As a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, each day feels like a precarious game of Jenga, with the iconic tower of our institution at constant risk of collapse. This instability stems not only from legislative actions but also from behind-the-scenes maneuvers by university leadership, leaving many students and faculty in a state of uncertainty, fear, and foreboding, wondering what may happen next. This tension has been exacerbated by recent events, including the sudden “departure” of a respected College of Liberal Arts dean, difficulties in recruiting faculty, failed job searches, the departure of valued colleagues to other universities, unexpected retirements, declining faculty morale, and an increasingly fragile system of faculty governance—if it can be said to exist at all.
These developments reflect a broader trend of censorship—targeting certain bodies, protests, and speech—imposed through top-down power and control. The result feels less like a functioning academic institution and more like a manifestation of despotic corporate control.
I leave open the question of whether the structure will eventually collapse. Some in my circles are already speaking of irreparable damage done, or at least of an urgent need for action from faculty, students, and the community to prevent further deterioration if long-term consequences to society are to be averted.
When one further considers that, per a recent Austin Chronicle report, since 2018 the university’s Legal Affairs Department has hired a majority of its attorneys straight out of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, a more fitting game metaphor than Jenga might be Monopoly Tycoon, which transforms players into landlords and empire-builders. Employing tactics of “strategic expansion,” this video game rewards players for takeovers of influential, or simply less powerful, competitors.
UT-Austin’s College of Liberal Arts faces a comparable challenge: the establishment of a new, seemingly redundant entity—the School of Civic Leadership—which will teach from a Western Civilization perspective, mirroring much of the liberal arts school’s existing offerings but without all of the “pesky” material from scholars who challenge Eurocentric histories.
This strategy undermines the College of Liberal Arts’ market influence by promoting the false and untenable narrative that there is a lack of intellectual diversity within the largest college on campus. It leverages the broader anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda, which mischaracterizes DEI efforts as “discriminatory” when nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, DEI efforts exist (or existed) to counter decades of exclusion faced by Black and Brown students and faculty who are just beginning to establish themselves in academia. Consequently, faculty find themselves on the defensive as programs, offices, and initiatives aimed at fostering a diverse student body and a sense of belonging are dismantled.
Despite my use of gaming metaphors, what’s happening at my university is no game at all: UT faculty and students are currently experiencing profound disruption and distress. This starkly contrasts with the arrogant posture and detached, dismissive demeanor of those perpetrating this harm, which has significant consequences for Texas and society as a whole.
Rooted in the civil rights movement, the principles of DEI represent a holistic framework for cultivating environments, programs, organizations, teaching strategies, and institutional practices that empower and uplift historically marginalized communities. These principles extend beyond the boundaries of any curriculum.
Although these initiatives often target specific groups requiring particular forms of support—such as first-generation and transgender students, students with disabilities, veterans, or immigrant students—they ultimately benefit the entire academic community. By fostering environments where individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and identities can interact, collaborate, and learn together, these initiatives enhance the educational experience for all. Consequently, opposition to DEI efforts can only be interpreted as a deliberate choice to neither support this agenda nor these students, despite the university’s increasingly diverse student population.
For many, the first shakeup took place on April 2, 2024, with the firing of 60 staff members who were formerly associated with the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement to ostensibly comply with Senate Bill 17 (SB 17), which took effect three months before the firings. Shockingly, this occurred after individuals in all DEI offices had already been reclassified to other non-DEI jobs. Those terminated were largely staff of color, mostly women. At a legislative hearing a month after the dismissals, Chancellor James B. Milliken informed legislators that 311 positions were eliminated system-wide, with the caveat that this number could change pending ongoing audits.
At UT-Austin, this decision, with its dizzying feeling of a Jenga tower wobbling, was executed with such calculated swiftness that it swept through the university in a single day. Timed precisely with President Jay Hartzell’s email to all university staff titled “Organizational Changes,” it resembled a strategy from Monopoly Tycoon, reflecting a well-orchestrated plan of monopolized resource control, literally bypassing schools and colleges, with terminations dictated from the top. The university’s approach was endorsed by Republican state Senator Brandon Creighton, author of SB 17, who described the ban as “a fundamental shift in the operations of our higher education institutions” to ensure “a merit-based environment.”
As for myself, I experienced my own Jenga moment even earlier, with an email I received on January 7, 2024, asking me to quickly consider making changes to one of my university websites. As the spring session had not even begun and we were barely past the New Year’s holiday, it seemed to be an effort to comply with the looming SB 17 compliance deadline.
The experience felt like psychic whiplash, causing me a great deal of distress at the time. I received this request just prior to a departmental retreat, where I exclaimed, “What the administration perceives as a bureaucratic request for compliance, I interpret as a hostile act of censorship.” Anxiety-ridden, I felt sick to my stomach and left the meeting. This was a first for me. Afterward, several of my colleagues reached out, thanking me for having the courage to express my views and lending their support.
Specifically, the words that they flagged—“diversity,” “diverse,” “equity,” “equity infographic,” “DEI programs,” and “DEI initiatives”—appeared on a research-based policy brief that was on my website’s landing page. SB 17 had a carve-out for teaching and research, yet here we saw my university over-complying. I got legal counsel when this happened and was advised not to make myself a target, so I reluctantly archived the brief on another page.
The next Jenga block to drop was on April 24, when university police and state troopers showed up to a peaceful, pro-Palestinian student-led protest in riot gear, carrying batons, and on horseback, arresting 57 protesters. “Everything was peaceful until the police arrived,” a student of mine who was present expressed.
My student’s words reminded me of the massive pro-Palestinian protest on November 12, 2023, which began at the Texas Capitol and wound its way through the heart of downtown Austin. I remember thinking that even in a very dense crowd packed with students, children, and families, it was not only entirely peaceful but visibly included the participation of Jewish Voice for Peace-Austin with their “#JewishResistance” and “#CeasefireNOW” banners, met by a welcoming, cheering crowd that contradicted the view that pro-Palestinian protestors are anti-Semitic.
While it is impossible to argue that there is no anti-Semitism among pro-Palestinian protestors—or no Islamophobia among the defenders of Israel, for that matter—this was not a significant element of the protests I witnessed. Nor did anti-Semitic sentiment seem to surface in testimony at a May 14 Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education hearing that I attended. Witnesses, comprised of UT students and faculty, overwhelmingly expressed concerns over the violence against peaceful pro-Palestinian protestors, the climate of fear on campus with the takedown of DEI centers and offices, SB 17 over-compliance, and violations of students’ First Amendment right to free speech—connecting the censorship of certain bodies, protest, and speech.
Unsurprisingly, our university was recently ranked eighth in a list of 251 universities that are the “worst for free speech” in research carried out by College Pulse in the wake of nationwide campus protests and encampments at other universities. Specifically, close to half of all UT students surveyed said that they censor their own speech at least once or more every month. The Spring semester ended with many UT students feeling betrayed.
The most recent Jenga block to drop at UT was reported in November by KXAN’s Jala Washington: a list of words being flagged, in university audits of UT websites for compliance with SB 17, including “Latino,” “Latinx,” “Latina,” “colonizer,” and “trans.” Although the university is not banning or taking formal action related to most of these words, this amounts to at least a form of soft implicit censorship with institutional power behind it.
The list also raises critical questions: What message is being conveyed here? What rationale underpins this decision? The terms “Latino,” “Latina,” and “Latinx” are not “DEI-related words”; rather they are significant identities for those of us who identify as such.
I am aware of “Latino,” “Latina,” and “Latinx” UT students who are very disturbed by this. It’s hard not to be. I am sure that our gay, lesbian, trans, queer, and bisexual student communities are feeling just as unsafe, especially since the terms “ally” and “safe space” have also been flagged.
Is this an attempt to marginalize the student and faculty communities associated with these identities at our university? If so, what is the underlying rationale? Is the objective to restrict teaching and research related to these communities? Such actions can be perceived as a form of censorship, effectively silencing and rendering invisible communities that hold significant importance to both our state and nation.
As Latina/o and non-Latina/o faculty, are we not to hold on to our scholarly career commitments to teaching and conducting research on this significant and consequential community to our state and nation? Is a shadow, Monopoly Tycoon group serving to usurp the interests of an autonomous and independent faculty?
We are all adults here. Rather than engaging in censorship, our university administration should empower faculty to be the true voice of the university. Shared governance, especially on matters of curriculum, is a time-honored practice that relies, as it should, on the expertise of the faculty and promotes both student and faculty morale.
All this should alarm Texas taxpayers whose hard-earned money helps fund higher education and whose children attend our universities. As one of Texas’s two flagship institutions, alongside Texas A&M, these actions mark a troubling decline and a predictable loss of reputation that will be challenging to reverse if this agenda continues to gain traction. We cannot allow the Monopoly Tycoons who are ideologically vested in this takeover to continue trampling over students’ free speech and faculty’s academic freedom.
Ironically, in allegedly wanting to minimize so-called bias in the university curriculum, anti-DEI censorship is itself a demonstration of bias, against Latinos and Latinas and others. In education, a subject that I teach, one can never stand outside of either bias or the politics of education as the entire enterprise is inherently subjective, comprised of value judgments, ethical and moral dilemmas, sociocultural factors, power dynamics, and so on.
Clearly, a subjective, values-based decision was made with the list of flagged words to marginalize Latino identities, along with other important identities and critical topics, within the university curriculum. This action is not only anti-Latino but also un-American and un-Texan. It represents a direct assault on the teaching and research mission of our university. As research faculty, our teaching and research are intrinsically linked—each informing and enhancing the other, even though they are never entirely reducible to one another.
We are facing a threat to democratic principles and the legitimacy of the UT-Austin. However, this will only persist if we, as a campus community and the public, allow it. Together, we must respond every time with equal force to stop the Jenga tower from collapsing for good, toppled by the Monopoly Tycoons.
Particularly as faculty, we must demand a stop to these censorious audits targeting speech, identities, and ideas that are of vast importance to the college classroom and an increasingly complex and interconnected world..
Together with our students, civil rights organizations, and the broader public, we must also prepare for and lead the fight in the 2025 session of the Texas Legislature, the policy arena where the battle over the future of higher education in Texas will continue.
For the benefit of the university and the very notion of public higher education, it is imperative that we respectfully dissent while crafting a restorative narrative of faculty governance and shared responsibility. This narrative should prioritize inclusivity, free speech, academic freedom, and the collective well-being of the entire university community.
List of flagged terms:
DiversityBisexualDEITransDiverseQueerDEAINonbinaryEquityDecolonizeEquitableColonizerAllyMarginalizedInclusiveUnderservedInclusionMicroagressionSafe spaceWhitenessBIPOCAnti-ColonialismImplicit biasInstitutional racismIntersectionalitySystematic racismAnti-racistWhite privilegeOppressionWhite fragilityGender identitySocial justiceLGBTQBiasLesbianRacismGayMinorityBisexualLatino, Latinx, LatinaTransPrivilege
The post Monopoly Tycoons in a Game of Jenga: The Censorship of Bodies, Protest, and Speech at UT-Austin appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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