Editor's Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
Early last month, the University of Texas at Austin sent pink slips to roughly 50 staff employees who formerly worked for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the campus.
University President Jay Hartzell announced the firings in an April 2 email addressed to the UT community, including its "more than 50,000 incredible students." He explained the move was part of his professed legal obligation to comply with Texas Senate Bill 17's prohibition of DEI programs in higher education, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law last June. UT Dallas has since followed suit with 20 layoffs of its own.
Except, there's a wrinkle.
"At the time when they were issued pink slips, all terminated employees were no longer in DEI-related positions," the Texas Conference of American Association of University Professors and the state's NAACP chapter pointed out in a joint press statement. Sure seems like, in their words, the firings were "intended to retaliate against employees because of their previous association with DEI," as the groups also noted in the statement.
And this news comes after the shuttering of UT Austin's vibrant Multicultural Engagement Center back in January. Seeing as Hartzell described the post-SB 17 restructuring as "a multiphase process," students and educators are left to worry whether the final shoe has dropped.
Retaliation is one possible motive, but abject fear is another. The bill's coauthor, Texas Sen. Brandon Creighton, whose district comprises parts of Houston and Galveston, penned a letter to university administrators on March 26, threatening to freeze state funding if they were caught "merely renam[ing] offices or employee titles" to superficially genuflect to the law.
Hearings are set for May on that very matter.
Suspiciously, or as I prefer, fittingly, Creighton's warning arrived one week after the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a right-wing think tank, held its annual convention attended by GOP lawmakers galore, including Abbott himself. The event also featured mutliple panels decrying the so-called "woke" rot eating away at our institutes of higher learning.
The TPPF is chiefly funded by fossil fuel billionaires Timothy Dunn and Dan and Farris Wilks, whose fealty to Christian charity has inspired them to donate more than $100 million to a bevy of Republican campaigns, political action committees and propaganda dispensaries.
So the order of operations appears at least translucent: Christian nationalist plutocrats pour money into right-wing echo chambers, lighting a fire under the asses of GOP politicians, who then set about dismantling our public institutions.
Karma Chávez, the chair of the Mexican American Studies program at UT Austin, told NBC News that those caught up in the layoffs are "largely Black and brown, queer and trans folks."
Looks like the arrow hit its intended mark.
"Overall, the campus morale is sad," graduate student Zion James told NBC. "We don't know where to go, or how to move forward. I feel like I'm being robbed of my family."
Black Texans account for around 13% of our state's population, and Latinos another 40%, according to census estimates, yet only around 4% of UT students are Black, and 24% Latino, according to a recent university fact sheet. Is this really the time to be scrapping minority outreach programs, however inadequate?
With gross racial disparities like that, it's easy to understand why protesters hold signs reading "No DEI = Not Our Texas." And the kids, to their everlasting credit, have refused to accept all this without a fight. Some 200 disrupted a virtual meeting with the university president on April 15, and Texas Students for DEI intends to gather at the UT Tower soon and demand answers. However, the chaos surrounding the mass arrest of antiwar demonstrators has postponed those plans.
Regrettably, the targeting of DEI programs is a national problem. The Chronicle of Higher Education is tracking more than 80 anti-DEI bills across 28 states, and a dozen have already gained the force of law.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Creighton "say they want diversity," Houston Chronicle columnist Chris Tomlinson wrote when the DEI ban was passed. "They simply oppose efforts to measure it, understand the barriers to it, or do something about it."
Tomlinson continued: "They argue that any attempt to improve diversity and deliver a student body and workforce reflective of the population discriminates against white people. Reactionaries uncomfortable with delivering an equitable society have made this argument since 1865."
And who can argue with results? White grievance politics has a stunning track record of success.
Take one recent white South African émigré to the Lone Star State, that galactic dipshit named Elon Musk, who's done quite well for himself. Somehow he's found a way to blame DEI for every airplane door bursting open mid-flight and every botched surgery. But thanks to the civil rights movement and feminism, Musk can no longer openly attribute profit-driven mishaps to dumb racial minorities and women, so instead he hints at "lowered standards," evidence notwithstanding.
In a March interview, former CNN host Don Lemon asked Musk, "Do you have any desire to understand how people of color and trans people are treated in this country? Why don't you believe them?"
"You cannot have a situation where someone is a self-described victim and they just get to be that because that's how they feel," Musk replied.
But what if being conscious of disadvantage and stigma — staying "woke" in the parlance of our time — exemplifies the refusal to be a victim and the insistence on welcoming others into the conversation and our circle of concern?
Musk fired Lemon from the X platform hours after the interview, of course, indicative of his sincere commitment to free speech. Much like the students protesting Israeli atrocities in Gaza, we're all getting an education in just how flimsy the allegiance of the powerful elite is to a great society.
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