Upping The Ante

Ah yes, because what is a public university if not a partisan, political arm of the state legislature. https://t.co/Vr3gXt5dz2

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 18, 2022

He's so close to getting it... https://t.co/3ER2lSGH3E

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 18, 2022

And all because the UT Faculty had the temerity to adopt a resolution that does nothing other than reaffirm the importance of academic freedom and faculty control of curricula:https://t.co/5hsmaC2G1P

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 18, 2022

Just to say this directly, if this proposal actually makes its way into law, it will simply destroy @UTAustin's ability to compete with any other research university in the country.

Maybe that helps @DanPatrick score political points, but how is that actually good for *Texas*? https://t.co/IO2TLiDUR2

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 18, 2022

Definitely curious to see if all of the folks who were so quick to launch into loud defenses of academic freedom to protect an untenured head of a law school center will have anything public to say about @DanPatrick's proposal to eliminate tenure at all public Texas universities.

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 18, 2022

Professor Vladeck left out the best part:

The next day, @DanPatrick responded by pledging to ban the teaching of critical race theory from public universities.

“I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with Critical Race Theory,” he tweeted.https://t.co/tEblbCYn5W

— Megan Menchaca (@meganmmenchaca) February 18, 2022

Because teaching students to think critically is not teaching them to....think?  Believe me, Randy Newman came closer to the truth than Patrick ever has:

Good ol' boys from LSU

Went in dumb, come out dumb, too.

Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes

Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecue

Teaching people to think like a lawyer; or a doctor, or an engineer, is a simple task compared to teaching people to simply think, for themselves.  The majority of students at any university, from the Ivy Leagues to the community colleges, is barely at risk of learning that lesson.

Patrick's comments?  Honestly? I think he's trolling.  Well, he might as well be.  Remember what I said about UT Alumni?  Now up that to the other universities in the state (well, except A&M, which has proven itself to not care about academics at all).  Several of them are proud of their status as research facilities, based on some new and wildly popular designation of "Top Tier Research University" or some such.  Every school in Texas wants that title, like it was a Nobel Prize for Universities or something.  Patrick has as much chance of endangering that as he does of flying to the moon under his own power.  The party primaries have started, early voting runs until the end of the month or thereabouts.  Patrick will talk like this now, but it won't go anywhere in 2023.  Oh, he may get it through the Texas Senate; but it dies of starvation after that.  Guaranteed.  Take it to the bank.

Of course, it won't hurt to have it noticed by people like Professor Vladeck.  But this is Texas; we've fought this fight since UT had to go co-ed.  Anything that threatens the accreditation of the public universities is never going to become law.  Too many people want their kids to have those college degrees that are worth something.  Having the Lege set the curriculum of the public universities would reduce them all to clown colleges, unaccredited clown colleges, in a heartbeat.

The risk of that is not negligible, but it never is.  It is, however, almost nil.  That's as good as it ever gets around here. The biggest risk is critics as self-important as Patrick.  That, nobody needs:

The First Amendment does not permit the Texas government to impose a “pall of orthodoxy” over higher education.

We look forward to explaining to the Lt. Governor why academic freedom is the lifeblood of American universities.https://t.co/vduB9ytYRo #freespeech #AcademicFreedom

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) February 18, 2022

Let's wait until September 2023 before we start making litigious threats, huh? All you're doing is fueling Patrick's political fires. As Jack Nicholson famously said: "Peddle crazy somewhere else. We're all full up here."