Interviewer: So, I'm here with my Faculty Member on April 11. And I'm gonna ask, do you consent to have this recorded and posted/made available online?
Faculty: Sure.
Interviewer: Okay. Awesome. All right. So, we can start with what organizations, associations and departments you are a member of, or a part of on campus?
Faculty: Sure. I guess, relevant to this: I'm on the executive committee of the UT Austin American Association of University Professors. And I'm also the Shair of the Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies here at UT.
Interviewer: Okay, awesome. And then, so what has changed about how these organizations function, or your role within these organizations since the bill has been implemented in January?
Faculty: Sure, I mean, so AAUP is kind of an adjacent organization to UT Austin. In other words, it's a professional organization. So it's not that it has changed, really, because we really serve as a kind of watchdog, to make sure that the university is living up to its values in terms of free speech and academic freedom, shared governance, and due process when relevant. So it's not, again, that that's changed for us. What has changed, I guess, for us in AAUP, is simply the amount of watchdogging we have had to do. So, we definitely over the last year with SB-17, and SB-18 as well, we've had a lot of concerns that we've tried to raise with our administration about, you know, whether they're protecting academic freedom, free speech, whether they're living up to their their stated values regarding tenure and shared governance, and some of those things. So, you know, in that way, that's how our work has changed. In the department, as department chair, it's also not yet that that much has changed, as an ethnic studies department, everything we do is open to everyone, and we're an academic department. But our orientation is around, you know, Latinos. And so the bulk of what we do is not included in the purview of SB 17. But there are some things that have changed in the sense of partnerships that we would have once had with something like the Hispanic Faculty and Staff Association, or maybe even Latina/Latino Cultural Affairs. The nature of those relationships has changed, as well as we can no longer offer or support any events that are for Latinos. Which is kind of ironic.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Faculty: But that's the nature of the reality.
Interviewer: I guess you kind've touched on this, this is like an addendum to the question. Are there very specific challenges that you see happening with this, or maybe ones that you foresee happening, I don't know, as this progresses, especially since the DDCE or DCCE, I guess now, has been announced to be shut down.
Faculty: Yeah, I mean, you know, the announcement came last week, my faculty, and I'll discuss it tomorrow. And what does it look like, as an ethnic studies department that is populated largely by Latino faculty? Most of our majors and our PhD students are also you know, Latinx. And we have long, even though we're an academic department, we've also served as a certain kind of cultural home for folks who aren't necessarily majors or minors. And so what is it going to look like to try to fill in some of the gaps that are going to be left by the closing of DCCE, and Multicultural Engagement Center, etc? So, you know, there are lots of services that UT is not going to provide any longer. I don't know that we can do that. I don't know that as an academic department we have the capacity to fill all that. There's some we can, but there's some we just won't be able to because if DCCE can't do it, neither can MALS.
Interviewer: I was recently in a meeting where it was expressed that because the Services for Students with Disabilities is no longer going to be under DCCE, so the person who was talking, and expressed that, I think it's Student Affairs that it's getting moved under, they don't have the capacity to handle what that initiative requires. So it's going to be kind of a similar issue, where all of the things that have been moved out from under the DCCE, just being looped under other departments, and they don't necessarily have the ability to fully dedicate their time and efforts to those things.
Faculty: Yeah, I mean, it remains to be seen, right? So what happens when you no longer have all the people who are really interested, specifically in how you make campus more welcoming and hospitable for everyone? When most of those people, you fire?And the ones you keep, you've sprinkled throughout campus, so they're no longer having those conversations about best practices, etc? I think yeah, there's a very good chance that the services that remain like Disability Services won't be what they were.
Interviewer: So my next question is about the bill specifically. I know that you testified against the bill back when they were having hearings. So, I assume you've read the actual bill. So, when it comes to like the language that's in the bill, what do you understand that it covers and, was it easily understandable, what was covered in the bill?
Faculty: In some ways, it's kind of a hard question, because I think when the bill went in to effect and became a law, I thought I very much understood it. I had spoken with attorneys who I respect, who confirmed that my understanding was accurate in their legal view. But then once we started getting the interpretations from the Vice President of Legal Affairs office here at UT, as well as the UT System's legal office, realized I apparently didn't understand it, in the same way. So, I think UT has interpreted the law in overly expansive ways. But I also think there's ways in which the law was written more expansively than some of us thought it was when it went into effect.
Interviewer: I'm trying to remain as objective as possible when I'm asking these questions. Was there I guess, specific language that you think maybe was written in a way to where it could be interpreted further than it maybe was understood at the time that it was adopted?
Faculty: So, I think a couple of things on that. So one, I think, one source of the expansive interpretation, at least the UT Austin's making, has to do with a section that says, you know, no- I don't remember these, I'm not gonna pull it up. But it's like, basically, there's no entity that could be designed for, or implemented in a way that it's meant for a particular group. So if that had said, "and," that would have been a different kind of thing. But because it says "or", that essentially means even though, so you see, today, I'm wearing my Hispanic Faculty and Staff Association shirt. So Hispanic Faculty, and Staff Association is not designed just for Hispanics, necessarily. It's open to everybody. We have, you know, a variety of folks in the group. But it is implemented in such a way that it's, you know, because it has the name Hispanic in the title, I think it falls under the law. If you, you know, I mean, there's room for interpretation there, but that's how they're interpreting it and that "or" carries a lot of weight there. So, I think that's where the expansion is, but but the other thing I'll say is there's terms like training, and programs and practices that I think should have been defined much more narrowly than UT has chosen to define them.
Interviewer: So my next question is: funding is a major aspect of the losses on campus. How do you predict the reallocation of funding will impact the campus.? And, I also know that this could kind of tie into the fact that the loss of funding is what's being threatened with UT if they are not within compliance as well.
Faculty: Yeah. I mean, it remains to be seen, that's a very hard question to predict. I think the threat of losing funds due to being out of compliance is one that it seems, you know, is driving UT's practices on the matter. You know, so you've cut a whole division as well as 60 plus staff. So that's a lot of money. So someone said it's around $400 million?
Interviewer: Wow.
Faculty: I don't know if that's accurate. But that's what I remember seeing that number. So what does that mean? You know, President Hartzell says that's going to go to support the teaching and research mission of the university. You know, there's no clarity. About what that that looks like, does that mean hiring more faculty? Does that mean supporting graduate students in a better way? Does that mean providing, you know, more kinds of Student Services resources for undergrads? I mean, it's totally unclear. I would guess, though, that it'll look nothing like the kinds of support, for example, that those resources were used for before.
Interviewer: Okay. Okay. My next question is back on the DCCE. So the closure of the DCCE, which is formerly the DDCE Division of Diversity and Community Engagement was a major recent decision. What does it mean for our community on campus? And why do you think this division was included in universities compliance with SB 17? So kind of tying in a lot of stuff we were just talking about?
Faculty: Well, I think, you know, SB-17, is very explicit that campus can have no DEI officers so that that makes sense that DDCE would have to go under the law. The transition to DCCE should have taken care of that. I've seen the compliance documents that says they were in compliance with the law. And they had a completely different remit from what I understand. So...
Interviewer: Yeah, it is interesting. I do remember there were maybe it was a couple of students who were concerned still over the Women's Community Center and the name of that and whether or not that would fall under, I guess, the gender identity section of the law.
Faculty: It could have, except for it can't because of Title Nine, so federal law trumps state law. So that's where the Women's Community Center was. Yeah. Should have been protected.
Interviewer: Yeah, so I guess it's just kind of, I don't know. I don't necessarily have an answer for this question, either. But yeah, I don't know. I've heard some people have been talking about the term "over compliance" a whole lot, which might apply here. I don't know.
Faculty: Yeah, this is all where you see the pliability of legal perspective, right. So if you talk to the ACLU, or the NAACP, their their view on how what SB 17 means is very different than how the VP LA is interpreting SB 17. So who's right, who's wrong? I mean, if NAACP and AAUP and whoever else was opposed to SB 17 can, you know, find grounds from which to file a lawsuit, then, you know, we'll find out as we go through the courts, right, but these things are this is, you know, where the laws, people think laws objective, there's there's nothing objective. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Interviewer: This is kind of, I think this is one of the questions that was before I changed any of them. So before any of like any other changes on campus were implemented. How did you feel about the efforts to foster inclusivity on campus?
Faculty: Oh, they're not nearly enough.
Interviewer: Really?
Faculty: I mean, I think they were going in the right direction. I think DDCE, particularly, under you know, Dr. Latoya Smith's leadership was really doing some important work. Really sort of, I think working against the stereotype of DEI as just window dressing, which is what a lot of DEI seems like, right? You make someone take a little training, but you know, you don't structurally change anything. But I think under Dr. Smith's leadership, you know, people were feeling pretty good about diversity work. I think people were feeling like their voices were heard they were feeling there was sufficient resources there space. Doesn't mean that this campus isn't still a very hostile place, because it absolutely was, and it's only going to be worse, I guarantee you. Students face constant microaggressions in their classes on campus, you know, it's not a welcoming place, but DEI made a difference. Because at least there were spaces you could go, at least there were staff who were designed to serve your needs, at least there was, you know, an office to do this, that and the other. None of those things exist now. So for students of color, queer/trans students, for, maybe not first gen, but students marginalized based on their race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, these kinds of things. The places they used to go don't exist now. So how do you make a way? You don't have the resources that helped it to be tolerable when it's generally intolerable.
Interviewer: Yeah. And because I'm taking this project from also historical, like, mainly a historical perspective, a whole, like a really big part of this is how UT has been historically, so exclusionary, and arguably, as you say, like still today is very exclusionary. So it's just kind of this is, a continuation of that timeline of how we've progressed since, well Sweatt v. Painter is kind of my beginning point here.
Faculty: Sure.
Interviewer: So yeah. Here, this is actually, kind of your question that you told me to ask: in your own opinion, why do you think SB 17 was enacted?
Faculty: Yeah, it's a question we're spending some time thinking about right? So I think, if you asked Senator Creighton, I suspect he would say, because he'd been hearing from a lot of aggrieved white men, on campuses like UT's that they were being forced to take trainings that they didn't want to take, they were being forced to treat people with dignity and respect who they had no respect for. They were being asked to use pronouns that, in their view, weren't the pronouns they should have to use. They were asked to treat women like humans, these kinds of things. So I think, you know, and that was divisive for them, they felt that they no longer were just able to be who they were, because they were having to treat other people with respect. So I think, you know, that would be what what you would hear from someone who proposed the bill. But the you know, the truth is, this all comes from think tanks. So Chris Ruffo, and the Manhattan Institute are absolutely the driving forces behind this legislation. I mean, you can see the language from draft legislation, the Manhattan Institute, produced in January 2023, replicated almost word for word in SB 17. So maybe that's just you know, unfortunate plagiarism. But, there's a reason why these think tanks have so much power. There has been money for decades now by very wealthy donors, like say, the Koch brothers, right, and the different funders that they have. They're very invested in having an influence in higher education, and sort of returning higher education to a space where a rich white man controls the agenda. Now, I don't know that that's, like Brandon Creighton, that's what he's trying to do. But, that's what he's participating in.
Interviewer: And I have kind of a little follow up to that is that Senator Creighton focuses a lot in like, what he says about this bill, is that merit should be what is the determining factor in admissions decisions and things like that on campus. Do you think that in any way, this would be able to promote fairness, like, I guess the idea of merit, or fairness in admissions or anything on campus?
Faculty: Well, the question is who gets to define what merit is? So you know, we know for example, that standardized tests are racist. We've known that for decades. Yet we still use them. And they are one of the primary ways we evaluate merit. Is that actually merit? If it's already been shown to actually be biased for a certain group and against other groups? How is that about merit? Even when we think about what is deemed the kind of knowledge you have to have, right to get a college degree, or to be the top of the class, right? All of those standards, they weren't created by people like you or me. Right? They were created by elite, white citizen, Christian men in this country. And they are designed in ways to serve their interests. So everything we have had historically, to define "merit" has come from a very biased perspective. So even if we said, "Okay, sure, it's biased, but it's our standard, we're going to use it." Okay, so let's just accept that for a minute. What are the things that are in your life, that might give you a benefit in being able to achieve that or not? So let's say I agree that the SAT is a good test, okay. And if my parents are rich, and my parents are white, and so I'm rich, and I'm white, and my parents get me a tutor, they pay for me to get one of those books, how to study for the SAT, and and then they pay for me to take one of those Kaplan courses. Okay, I'm probably going to do pretty good on the SAT. But if I'm, say, a person of color, and immigrant, and I'm poor, so one, we've already know that the material that's on the SAT isn't going to reflect my experience, and has been shown to be biased against me, so let's just start there. But then, if I'm poor, are my parents gonna be able to hire a tutor for me? Pay for the Kaplan class? So who's going to do better, on the test? But what bills like SB 17 do is they want to erase all of that. They want to pretend that the privilege that the rich white person has isn't privileged at all, it's just normal and natural. And anybody else who doesn't have access to that is deficient. Right? So even if you accept their definition of what merit is, right, which I don't, but even if you did, then you would have to find a way to account for all the things that enable certain groups to achieve merit and others not. But without even the band aid that is DEI, we're just basically widening that gap. And then pretending the gap doesn't exist in the first place. And it's that poor, immigrant person's fault? And it's all merit over here for the rich white person, right? They just, it's not that they have privileges, just, they're better, right? I mean, that kind of logic, is what supports a discourse that says that we have to go back to merit. It's like, it is ridiculous. It does not exist, on any level. And there's also plenty of research to show that, you know, diverse environments actually produce better results. So, the sort of dichotomy between diversity and excellence, is also just a ruse.
Interviewer: So my, actually, I think this is the last question I have on here. But I want to add something to it. Because I didn't think about this until yesterday as a question for some reason. So do you think that this moment, this event is going to be important to UT's history, because that's the crux of my project. But also, the whole point of what I'm doing is trying to gather as much primary source material of what we still have record of, essentially, online, like mission statements, things like that. I was looking at the announcement of the Strategic Plan for Inclusion, which is a website that's no longer available and the PDF for what that plan was, is no longer available. So, the question is: in this digital age, what, what can we do to try and preserve this kind of stuff? What kind of effect will it have to no longer have access to these websites? And how, like the DCCE, the mission statement on the website is completely different from what it used to be. But there's no way to find those kinds of things anymore because they can just be wiped out. So, what kind of effect do you think that that has for I guess, just like, marking this in history, and kind of the way that people understand how the university has functioned, relating to DEI, and things like that?
Faculty: I mean, this is a bigger problem for historians. Right? Yeah, I remember, I think it was under the Obama administration, when reporters started noting that, from like, one day to the next, the Obama administration would be slightly changing the wording in its daily updates, they put on the website. If something had been like a little bit controversial or something, it was just these subtle changes, and they started notice. And, back in the day, there would have been a press document by paper sent out, so everyone would have had the same thing. And so you couldn't do that. But this is the problem of the digital era. And I know, just the last year has been so chaotic. Like, I have not even tried to keep all the materials. Yeah, like there's a lot of it in my email, for example. There's a lot of random Google Docs. And I think like, someone in AAUP, for a while was keeping track of all of the the news reports. You know, but like I didn't think about it last fall, I was like, I should go and basically download the entire UT website. But I didn't have time to do it, you know. So it's like, I think this is kind of the new normal. I hope somebody has done that. And they'll eventually that'll, you know, they'll reveal themselves. Because it makes it very hard to mark this moment without being able to, you know, directly compare things. Yeah, in the primary sources. But this is a significant moment. I mean, I'm working on a an op-ed right now with another colleague about all this and we're calling it segregation 2.0. And so I think that your starting with, you know, Sweatt v. Painter is exactly right. And so, I think that's what this moment is really trying to return us to a pre-Sweatt moment.
Interviewer: I had like a thought that I came up with while I was listening, I don't remember what it was. Yesterday, I actually found a video on the DCCE's YouTube that was from 2013. And it was like an induction, an introduction to the DDCE. And it's just this whole video explaining what the purpose of the DDCE was. And I transcribed the entire thing because I don't know how long it's going to be there.
Faculty: Smart, get just all those videos if you can.
Interviewer: Like, all of them?
Faculty: If you have a big storage, because they will go.
Interviewer: I might be able to, I don't know, but that one I thought was really, really important and interesting, because they were describing how the whole purpose of the DDCE like looking back at the history of UT and understanding the point that we came from, which is what I'm working on as well. And then I remember there was one of the members that said, UT needs to be look like the demographics of Texas. And it's just like all of the language and the things that they were talking about is completely different from what we're able to see from the university now. So I just thought that that was super, I don't know, it's just very jarring, I think from all the things that we've seen now. And then also, the fact that videos like that are not going to be available anymore in a very near future is very, it's upsetting the least. But, yeah, that was the last question that I had for you. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up?
Faculty: Not off the top of my head.
Interviewer: Okay, awesome. I'll go ahead and stop this.
Faculty: Sure.
Interviewer: Okay. Awesome. All right. So, we can start with what organizations, associations and departments you are a member of, or a part of on campus?
Faculty: Sure. I guess, relevant to this: I'm on the executive committee of the UT Austin American Association of University Professors. And I'm also the Shair of the Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies here at UT.
Interviewer: Okay, awesome. And then, so what has changed about how these organizations function, or your role within these organizations since the bill has been implemented in January?
Faculty: Sure, I mean, so AAUP is kind of an adjacent organization to UT Austin. In other words, it's a professional organization. So it's not that it has changed, really, because we really serve as a kind of watchdog, to make sure that the university is living up to its values in terms of free speech and academic freedom, shared governance, and due process when relevant. So it's not, again, that that's changed for us. What has changed, I guess, for us in AAUP, is simply the amount of watchdogging we have had to do. So, we definitely over the last year with SB-17, and SB-18 as well, we've had a lot of concerns that we've tried to raise with our administration about, you know, whether they're protecting academic freedom, free speech, whether they're living up to their their stated values regarding tenure and shared governance, and some of those things. So, you know, in that way, that's how our work has changed. In the department, as department chair, it's also not yet that that much has changed, as an ethnic studies department, everything we do is open to everyone, and we're an academic department. But our orientation is around, you know, Latinos. And so the bulk of what we do is not included in the purview of SB 17. But there are some things that have changed in the sense of partnerships that we would have once had with something like the Hispanic Faculty and Staff Association, or maybe even Latina/Latino Cultural Affairs. The nature of those relationships has changed, as well as we can no longer offer or support any events that are for Latinos. Which is kind of ironic.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Faculty: But that's the nature of the reality.
Interviewer: I guess you kind've touched on this, this is like an addendum to the question. Are there very specific challenges that you see happening with this, or maybe ones that you foresee happening, I don't know, as this progresses, especially since the DDCE or DCCE, I guess now, has been announced to be shut down.
Faculty: Yeah, I mean, you know, the announcement came last week, my faculty, and I'll discuss it tomorrow. And what does it look like, as an ethnic studies department that is populated largely by Latino faculty? Most of our majors and our PhD students are also you know, Latinx. And we have long, even though we're an academic department, we've also served as a certain kind of cultural home for folks who aren't necessarily majors or minors. And so what is it going to look like to try to fill in some of the gaps that are going to be left by the closing of DCCE, and Multicultural Engagement Center, etc? So, you know, there are lots of services that UT is not going to provide any longer. I don't know that we can do that. I don't know that as an academic department we have the capacity to fill all that. There's some we can, but there's some we just won't be able to because if DCCE can't do it, neither can MALS.
Interviewer: I was recently in a meeting where it was expressed that because the Services for Students with Disabilities is no longer going to be under DCCE, so the person who was talking, and expressed that, I think it's Student Affairs that it's getting moved under, they don't have the capacity to handle what that initiative requires. So it's going to be kind of a similar issue, where all of the things that have been moved out from under the DCCE, just being looped under other departments, and they don't necessarily have the ability to fully dedicate their time and efforts to those things.
Faculty: Yeah, I mean, it remains to be seen, right? So what happens when you no longer have all the people who are really interested, specifically in how you make campus more welcoming and hospitable for everyone? When most of those people, you fire?And the ones you keep, you've sprinkled throughout campus, so they're no longer having those conversations about best practices, etc? I think yeah, there's a very good chance that the services that remain like Disability Services won't be what they were.
Interviewer: So my next question is about the bill specifically. I know that you testified against the bill back when they were having hearings. So, I assume you've read the actual bill. So, when it comes to like the language that's in the bill, what do you understand that it covers and, was it easily understandable, what was covered in the bill?
Faculty: In some ways, it's kind of a hard question, because I think when the bill went in to effect and became a law, I thought I very much understood it. I had spoken with attorneys who I respect, who confirmed that my understanding was accurate in their legal view. But then once we started getting the interpretations from the Vice President of Legal Affairs office here at UT, as well as the UT System's legal office, realized I apparently didn't understand it, in the same way. So, I think UT has interpreted the law in overly expansive ways. But I also think there's ways in which the law was written more expansively than some of us thought it was when it went into effect.
Interviewer: I'm trying to remain as objective as possible when I'm asking these questions. Was there I guess, specific language that you think maybe was written in a way to where it could be interpreted further than it maybe was understood at the time that it was adopted?
Faculty: So, I think a couple of things on that. So one, I think, one source of the expansive interpretation, at least the UT Austin's making, has to do with a section that says, you know, no- I don't remember these, I'm not gonna pull it up. But it's like, basically, there's no entity that could be designed for, or implemented in a way that it's meant for a particular group. So if that had said, "and," that would have been a different kind of thing. But because it says "or", that essentially means even though, so you see, today, I'm wearing my Hispanic Faculty and Staff Association shirt. So Hispanic Faculty, and Staff Association is not designed just for Hispanics, necessarily. It's open to everybody. We have, you know, a variety of folks in the group. But it is implemented in such a way that it's, you know, because it has the name Hispanic in the title, I think it falls under the law. If you, you know, I mean, there's room for interpretation there, but that's how they're interpreting it and that "or" carries a lot of weight there. So, I think that's where the expansion is, but but the other thing I'll say is there's terms like training, and programs and practices that I think should have been defined much more narrowly than UT has chosen to define them.
Interviewer: So my next question is: funding is a major aspect of the losses on campus. How do you predict the reallocation of funding will impact the campus.? And, I also know that this could kind of tie into the fact that the loss of funding is what's being threatened with UT if they are not within compliance as well.
Faculty: Yeah. I mean, it remains to be seen, that's a very hard question to predict. I think the threat of losing funds due to being out of compliance is one that it seems, you know, is driving UT's practices on the matter. You know, so you've cut a whole division as well as 60 plus staff. So that's a lot of money. So someone said it's around $400 million?
Interviewer: Wow.
Faculty: I don't know if that's accurate. But that's what I remember seeing that number. So what does that mean? You know, President Hartzell says that's going to go to support the teaching and research mission of the university. You know, there's no clarity. About what that that looks like, does that mean hiring more faculty? Does that mean supporting graduate students in a better way? Does that mean providing, you know, more kinds of Student Services resources for undergrads? I mean, it's totally unclear. I would guess, though, that it'll look nothing like the kinds of support, for example, that those resources were used for before.
Interviewer: Okay. Okay. My next question is back on the DCCE. So the closure of the DCCE, which is formerly the DDCE Division of Diversity and Community Engagement was a major recent decision. What does it mean for our community on campus? And why do you think this division was included in universities compliance with SB 17? So kind of tying in a lot of stuff we were just talking about?
Faculty: Well, I think, you know, SB-17, is very explicit that campus can have no DEI officers so that that makes sense that DDCE would have to go under the law. The transition to DCCE should have taken care of that. I've seen the compliance documents that says they were in compliance with the law. And they had a completely different remit from what I understand. So...
Interviewer: Yeah, it is interesting. I do remember there were maybe it was a couple of students who were concerned still over the Women's Community Center and the name of that and whether or not that would fall under, I guess, the gender identity section of the law.
Faculty: It could have, except for it can't because of Title Nine, so federal law trumps state law. So that's where the Women's Community Center was. Yeah. Should have been protected.
Interviewer: Yeah, so I guess it's just kind of, I don't know. I don't necessarily have an answer for this question, either. But yeah, I don't know. I've heard some people have been talking about the term "over compliance" a whole lot, which might apply here. I don't know.
Faculty: Yeah, this is all where you see the pliability of legal perspective, right. So if you talk to the ACLU, or the NAACP, their their view on how what SB 17 means is very different than how the VP LA is interpreting SB 17. So who's right, who's wrong? I mean, if NAACP and AAUP and whoever else was opposed to SB 17 can, you know, find grounds from which to file a lawsuit, then, you know, we'll find out as we go through the courts, right, but these things are this is, you know, where the laws, people think laws objective, there's there's nothing objective. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Interviewer: This is kind of, I think this is one of the questions that was before I changed any of them. So before any of like any other changes on campus were implemented. How did you feel about the efforts to foster inclusivity on campus?
Faculty: Oh, they're not nearly enough.
Interviewer: Really?
Faculty: I mean, I think they were going in the right direction. I think DDCE, particularly, under you know, Dr. Latoya Smith's leadership was really doing some important work. Really sort of, I think working against the stereotype of DEI as just window dressing, which is what a lot of DEI seems like, right? You make someone take a little training, but you know, you don't structurally change anything. But I think under Dr. Smith's leadership, you know, people were feeling pretty good about diversity work. I think people were feeling like their voices were heard they were feeling there was sufficient resources there space. Doesn't mean that this campus isn't still a very hostile place, because it absolutely was, and it's only going to be worse, I guarantee you. Students face constant microaggressions in their classes on campus, you know, it's not a welcoming place, but DEI made a difference. Because at least there were spaces you could go, at least there were staff who were designed to serve your needs, at least there was, you know, an office to do this, that and the other. None of those things exist now. So for students of color, queer/trans students, for, maybe not first gen, but students marginalized based on their race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, these kinds of things. The places they used to go don't exist now. So how do you make a way? You don't have the resources that helped it to be tolerable when it's generally intolerable.
Interviewer: Yeah. And because I'm taking this project from also historical, like, mainly a historical perspective, a whole, like a really big part of this is how UT has been historically, so exclusionary, and arguably, as you say, like still today is very exclusionary. So it's just kind of this is, a continuation of that timeline of how we've progressed since, well Sweatt v. Painter is kind of my beginning point here.
Faculty: Sure.
Interviewer: So yeah. Here, this is actually, kind of your question that you told me to ask: in your own opinion, why do you think SB 17 was enacted?
Faculty: Yeah, it's a question we're spending some time thinking about right? So I think, if you asked Senator Creighton, I suspect he would say, because he'd been hearing from a lot of aggrieved white men, on campuses like UT's that they were being forced to take trainings that they didn't want to take, they were being forced to treat people with dignity and respect who they had no respect for. They were being asked to use pronouns that, in their view, weren't the pronouns they should have to use. They were asked to treat women like humans, these kinds of things. So I think, you know, and that was divisive for them, they felt that they no longer were just able to be who they were, because they were having to treat other people with respect. So I think, you know, that would be what what you would hear from someone who proposed the bill. But the you know, the truth is, this all comes from think tanks. So Chris Ruffo, and the Manhattan Institute are absolutely the driving forces behind this legislation. I mean, you can see the language from draft legislation, the Manhattan Institute, produced in January 2023, replicated almost word for word in SB 17. So maybe that's just you know, unfortunate plagiarism. But, there's a reason why these think tanks have so much power. There has been money for decades now by very wealthy donors, like say, the Koch brothers, right, and the different funders that they have. They're very invested in having an influence in higher education, and sort of returning higher education to a space where a rich white man controls the agenda. Now, I don't know that that's, like Brandon Creighton, that's what he's trying to do. But, that's what he's participating in.
Interviewer: And I have kind of a little follow up to that is that Senator Creighton focuses a lot in like, what he says about this bill, is that merit should be what is the determining factor in admissions decisions and things like that on campus. Do you think that in any way, this would be able to promote fairness, like, I guess the idea of merit, or fairness in admissions or anything on campus?
Faculty: Well, the question is who gets to define what merit is? So you know, we know for example, that standardized tests are racist. We've known that for decades. Yet we still use them. And they are one of the primary ways we evaluate merit. Is that actually merit? If it's already been shown to actually be biased for a certain group and against other groups? How is that about merit? Even when we think about what is deemed the kind of knowledge you have to have, right to get a college degree, or to be the top of the class, right? All of those standards, they weren't created by people like you or me. Right? They were created by elite, white citizen, Christian men in this country. And they are designed in ways to serve their interests. So everything we have had historically, to define "merit" has come from a very biased perspective. So even if we said, "Okay, sure, it's biased, but it's our standard, we're going to use it." Okay, so let's just accept that for a minute. What are the things that are in your life, that might give you a benefit in being able to achieve that or not? So let's say I agree that the SAT is a good test, okay. And if my parents are rich, and my parents are white, and so I'm rich, and I'm white, and my parents get me a tutor, they pay for me to get one of those books, how to study for the SAT, and and then they pay for me to take one of those Kaplan courses. Okay, I'm probably going to do pretty good on the SAT. But if I'm, say, a person of color, and immigrant, and I'm poor, so one, we've already know that the material that's on the SAT isn't going to reflect my experience, and has been shown to be biased against me, so let's just start there. But then, if I'm poor, are my parents gonna be able to hire a tutor for me? Pay for the Kaplan class? So who's going to do better, on the test? But what bills like SB 17 do is they want to erase all of that. They want to pretend that the privilege that the rich white person has isn't privileged at all, it's just normal and natural. And anybody else who doesn't have access to that is deficient. Right? So even if you accept their definition of what merit is, right, which I don't, but even if you did, then you would have to find a way to account for all the things that enable certain groups to achieve merit and others not. But without even the band aid that is DEI, we're just basically widening that gap. And then pretending the gap doesn't exist in the first place. And it's that poor, immigrant person's fault? And it's all merit over here for the rich white person, right? They just, it's not that they have privileges, just, they're better, right? I mean, that kind of logic, is what supports a discourse that says that we have to go back to merit. It's like, it is ridiculous. It does not exist, on any level. And there's also plenty of research to show that, you know, diverse environments actually produce better results. So, the sort of dichotomy between diversity and excellence, is also just a ruse.
Interviewer: So my, actually, I think this is the last question I have on here. But I want to add something to it. Because I didn't think about this until yesterday as a question for some reason. So do you think that this moment, this event is going to be important to UT's history, because that's the crux of my project. But also, the whole point of what I'm doing is trying to gather as much primary source material of what we still have record of, essentially, online, like mission statements, things like that. I was looking at the announcement of the Strategic Plan for Inclusion, which is a website that's no longer available and the PDF for what that plan was, is no longer available. So, the question is: in this digital age, what, what can we do to try and preserve this kind of stuff? What kind of effect will it have to no longer have access to these websites? And how, like the DCCE, the mission statement on the website is completely different from what it used to be. But there's no way to find those kinds of things anymore because they can just be wiped out. So, what kind of effect do you think that that has for I guess, just like, marking this in history, and kind of the way that people understand how the university has functioned, relating to DEI, and things like that?
Faculty: I mean, this is a bigger problem for historians. Right? Yeah, I remember, I think it was under the Obama administration, when reporters started noting that, from like, one day to the next, the Obama administration would be slightly changing the wording in its daily updates, they put on the website. If something had been like a little bit controversial or something, it was just these subtle changes, and they started notice. And, back in the day, there would have been a press document by paper sent out, so everyone would have had the same thing. And so you couldn't do that. But this is the problem of the digital era. And I know, just the last year has been so chaotic. Like, I have not even tried to keep all the materials. Yeah, like there's a lot of it in my email, for example. There's a lot of random Google Docs. And I think like, someone in AAUP, for a while was keeping track of all of the the news reports. You know, but like I didn't think about it last fall, I was like, I should go and basically download the entire UT website. But I didn't have time to do it, you know. So it's like, I think this is kind of the new normal. I hope somebody has done that. And they'll eventually that'll, you know, they'll reveal themselves. Because it makes it very hard to mark this moment without being able to, you know, directly compare things. Yeah, in the primary sources. But this is a significant moment. I mean, I'm working on a an op-ed right now with another colleague about all this and we're calling it segregation 2.0. And so I think that your starting with, you know, Sweatt v. Painter is exactly right. And so, I think that's what this moment is really trying to return us to a pre-Sweatt moment.
Interviewer: I had like a thought that I came up with while I was listening, I don't remember what it was. Yesterday, I actually found a video on the DCCE's YouTube that was from 2013. And it was like an induction, an introduction to the DDCE. And it's just this whole video explaining what the purpose of the DDCE was. And I transcribed the entire thing because I don't know how long it's going to be there.
Faculty: Smart, get just all those videos if you can.
Interviewer: Like, all of them?
Faculty: If you have a big storage, because they will go.
Interviewer: I might be able to, I don't know, but that one I thought was really, really important and interesting, because they were describing how the whole purpose of the DDCE like looking back at the history of UT and understanding the point that we came from, which is what I'm working on as well. And then I remember there was one of the members that said, UT needs to be look like the demographics of Texas. And it's just like all of the language and the things that they were talking about is completely different from what we're able to see from the university now. So I just thought that that was super, I don't know, it's just very jarring, I think from all the things that we've seen now. And then also, the fact that videos like that are not going to be available anymore in a very near future is very, it's upsetting the least. But, yeah, that was the last question that I had for you. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up?
Faculty: Not off the top of my head.
Interviewer: Okay, awesome. I'll go ahead and stop this.