This really is becoming the McCarthy Era all over again, except that there is no foreign power committed to the CRT bogeyman:
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is proposing to end tenure for new hires at Texas public universities and making the teaching of critical race theory a cause for tenure revocation. He said tenure should also be reviewed annually.
Currently state law says tenured faculty are subject to a performance evaluation “no more often than once every year, but no less often than once every six years.”
The goal is to eliminate tenure at all public universities in Texas, Patrick said during a Friday news conference. The issue will be a “top priority” and a subject of interim hearings as lawmakers prepare for the 88th Legislative Session that starts in January.
Obviously the lawyers explained to him that revoking tenure for existing faculty would constitute a breach of contract, hence the call for annual post-tenure reviews (inspired by Georgia, no doubt). Whether the very conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (which includes Texas) will strike down a ban on the content of University teaching on academic freedom and/or First Amendment grounds remains to be seen: one would expect them to do so, but one would have expected the courts to have struck down anti-communist loyalty oaths much more quickly than they actually did.
In any case, this is the future: public universities in all states will increasingly face these threats to tenure and to academic freedom from state legislatures, especially in Republican states, but I suspect in Democratic states too, as we have seen with "diversity loyalty oaths" in California and legislative meddling in Hawaii.
(Thanks to Richard Galvin for the pointer.)
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