After 11 years working as a college professor, Yasmiyn Irizarry reached a goal she dreamt about from the very beginning of her career: tenure.
Irizarry would be granted not only job security but also the academic freedom to teach and conduct research without fear of censorship as an associate professor of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas.
But on the same day that she celebrated the milestone last year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced his priorities for this legislative session — which included eliminating tenure in Texas moving forward.
Patrick has said doing so would support his goal to keep critical race theory out of Texas universities. Critical race theory is an academic framework that probes the way policies and laws uphold systemic racism. Just this week, the Senate, which Patrick oversees, gave its approval to a bill aimed at banning the theory from state universities and colleges.
“We are the ones who pay (faculty’s) salaries. Parents are the ones who pay tuition. Of course, we’re going to have a say in what the curriculum is,” Patrick said last year when announcing his intentions to end tenure.
So what was meant to be a celebratory day for Irizarry instead became tainted by concern about what Patrick’s goal could mean, if achieved, for educators and students in the state.
In Texas, about 7,668 faculty members were on tenure track in 2021, according to the most recent federal data available.
UT-Austin, Texas A&M University, the University of North Texas, Texas Tech University and Tarrant County College were among those with the highest numbers of faculty seeking tenure in the state that year.
Many Texas faculty are concerned about such a move. Some publicly opposed it during a March hearing. A bill that would end tenure advanced and is expected to come up for debate in the Senate soon.
The bill’s author, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said at the public hearing in March that the reputations of several Texas universities were damaged because of the actions of a few tenured faculty. The legislation’s goal is to end “the practice of guaranteed lifetime employment through tenure,” he said.
“There is more evidence that non-tenured professors are contributing a disproportionate level of instructional time compared to their tenure counterparts,” Creighton said. Professors who currently hold tenure would not be affected by the bill, he added.
Tenure and academic freedom
Tenure is awarded based on merit, and it generally means a professor’s contract can only be terminated under extreme circumstances, such as financial struggles or program discontinuation.
Kevin Cokley, a former UT-Austin professor, earned tenure almost 20 years ago based on his teaching and research in the field of African American psychology.
“You need to have the freedom to be able to pursue work without looking over your shoulders, wondering if you have offended someone or some sort of political entity,” Cokley said.
However, supporters of the bill say that academic freedom does not rely on tenure.
Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation who previously worked at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, told lawmakers at the hearing that he was unaware of a case involving free speech or academic freedom where tenure made the difference in protecting someone’s rights.
“Every faculty member at a public institution of higher education has full free speech and academic freedom rights, regardless of tenure,” Kissel added.
But several in academia say ending tenure would have a chilling effect on the quality of the state’s universities as well as academic freedom. They worry it would set a dangerous precedent about the state’s involvement in universities’ curriculum.
This past fall, Cokley started teaching at the University of Michigan. Although he wasn’t looking to leave, he was open to the idea because of Texas’ political climate and his concern about UT-Austin’s ability to retain talented faculty, specifically those who do work on race.
Both Cokley and Irizarry teach courses and conduct research on race and racism, which is often informed by critical race theory.
Concerns about what could be targeted next troubles Texas professors across disciplines.
“It would make it so that we would be at the whim of administrators if someone were to disagree with how we teach something or what we teach,” said Teresa Klein, a psychology professor at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi.
Klein teaches courses on childhood and lifespan development, which sometimes includes discussions of child abuse, domestic violence and other topics that some might consider controversial. Tenure protects her “if someone were to say ‘I don’t want you to talk about that.’”
Having grown up in Iowa and earning advanced degrees from Oklahoma universities, Klein is one of many professors who relocated their families to Texas to pursue academic careers.
“People are less likely to buy houses if they are not tenured,” she said.
UT-Dallas has worked toward the coveted Tier 1 status that denotes a top research university and currently has a campaign to attract some of the best faculty and students. UT-Dallas President Richard C. Benson worries that such a move to dial back tenure could complicate recruitment.
“Without being able to offer tenure or a pathway to tenure ... our employment offers, and those of other Texas public universities, will be at a severe competitive disadvantage,” Benson said in a statement.
Universities need to offer competitive packages to “lure top scholars from all over the world” to grow, which benefits students and the state, he added.
Hiring season across colleges usually is in full swing by the spring. Some North Texas faculty groups already are hearing hesitation from candidates.
Ravi Prakash, an associate professor of computer science at UT-Dallas, said some recruits are saying, “‘We hear that you guys are not gonna give us tenure, so why should we apply?’”
Prakash, who received tenure in 2001, serves as speaker for the university’s Academic Senate. He worries that as potential faculty members consider job offers, the mere idea that they could lose the chance to earn tenure will convince them to choose another state.
Thomas Lindsay, a research fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, testified in support of the bill in March. Lindsay used to be a tenured faculty at the University of Dallas, a private Catholic school. He also stressed that the bill does not undermine academic freedom.
“Too many of us academics, after getting tenure, enjoy something that tenure really was never intended to produce,” Lindsay said. “And that’s a virtual lifetime job meaning a lack of accountability, in our case to the taxpayers of Texas.”
Patrick did not respond to a request for comment.
A century-old standard
In 1915, college professors were criticized for teaching evolution as a Christian fundamentalist movement led several states to consider banning the topic from K-12 schools, along with a range of other then-controversial issues.
So the American Association of University Professors published a document establishing modern-day academic tenure. The need for such a designation, they wrote, was based on professors being dismissed for exploring ideas that were unpopular with the public.
The document states that “freedom and economic security, hence, tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society.”
At the time, “teaching around evolution was criticized for being antithetical to religion,” said Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. “People were being fired summarily for taking unpopular views on a whole range of issues.”
Not being able to speak freely and fearing termination “in the pursuit of truth” can undermine the faculty’s capacity to serve the public good, she said. Allowing legislators to control what can and cannot be taught in college classrooms could risk “eviscerating” higher education.
Some fear lawmakers from other states will follow Texas’ lead on questioning tenure. Such efforts would reduce the quality of higher education institutions and their faculty across the country, said Antonio Flores, president and CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.
This “has the potential to damage irreversibly the state of Texas,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with learning about the truth.”
Flores said he hopes lawmakers will reconsider such a move because it would discourage talent from coming to work in Texas under those conditions.
Irizarry, who was awarded tenure last year, is concerned about the future of Texas’ colleges and universities and her own career.
Many people congratulated her but also said they hoped her tenure wouldn’t be taken away, particularly since she teaches about race and racism, she said. .
Irizarry does not want to give up her place in a university where she feels at home. However, she’d leave Texas she didn’t have a choice.
“I’m not gonna change what I teach, so they would lose a scholar,” Irizarry said. “They would lose a number of scholars.”
---------
