My University Just Taught Extremists How to Eliminate Academic Programs They Don’t Like

On October Texas Christian University stated it would close its Women and Gender Studies WGST and Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies CRES departments folding what remains of the programs into the English department The official reason given was low enrollment But I know what this decision really means I know because I ve watched my university abandon my colleagues then me and now entire fields of survey all while extremists documented every capitulation as proof that masses harassment campaigns can and do reshape higher instruction in Texas In July my WGST colleague Nino Testa received death threats severe enough that campus police instructed him to leave His crime Teaching a discipline on the art of drag Over faculty members signed a petition asking TCU to publicly advocacy LGBTQ faculty and students The administration refused In August it was my turn Conservative activists including two elected Tarrant County leaders publicly called for my firing over social media posts made before I even worked at TCU Local extremists called my work with CRES anti-white Within days my home address was published online Death threats arrived in my work email inbox TCU s response An email from the communications office with suggestions on what to do when a faculty member is targeted on social media which included deleting my posts and making my accounts private There was no inhabitants declaration defending academic freedom No acknowledgment that faculty shouldn t have to stay on the downlow the actual words used by my dean in order to avoid targeted harassment In a announcement to the Texas Observer TCU noted The university has a thorough process to notify faculty and staff members and provide them with appropriate guidance and sponsorship to mitigate expected risks This September another faculty member affiliated with these programs was targeted Again no inhabitants promotion from the administration Now both departments are gone At the October faculty meeting where this decision was officially presented to the English department I watched my university s leadership tell contradictory stories about what was happening The provost insisted political pressure had no influence on the decision But after he left the room the dean stated us something different I have been concerned for WGST and CRES since January the day of Trump s second inauguration When faculty sought for the financial analysis justifying this supposedly fiscal decision the provost announced he had numbers but wouldn t share them A colleague required whether we d ever see this analysis No he disclosed A decision justified by fiscal responsibility but we re forbidden from seeing the fiscal analysis A decision supposedly unrelated to politics but made by administrators who ve supposedly been worried about political attacks since Inauguration Day A decision affecting three academic departments but made without consulting a single faculty member in those departments a direct violation of our Faculty Handbook s shared governance requirements TCU noted in its declaration Changes are rooted in a review that began more than two years ago with a comprehensive academic undertaking review of class sizes demand for courses and activity enrollment That review has led to adjustments to a large number of courses and programs as well as realignment of academic units There s a particular kind of despair that comes from watching an institution abandon its principles in real time It s not the dramatic betrayal of a single moment It s slower than that It s watching your university refuse to defend a colleague then refuse to defend you then eliminate entire fields of analysis and claim with a straight face that these events are unrelated It s the sick feeling of recognizing that your employer has been making calculations about you that you weren t privy to Which faculty do we want to protect Which programs can we be bothered to keep What s the political cost of supporting our own people versus the cost of quietly surrendering It s realizing that when administrators declared they supported inclusive excellence and academic freedom what they meant was only until someone complains The people who harassed my colleagues and me documented everything They took screenshots compiled spreadsheets and in several cases leaked audio that could only have come from other campus employees They hypothesized that if you target faculty systematically enough if you get elected bureaucrats involved if you generate enough outrage on social media and in the news universities will eventually abandon the people and programs you re attacking And my university just proved them right Here s what TCU has taught anyone paying attention First identify faculty teaching about race gender or sexuality Make them individually vulnerable through harassment doxxing and threats Second wait for the university to refuse to defend them publicly Universities are risk-averse institutions They ll tell targeted faculty to stay on the downlow rather than make themselves targets by defending academic freedom Third keep up the pressure The harassment doesn t have to work directly Just keep targeting faculty in these fields year after year Document the university s silence as evidence you re winning Fourth wait for the university to eliminate the programs for other reasons They ll cite enrollment numbers budget constraints or administrative efficiency They ll violate their own shared governance procedures if necessary They ll refuse to show the financial analysis They ll tell contradictory stories about whether politics was involved Eventually move to the next target You ve just proven the tactic works When these departments close we lose more than two lines on an organizational chart We lose scholars who have dedicated their careers to understanding how race and gender shape our society We lose courses where students learn to think critically about power identity and justice We lose intellectual population for faculty and students whose work doesn t invariably fit neatly next to the business school But we also lose something harder to quantify the belief that universities are places where intricate questions can be explored where broad sets of ideas can be examined where faculty can pursue scholarship without fear of harassment campaigns determining what gets taught My university just taught me that belief was naive The students majoring and minoring in these departments deserved an institution that would stand behind the fields they d chosen to investigation The faculty who built these programs over decades deserved consultation before their departments were dissolved The hundreds of students who take these courses to fulfill core requirements deserve to know their university believes this scholarship matters Instead they got a Friday afternoon announcement and a provost who indicates he has a financial analysis he ll never share TCU is a private institution The Texas Legislature didn t force this decision No law required the school to close these departments They did it willingly That should terrify anyone who cares about academic freedom Populace universities can point to legislative pressure and budget cuts mandated by the state They can say truthfully that their hands are tied But when private universities eliminate programs studying race and gender without any external requirement to do so it reveals something darker institutions are abandoning these fields because they ve decided the political cost of supporting them is too high If private universities won t defend scholarship where exactly is it safe If institutions with the materials and autonomy to protect academic freedom choose not to what message does that send to scholars considering this work The answer is already visible Faculty are leaving the academy Graduate students are choosing safer dissertation topics Scholars self-censor before anyone asks them to And universities are discovering that there s reliably another campaign that might make them a target reliably another reason to quietly divest from real intellectual inquiry The question isn t whether my university will eventually regret this decision The question is whether we ll recognize the pattern before it s too late before every institution has learned that the easiest way to deal with harassment campaigns is to eliminate what the harassers are attacking I don t know what comes next for me in academia I ve already been doxxed and threatened for my research teaching and First Amendment-protected speech I ve already watched my university refuse to defend me or my colleagues publicly I ve already seen what happens to programs that survey the topics I care about But I know this when universities abandon faculty under attack when they violate their own governance procedures when they tell contradictory stories about their motivations when they refuse basic transparency about their decision-making they re not protecting their institutions They re hollowing them out TCU s motto is Learning is power I agree But after watching my university systematically abandon every principle it suggests to uphold I understand the motto differently now Power goes to whoever is willing to use it And my university just handed its power to the people working hardest to dismantle learning itself The post My University Just Taught Extremists How to Eliminate Academic Programs They Don t Like appeared first on The Texas Observer