update to its universities’ speech policies to comply with another state law passed earlier this year.

Senate Bill 2972 gives regents the power to designate which parts of campus are open to protests, replacing a previous law that automatically opened all common outdoor areas to protests unless they were unlawful or disruptive.

It also requires regents to adopt new policies at their universities banning demonstrations between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. and during the last two weeks of the semester if they interfere with campus operations. The policies must prohibit masking to conceal one’s identity, erecting encampments and lowering U.S. or Texas flags.

The new rules are largely in response to massive pro-Palestinian protests that erupted at UT-Austin and at other universities across the country last spring. UT-Austin and UT-Dallas presidents called police to respond to the peaceful protests, which arrested more than a hundred people.

Under UT-Austin’s revised speech policy, members of the public cannot protest, distribute leaflets or hold events on campus unless the university invites or sponsors them. Students, faculty and staff retain the right to do so in common outdoor areas as long as they are not disruptive and follow the university’s restrictions on time, manner and place. For example, the use of amplified sound in certain areas of campus now requires a reservation and is not permitted after 5 p.m. on weekdays.

The policy expands the authority of university officials when managing protests. It allows administrators to use their discretion in determining what constitutes a disruption to the campus operations.

The policy further states that “during periods of disruption…staff may ask an individual to briefly open a cooler, ice chest or other receptacle to allow a visual inspection for the presence of weapons or other prohibited items.” Staff must first obtain approval from the university’s lawyers, and if a person refuses to allow an inspection, they may be required to leave the area.

Finally, the new speech policy includes a definition of antisemitism that the Texas Legislature required universities to incorporate into their rules on harassment and discrimination.

The definition, taken from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, says antisemitism is “a certain perception of Jews that may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. The term includes rhetorical and physical acts of antisemitism directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals or their property or toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

UT-Austin’s revised speech policy states: “Any incitement of violence, incitement of imminent violation of law, harassment, property damage, disruption of a university activity, or any other violation of state or federal law or university policy that was committed because of antisemitism … will be subject to discipline, up to and including possible termination or expulsion.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has raised concerns about the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism, arguing that some of its examples treat criticisms of Israel as antisemitic and could chill protected political speech on campus.

The group has also expressed broader concerns about SB 2972’s chilling effect on protected speech.

FIRE said it is still reviewing individual institutions’ revised speech policies.

Other public university systems’ boards of regents have also used their quarterly meetings this month to decide how to respond to the new laws.

Like UT, Texas State regents opted on Aug. 8 to let their existing faculty senates lapse on Sept. 1 rather than authorize them with changes required by SB 37.

By contrast, regents at the University of North Texas and Texas Tech voted on Aug. 14 to keep their faculty senates, provided they are updated to comply with the law.

The University of Houston System’s Board of Regents was scheduled to meet at the same time as UT on Thursday. It wasn’t immediately clear what action, if any, it planned to take, but all its faculty senate bylaws have been updated to comply with SB 37, according to materials published in advance of the meeting.

Even though some systems are keeping their universities’ faculty senates, they will not look like they currently do.

Each system is also complying with SB 2972, but their approaches have differed. For example, the University of North Texas’ revised speech policy allows the public to protest, but only in designated areas. UT-Austin’s policy is stricter, barring the public from protesting on its campus entirely unless the university invites or sponsors them.

Texas A&M’s Board of Regents are scheduled to meet between Aug. 27-29, but its agenda has not been published yet. In an interview with The Texas Tribune last month, new chancellor Glenn Hegar suggested faculty senates will stay in schools across the system.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: University of North Texas, University of Texas System and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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