Texas Lawmakers Pass Ban on D.E.I. Programs at State Universities

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times

Just a day before the Texas legislative session ended, state lawmakers approved a ban on offices and programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion at publicly funded colleges and universities. On Sunday, both chambers approved Senate Bill 17, which was sponsored by Brandon Creighton, a Republican state senator. “The days of political oaths, compelled speech, and racial profiling in university hiring are behind us,” Mr. Creighton said in statement.

Democratic leaders, college educators and students warned that the bans could have wide repercussions including on the ability to attract and retain students from diverse backgrounds and on the chances of winning research and programming grants.

The Texas Conference of American Association of University Professors said in a statement that the bill sends a clear message to the 1.3 million public university and community college students, “that our state is not committed to welcoming students from all backgrounds and to building a public higher education system that is truly inclusive and supportive of all.”

Texas is the latest state to defund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, known as D.E.I. The move there is part of a national wave by conservative politicians who say that taxpayer money is being used to stoke racial division and push a liberal agenda in colleges and universities.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/us/texas-dei-program-ban.html

[vishnura]

1. Free thinking

If not on college campuses, where then?

[Comfortably_Numb]

13. Back in the day, college campuses. The only thing that prevented the magats in Texas from gutting

tenure was because Texas A&M University and Austin community college, I mean UT, convinced them that the measure would kill the two premier state universities in Texas. Most of those fuckmooks graduated from TAMU or TU. I bleed maroon, just in case that’s not clear.

[pstokely]

16. don't know if they graduated from anywhere, but they're probably t-shirt UT or TAMU fans

would they vote for this if it hurt football?

[Comfortably_Numb]

2. As a university administrator I feel qualified to speak up. When we interview faculty, we have to

try to assure them they are going to be safe and they can do research. The ones that leave texas because of sexual orientation are real. Fear of not getting tenure because their research offends the magat-Autocracy, real. Folks fearful because they are Muslim, leaving, real. I wish there was a word beyond “hate” that accurately expresses the loathing I have for these virtue signaling magats.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. "I wish there was a word beyond "hate" that accurately expresses the loathing I have"

I think "abhor" is a good one that is more intense than "hate" or "loathe".

[Evolve Dammit]

10. thanks for that post. Dishearteningly insightful.

[Comfortably_Numb]

11. Disheartening is spot on. And I have to go back to work tomorrow. Hatred

on an industrial scale. That’s Texas these days.

[Evolve Dammit]

19. Totally GOP fueled. Best wishes to you

[vishnura]

3. Free thinking

If not on college campuses, where then?

[bucolic_frolic]

5. The brain drain will be real, and it will extend to money outflow in many forms

Conservatives use funding to stoke racial division through exclusion, and push a conservative agenda in colleges and universities.

How are they different? Only by left and right.

Youth are historically liberal. Conservatives are old men in suits and robes.

As any economist will tell you, at times capital flight is real. People vote with their money and their feet.

[sanatanadharma]

6. Conservatives: standing proudly for uniformity, unfairness, and exclusion (shunning)

Conservatives: Standing proudly against diversity, equity, and inclusion in 'their' social systems.

[Snackshack]

7. People.

Should leave, I hate to say that but after years of this and knowing now that it really does not matter what a vote outcome is, if the vote has been gerrymandered out of any possibility or it is not in the GOP's favor because the GOP will fight it and claim some sort of nefarious ballot box stuffing activity by ACORN... (oh wait)... BLM I mean, is at hand or as in Az the GOP will just ignore the affirming vote.

Add in that there seems to be no answer from the opposition party anymore. This GOP in Tx literally allowed their constituents to freeze to death. One of their Senators jetted off to Cancun even and the opposition party was either unable or unwilling to formulate and apply an answer that would win the vote.

It is simply not safe to live in a GOP controlled state anymore and the only way that party is ever going to have to face and own up to the insane direction it has chosen to take is if they find no one's willing to let themselves be led by the GOP anymore.

Our system is irrevocably broken. It relies much too much on a person being a decent human and being willingly following rules that limit behaviors and possibilities.

[Rebl2]

8. Hopefully

parents won’t allow their kids to attend college in TX.

[Comfortably_Numb]

12. My son fled Texas for Colorado and I would have paid for his gas. Fucking hate this state.

[Evolve Dammit]

9. Well they could keep the acronym and secretly switch to "Death, Evil and Insurrection"?? So F'd up.

[Redleg]

14. Does this mean Human Resource Management professors can't discuss DEI

in their classes? As a professor of Organizational Behavior and HR Management, a good part of what I teach is related to diversity and inclusion. They would have to get rid of a big chunk of the content in employment law courses, staffing courses, and employee relations courses, and a smaller chunk of the other HR courses such as training & development and compensation and benefits.

Many businesses have DEI initiatives and some of them actually care about diversity and inclusion (but not necessarily equity in the sense that DEI proponents tend to view it).

These wingnut asshole politicians have been told all their lives that the academy has a liberal bias and now they are out to replace that with an extreme conservative bias. The academy is not an attractive place for wingnuts. Not because of the so-called liberal bias so much as the requirement for having a Ph.D. or other graduate degree. Good luck finding enough extremists with Ph.D.s to fill the ranks of your universities!

[Old Crank]

15. This can help the US budget.

Turn off all federal aid to Texas state run programs.

[dlk]

17. Does this violate the First Amendment right to free speech?

Republicans have shown themselves to have deep problems with fairness.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. I'm sure it does

But it's hard to tell when the media consistently reports, time after time after time, only tepid and milquetoast hand-wringing responses from the victims of the fascist legislatures in TX and FL, instead of finding the activist pushback from those who have lawsuit intentions.

The whack-a-doodle backwards-thinking GOP state legislatures think that the "First Amendment" means that states can require, impose, and enforce only a narrow version of "speech" that they approve of as "legitimate speech" (i.e., "religious" ) and can reject any other "speech" that they don't like.