AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Senate voted Tuesday to give initial approval to a bill that aims to ban critical race theory from being taught at the state’s public universities.
The proposal from Mineola Republican Bryan Hughes is part of a slate of higher education bills in the Senate that are among Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s top priorities during this legislative session. Other bills include eliminating tenure at public universities and prohibiting colleges from maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion offices – also known as DEI.
The vote was 19-12 along party lines on a bill that would allow students, faculty and members of the public to file complaints against professors they claim are indoctrinating students. It will likely come up for a final vote on Wednesday before heading to the House for consideration.
Critical race theory – or CRT – is an academic philosophy that examines laws, government policies and structures under a lens of systemic racism. The ideas of the intellectual framework have existed since the 1960s and were never taught in an official sense at public K-12 schools.
Despite this, critical race theory has remained a political target for Texas conservatives. It was a dominant issue during 2021′s session as lawmakers passed bans on teaching CRT in K-12 public classrooms.
Hughes’ proposed law does not name critical race theory explicitly and is far less prescriptive than bans that passed the Legislature in 2021. At a March 23 hearing on the bill, he said that the bill promotes academic freedom and prevents faculty from forcing their beliefs on students.
“In higher education, we are exposed to different ideas to grow us and challenge us and help us form our own views and opinions and beliefs,” Hughes said. “This is certainly not an attempt to stifle that.”
Republican lawmakers have derided the theory for being divisive, defining people by their race and teaching hatred of the U.S.
Critics of the bill have called it overly broad and believe it will have a chilling effect on academic discourse involving race and equity and that it will more disproportionately affect non-white and LBGTQ professors.
The proposal – Senate Bill 16 – was passed out of the Senate Public Education Committee on March 29 on a party line vote.
