Professors in North Carolina and other red states are lashing out against bills moving through Republican-led legislatures that would remove or weaken academic tenure and counter divisive political ideology.
At UNC-Chapel Hill, 673 professors who complained that the bills violated their “academic freedom” and constituted government overreach signed the letter.
“Woke” university policies and teaching is commanding increasing attention in conservative states where critics say colleges have been taken over by social justice ideologies that stifle education.
In particular, conservative states have gone after benign-sounding Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies and Critical Race Theory (CRT), which critics say is a form of Neo-Marxism.
Conservatives argue that these race-based discriminatory policies targeting whites and anti-American political theories are embedded in DEI practices and university classes.
North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Louisiana are also moving bills on restricting or removing tenure from higher education institutes.
Proponents say universities are about the free exchange of ideas and professors should be free to teach what they want.
However, most colleges and universities employ professors and faculty who are liberal or even openly communist and hostile toward the United States.
A recent Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) survey of 1,491 professors at four-year U.S. colleges and universities found that 54 percent of professors identify as liberal, 17 percent as moderate, and 26 percent as conservative.
FIRE’s report said pressure from students and staff increasingly led to “hard authoritarianism” in institutions censoring or disciplining a scholar for his or her viewpoint.
State-approved courses are not currently required in North Carolina colleges and universities.
The NC Chapel Hill professors called teaching about the founding documents and Constitution “ideological force-feeding.”
This isn’t the first effort from North Carolina conservatives to push back against liberal universities.
The proposal sparked outrage from UNC faculty, who huffed that it is their responsibility to determine the curriculum—which illustrated the conservative viewpoint as to why the new school is needed.
Texas and Florida political leaders are also in a showdown with academia in their states.
In February 2022, in response to CRT bans in Texas and nationwide for K-12, the University of Texas at Austin Faculty Council challenged anyone to stop them from teaching CRT.
The council passed a resolution stating it will stand against any future intrusions on faculty authority by the Texas Legislature or UT System Board of Regents.
Since then, Texas lawmakers have been building support to outlaw DEI and CRT at the college level.
Earlier this year, Gov. Greg Abbott notified Texas universities that DEI policies used to hire minorities to the detriment of white candidates were illegal, race-based discrimination.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Texas Senate, has been an outspoken critic of universities adopting CRT and DEI for over a year, vowing legislation to stop it.
“When you are teaching our students that America is evil, and capitalism is bad, I’m sorry, that will destroy our country long term,” he said in January. “We’re going to push for it.”
But the tenure bill could see an uphill battle in the Texas House, where Republican Speaker Dade Phelan, who has come under fire from conservatives for giving chairmanships to Democrats, has expressed skepticism about eliminating tenure.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged war on “woke” that has outlawed CRT in the workplace and K-12 schools.
In January, he shook academia to its core when he demanded that universities account for DEI expenditures and announced a conservative takeover of New College of Florida.
DeSantis championed a plan to turn the liberal, failing New College into a model of classical education. He appointed conservatives to the board, which hired a conservative university president to remake the college.
New College of Florida trustees, now dominated by conservatives, voted to deny tenure to five professors this week.
Shouts from the audience of “Shame on you!” came after the vote. New College professor Matthew Lepinski, a holdover trustee not appointed by DeSantis, quit the board after the vote and walked out of the room.
The bill puts some stipulations on tenure but does not remove it.
“I feel like there is degradation of the collegiate experience, and a lot of it has to do with the political activities of professors,” Cathay told Higher Ed Dive.
Meanwhile, local Louisiana publications quoted professors as worrying that restricting tenure would irreparably harm higher education in Louisiana.
