BY KARMA R. CHÁVEZ AND LAUREN GUTTERMAN

This post is part of a blog series, organized by Annelise Orleck, that will focus on recent crackdowns on protests at US college and university campuses against Israel’s war on Gaza. You can read the first post and an introduction to the series here.

Like many campuses during the spring of 2024, the University of Texas at Austin was the site of important student, faculty, and community pro-Palestine protests and the site of intense police and administrative crackdowns. Unlike many other large campuses though, ours also transpired the same semester that Texas S.B. 17—a law that banned diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, officers, and considerations in hiring—went into effect. The confluence of these two political phenomena left those of us invested in free speech, academic freedom, shared governance, and due process reeling. But it also offers important lessons for our battles going forward.

In addition to our local AAUP chapter, our campus is home to a student-led Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) and the newly formed Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP), both affiliated with national organizations. While PSC has always led educational and occasional protest events on campus, its activity understandably ramped up following the events of October 7, 2023. FSJP formed later in the fall with a mission to offer educational activities, hold the administration accountable, and, most importantly, to support the students in PSC.

Within just a few days of October 7, UT Austin’s administration showed its unwillingness to support Palestinian students and their allies. This was demonstrated after men claiming to have been members of the Israeli Defense Forces accosted and threatened students attending an on-campus PSC-led teach-in on October 12. Despite video evidence of the event, the university refused to respond. A few weeks later two teaching assistants were asked by students in their social work class on mental health to address the mental health needs of Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students. As we’ve written elsewhere, when the TAs sent a professor-approved message to the class, a student complained, and in less than forty-eight hours, the TAs were removed from their teaching posts and told they would not be reappointed as TAs the following semester. The UT Austin AAUP chapter’s leaders intervened, citing procedural concerns. Students kicked off a round of protests. Four students were disciplined after they delivered a letter to Dean Allan Cole, who had dismissed the TAs. Over the course of a few months, the university rejected the TAs’ formal grievances and upheld their dismissal.

In both these incidents during the fall of 2023, members of the AAUP chapter and FSJP expressed concern, including to the president, about the status of free speech, academic freedom, and due process at the university. Furthermore, given that the university had issued two statements expressing support for Jewish students and concern about antisemitism while neglecting to demonstrate the same concern for Palestinians, we had special worry about the learning conditions for Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students on campus.

The spring began with PSC- and FSJP-led protests, teach-ins, and other educational events, often carried out in partnership with a wide array of coalitional partners from the campus and community. While the university continued to refuse to address the harassment on October 12, PSC and its allies continued to build momentum. But on March 27, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order requiring universities and colleges to review and update their free speech policies and ensure groups like PSC are disciplined, possibly to the point of expulsion, for violating them. In addition, Abbott required institutions of higher education to include in their free speech policies the state’s definition of antisemitism, which conflates critiques of Zionism with antisemitism. The direct threat to PSC, which is explicitly not antisemitic, was especially worrying to AAUP, FSJP, and our allies.

While pro-Palestinian repression on campus was growing, the university’s leaders were taking steps to comply with the state’s new anti-DEI law, which went into effect on January 1, 2024. They dismantled programs and services for marginalized students across campus and moved staff members into different positions unrelated to DEI. Despite these significant institutional changes, on April 2, more than sixty UT Austin staff who had formally held DEI positions received notice that they were fired. The vast majority of those receiving pink slips were people of color. The university’s initial announcement of the firings offered vague explanations related to redundancies, but President Jay Hartzell later told faculty that the firings were made in response to outside political pressure. Emboldened by the state government, Hartzell did not back down on his decision despite repeated attempts to ask for accountability.

Meanwhile the national movement for Palestine on campuses was in full swing, and in the middle of April other universities like Columbia would announce the Popular University for Gaza, which on many campuses manifested in students making encampments in public spaces on campus. UT’s PSC did not mention an encampment in its announcement of its April 24 event. It called for a walkout of class, followed by a gathering on the south lawn to include teach-ins, study breaks, artistic activities, and pizza. However, the night before UT’s Popular University was set to launch, officials with the Office of the Dean of Students reached out to the registered student group to let them know that their event the next day would be canceled. In the justification, officials wrote that UT “will not allow this campus to be ‘taken’ and protestors to derail our mission in ways that groups affiliated with your national organization have accomplished elsewhere.”

Nevertheless, on April 24 around 11:30 a.m., student organizers and protesters convened as planned, and within minutes they were surrounded by state troopers on the Speedway Mall. As shown in extensive video evidence, police trapped students into an area with no exits. Student organizers can be seen in videos explaining to police that they are trying to comply with the dispersal order and announcing to protesters that they need to leave. But arrests started almost immediately without provocation. By the end of the day fifty-seven people had been arrested, and countless others had been traumatized by the experience.

Almost immediately, the AAUP chapter’s leaders began drafting a petition of no confidence in President Hartzell. The cumulative effects of the extensive use of police force and arrests as well as the unjust firings of DEI staff were too much. FSJP organized an emergency protest for April 25 to call attention to the injustices of the previous day and to keep all eyes on Gaza, which was the original purpose of launching a Popular University on our campus.

In the subsequent days, more than 650 faculty signed the petition of no confidence, but UT’s faculty council refused to put the matter up for a formal vote. Following the events of April 24, the university issued PSC a temporary suspension of its status as a registered student group. While supporters of the student movement on campus and in the community debated the best strategies for response, two events were scheduled for April 29. The first was a FSJP-organized vigil to honor Palestinian academics killed in Israeli’s “scholasticide” in Gaza, a term referring to Israel’s complete destruction of educational infrastructure, including destroying universities and slaughtering hundreds of professors and students. For an hour in the hot Texas sun, some forty faculty stood silently in regalia, holding the name of a murdered Palestinian colleague. Students handed out pamphlets explaining the meaning of our vigil to passersby. Immediately after, the Texas State Employees Union rallied to keep attention on the fired former DEI staff. As that rally was ending, a group of people chanted and encouraged attendees to join them on the South Lawn of campus.

Within minutes of their arrival on the lawn, state troopers on motorcycles descended on campus. PSC had not organized this protest, and several of its members sat with FSJP members on the sidelines watching the aggressive display of policing unfold once again. By the end of the day, seventy-nine people had been arrested. Remaining protesters stayed late into the day, facing pepper spray and flash bombs, chanting “Who killed Uvalde? You killed Uvalde!” into the faces of the many police forces on campus.

UT’s president remained defiant. In a later meeting for the faculty council, he defended his actions and claimed he would militarize campus again if the situation, in his mind, warranted it. The faculty council refused to pass a resolution demanding accountability and supporting the students. It eventually passed a watered-down resolution asking for explanations but, significantly, demanding amnesty for student protesters and campus community members. This would not happen. In the meantime, fifty-one Republican members of the Texas State House of Representatives sent President Hartzell a signed letter, cc’ing the executive committee of the UT Austin AAUP, supporting him and telling us to resign.

Travis County Attorney Delia Garza not only dropped trespassing charges against all the protesters but also chastised the president for this misuse of state resources. Nevertheless, the university continued with disciplinary proceedings against the arrested students and issued a combative statement attacking Garza. Faculty organized to serve as advisers to the arrested students during their disciplinary proceedings. However, the university used an unprecedented process purportedly to streamline the discipline. The Office of the Dean of Students required students to respond to a series of potentially incriminating questions supposedly intended to make students reflect on their participation and apologize for it. This was especially worrisome given that the county attorney has two years to reconsider and refile the criminal charges. Students received punishments ranging from probation to deferred suspension or outright suspension.

During the summer, as these proceedings unfolded, the university also rewrote its protest and free speech policies, adding several clauses that give administrative leaders greater authority both to limit expressive activity and to prevent students from congregating in various locations on campus, among other questionable changes that make it harder to demonstrate. As the semester started, the dean of students announced a new office, Event Readiness and Response, hiring a former police officer to helm it. Although mounted state troopers were on campus October 7, 2024, in anticipation of events that may have transpired, the PSC planned a “study in” and a Students for a Democratic Society “speak out” at the fountain went off without incident. Despite a small police presence and surveillance from staff with the Office of the Dean of Students, the rest of the week’s events went off without incident.

UT Austin’s AAUP chapter and FSJP have several serious concerns about what has happened so far in 2024. Among them include potentially unconstitutional free speech policies, policies that severely impact the ability for Palestinians and their allies to have academic freedom and practices that suggest a further disintegration of shared governance and due process.

The events of 2024 also bring to light several important lessons that should be taken very seriously by the AAUP and allied organizations on campuses nationwide. It goes without saying that Texas is a more repressive state than many others in which our members may reside. Nevertheless, we fear that Texas is meant to be the gold standard for reactionary university administrators and right-wing state legislators. This is affirmed by the number of states that have proposed anti-DEI legislation and antisemitism and free speech policies that mirror those adopted in Texas. This is also affirmed by the fact that no matter the general political persuasion of a given campus, university administrators around the country are in conversation with one another and are adopting each other’s policies and strategies.

The most important lesson is that faculty must be organized to address the grave threats facing our campuses. The content of each chapter’s organization must include at least the following:

1) a coordinated effort to support students (and faculty and staff) who face disciplinary proceedings or termination for their constitutionally protected activities or those who work (or worked) in jobs that are under threat due to bans on things like DEI;

2) creating subcommittees tasked with becoming intimately familiar with university policies so that faculty can quickly and accurately respond when changes occur or when universities act in ways that may be in conflict with existing policies;

3) robust educational activities on protest, free speech, academic freedom, due process, and shared governance must be held throughout campus so that faculty understand their rights and the rights of students and staff (our communities need to be informed so that the chilling effect does not do the work that policies otherwise would); and

4) essential efforts to ensure that faculty don’t cower in the face of university repression. The refusal to cower must entail

1. continuing to talk about university repression and its impacts on students, faculty and staff and talking to and organizing with students (they’ll accuse us of indoctrinating students whether we talk to them or not, so this is an opportunity to build power—plus, we all know we can’t even get students to read a syllabus!);
2. teaching exactly what we deem is relevant to teach in any given class, even if it makes us and others uncomfortable; and
3. issuing statements and other documents into the public record to make sure our discontent is known.

It is certainly unclear whether any of these actions will right the current course of higher education. As states seek to rewrite tenure laws (like Texas’s S.B. 18), which make it easier to fire faculty, our fear is warranted. But what the spring’s pro-Palestine protests and the oversized police response make abundantly clear is that when it comes to the values that we as AAUP members hold dear, and when it comes to the lives and livelihoods of our colleagues in Gaza, we are in the fight of our lives. Anything less than a principled, full-frontal response will inevitably fail.

Karma R. Chávez and Lauren Gutterman are members of the UT Austin AAUP executive committee and cofounders of UT Austin Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.