BY KARMA R. CHÁVEZ

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Callie Kennedy and Parham Daghighi, former teaching assistants (TAs) in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. I will detail the specific reason for our acquaintance, but the broader reason has to do with the AAUP and student coalitions built during the last Texas legislative session, in which we fought against several bills that targeted public universities in the state. The grave threats to academic freedom reflected in why I met Callie and Parham help to illustrate the importance of building relationships with student organizers.

Callie and Parham’s story has been documented in the media, but here are the facts as I understand them from their firsthand accounts and from the written evidence I have examined. Callie and Parham were TAs in a university signature course called Women and Madness taught by social work professor Lauren Gulbas. One of the primary functions of signature courses, designed for first-year students, is to introduce students to resources, including mental health resources, on and off campus. After the start of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza following Hamas’s October 7 attack, a student in this course asked the TAs if they could comment on the situation’s impacts on the mental health of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students. When Callie and Parham posed this to Dr. Gulbas, she said she didn’t feel comfortable doing that, but if the TAs wanted to draft a note and offer resources, she would support that. As corroborated by text messages between the members of the teaching team and a shared Google document in which they all offered edits, the TAs drafted the message, and Dr. Gulbas offered substantive edits and authorized them to share it with the class. On November 16, they did so as an announcement on the course’s Canvas page. The next day, Dr. Gulbas notified the TAs that a student had reported the message and indicated that they no longer felt comfortable in their TA-led discussion section. On the day before Thanksgiving, the TAs received a letter from the School of Social Work dean, Allan Cole, indicating that they had sent an unprompted message without the supervising professor’s approval and that their message was unrelated to course material. The dean described their message as political, their conduct as unprofessional, and that they were no longer trustworthy as TAs. Cole removed them from the class (with pay), ordered them to have no further contact with the students, and told them they would not be appointed as teaching assistants in the spring semester.

Almost immediately, the Texas Students for DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), a coalition created during the 2023 Texas legislative session that worked closely with our local AAUP chapter, reached out to the AAUP, asking to put us in touch with Callie and Parham. We connected with the TAs over the holiday weekend, and they supplied the relevant information. Our executive committee drafted a letter to the provost and Dean Cole about the TAs’ removal. We noted that the dean did not follow the procedures outlined in the Handbook of Operating Procedures and made his determination based on false information (the TAs were prompted by a student, they had approval, and their message was related to course content); the resulting  violation of their academic freedom and of due process were causes for immediate concern. The provost granted them a hearing with her.

Meanwhile, student organizers from an array of groups had already mobilized to address the injustice, organizing petitions, protests, legal remedies, and a media campaign. A group of more than a hundred faculty, including some of the AAUP leadership, also drafted an additional letter asking the university president to apologize to and reappoint the TAs, ensure a climate of free speech on campus, and offer equal support to Jewish and Palestinian members of our community.

Parham and Callie filed their grievance asking for a public apology by the university for this unjust disciplinary action, reinstatement as TAs, and an assurance that this will not go on their permanent records. The advocacy campaign was also in full force. Thanks to the coalitions already in place on campus, students and faculty supporting these efforts were well prepared: we know whom to call for help with a given aspect of the campaign and have social media expertise, media contact lists, experience writing press releases, and practice  doing media interviews. And, as Parham and Callie have modeled, we know how to keep those most impacted—in this case, Palestinians—at the center of our work.

Our experience is a microcosm of what is happening around the United States since October 7, but we’re doing it in an especially repressive environment given recent changes to tenure that minimize its protections, a state law that bans DEI on campus (interpreted in overly aggressive ways by the UT legal office), and other factors too complicated to detail here. Yet, in over twenty years in higher education, this is the most exciting and principled campus coalition I’ve been a part of.

The takeways are clear. First, despite widespread allegations of faculty indoctrinating students on college campuses that have led some faculty to shy away from building political relationships with students, those coalitions are among the most important resources we have at our disposal. Second, campus administrators will respond in repressive and inflammatory ways. For example, without grounds, UT has publicly claimed that efforts to support Callie and Parham and against repression of speech are happening based on a “coordinated disinformation campaign.” These threats have the chilling effect that they are designed to have but with principled campaigns based in evidence and sound arguments, coalition members feel emboldened to keep going. Thus, it is important to pick battles and to fight them on solid grounds so that when such repressive actions happen, those involved can ensure that they can seek the legal and other forms of redress that they deserve.

Recently, the provost has told Callie and Parham that their rights have not been violated, and their only recourse is to appeal to the president. The president has similarly suggested in his response to the faculty letter that he agrees with such an assessment, but it remains to be seen how he will respond directly to Callie and Parham’s appeal. His response to faculty is, in my view, unsurprising and a dire outcome for academic freedom and free speech. What remains very clear is that the work our coalition is doing will continue and, despite setbacks, it will only go from strength to strength.

Karma R. Chávez is Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor and Chair in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also serves on the executive committee of the AAUP chapter.