Dan Patrick’s attacks threaten innovation that drives Texas’s economy
Demagogue Dan uses a tried-and-true playbook to silence minorities, censor dissidents and drive away intellectuals. He doesn’t care that tenured faculty make important discoveries and drive economic growth.
Patrick’s assault on academic freedom is already causing problems for freethinkers, but if he convinces the Legislature to eliminate job protection for professors, he will blow up Texas’s engines of innovation.
Our lieutenant governor has always been an intolerant Christian nationalist. He frequently promises that his religious beliefs take priority over his political party or the laws of man. But now that the Republican Party is adopting his brand of populist authoritarianism, he’s going for broke.
“I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with Critical Race Theory. We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed,” he tweeted on Feb. 15.
Patrick followed up with a press conference where he said fighting tenure at public universities was his top legislative priority in 2023. He wants to make it illegal for administrators to offer tenure to new professors, and he wants to expand powers to take it away from existing faculty.
Tenure is a tradition designed to protect intellectuals from politics. Academics spend their lives studying, writing and helping people better understand their world. At their best, universities are places to discuss and debate this research without fear of retribution or cultish dogma.
Political winds can shift suddenly, and demagogues like to purge dissident thinking to consolidate their power. Tenure protects intellectuals, both on the left and right, from the mob’s mood at the moment.
Critical race theory, like multiculturalism, examines how authorities have used skin color to dole out power and privilege. Adherents believe that because our institutions were created by Anglos who used their power to oppress people of color, we should question how those institutions work today.
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Despite Patrick’s disinformation, the goal is not to make Anglo young people feel bad about their race but to create a more perfect union. To improve the present, we need to understand the past.
Patrick rejects that premise. He was enraged when UT’s faculty passed a nonbinding resolution affirming “that educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning, and supports the rights and academic freedom of faculty to design courses, curriculum, and pedagogy, and to conduct related scholarly research.”
Tenure is a vital perk that most universities offer to attract top talent. Professors of medicine, science, engineering, business and mathematics expect tenure in return for a life-long commitment to an institution.
Tenure also attracts more than experts on applying Marxist theory to community basket weaving in Stone Age clans.
Tenured professors drove the creation in 1945 of the Texas Medical Center, which now includes eight specialty institutions, eight academic and research institutions, four medical schools, seven nursing schools, three public health organizations, two pharmacy schools and a dental school.
Tenured faculty at UT’s business school and electrical engineering department transformed Austin into Silicon Gulch in the 1980s. All of the capitol’s tech growth emerged from professors attracting the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation in 1982.
Lastly, tenured UT and Texas A&M academics are turning San Antonio into a cybersecurity hub, spinning off new companies and creating thousands of jobs.
Extremism, though, frightens off America’s top minds. A UT professor told me one candidate responded to a recruiting call by referring to Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” asking, “Why would I want to move to Gilead?”
I know from personal experience that Patrick doesn’t care about freedom of ideas.
On July 2, Patrick’s campaign sent a fundraising email promising to protect the First Amendment. Then, he ordered the Bullock State History Museum to cancel a talk about my bestselling book “Forget the Alamo” just hours before the scheduled start time.
Patrick is coercing private companies too. He supported a law demanding that state contractors swear they will not boycott Israel, and he banned the state from doing business with entities that don’t invest in fossil fuel companies.
Patrick’s right-wing thought police have started with public schools, moved to government contracting and are headed for higher education. He’s far from done, and anyone who supports his reelection is responsible for the fascism and economic slowdown that comes next.
Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and politics.
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