Details here. That's a good break for UT Austin, since it will allow Powers to deal with the legislature during the next two-year budget cycle, finish the capital campaign and also launch the new medical school. It also means that the new President will not be chosen by Rick Perry--both the neanderthal Perry and the current Chancellor of the UT System will be gone by then.
I used to annoy my friends in New York and my friends in Texas by remarking that both places were the same: highly political, with competing "mafias" (not just the "Godfather" kind) wielding power and cutting deals. Obviously, the powerful "friends of Bill" made it clear that railroading him out of town wasn't going to happen without a bloodbath, and good for them for doing so. I guess I wouldn't be wholly astonished if come next Spring, with Perry gone, a new Governor and a different Board of Regents changed their mind about the planned resignation--bear in mind that the Texas legislature is only in session every other year, and they will be in session in Spring 2015. My bet is that key players in the legislature are already getting to work on stripping the Board of Regents of the power to meddle any further.
For a little context, let me share two stories from the 1960s in Texas, since political meddling with the university is nothing new, alas. Both involve Page Keeton, a very famous torts scholar who was Dean of the Law School at Texas for 25 years (from the late 1940s until the early 1970s) and was, like Powers, a powerful political figure in the state in his own right. He was also someone with a pretty good moral compass, considering the political battles he had to fight.
To get some flavor of the man: In the late 1950s, Keeton forced the big Houston law firms to stop discriminating against Jews after a Jewish student (who went on to a brilliantly successful career at a major Houston firm) mentioned to Keeton that he was told he couldn't be hried by the firm now known as Vinson & Elkins because "Judge Elkins said we don't hire Jews." Keeton summoned several of the senior faculty and told them to call their former students at the major Houston firms and explain that if they didn't start hiring Jewish students, they would no longer be welcome to interview on campus. They all caved, and so the major Houston law firms started hiring Jews in the late 1950s, while many of the "white shoe" law firms in New York continued to discriminate against Jews into the late 1960s.
But back to political meddling. During the civil rights era, many law faculty were involved in efforts to end segregation, expand voting rights and the like. In 1964, the Board of Regents summoned law professor Ernest Goldstein to appear before the Board to "explain" his civil rights activities, about which the Board was concerned. Page Keeton and the late Charles Alan Wright (law readers will know who Wright is, but I'll just note that Justice Ginsburg called him "a colossus atop the profession") drafted a letter to the Board, and secured signatures from the entire law faculty, stating that if Prof. Goldstein were forced to appear, the entire law faculty would resign. The Board backed down.
Later in the 1960s, the Texas legislature would pass budgets that included funding for the university, and then strike the salary lines of law faculty they thought were too "liberal" or "radical." Seriously! Keeton would mobilize his supporters around the state to force the legislature to restore the funding. I'm told this happened more than once!
And that's Texas. I'm very happy for my friends at UT Austin that Bill Powers, like Page Keeton before him, emerged triumphant over the forces of darkness.
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