\n<\/p>\n
In 2023, Texas became one of the first red states to institute a sweeping ban on diversity, equity and inclusion in public colleges and universities. <\/p>\n
Following pro-Palestinian protests and a police crackdown on an encampment at the University of Texas at Austin in 2024, the Texas Legislature this year passed another law restricting free speech on public campuses, including banning all expressive activities from 10\u00a0p.m. to 8\u00a0a.m. <\/p>\n
The Legislature also this year passed a wide-ranging bill that allows public college and university presidents to take over faculty senates and councils, prohibits faculty elected to those bodies from serving more than two years in a row, and creates an \u201combudsman\u201d position that can threaten universities\u2019 funding if they don\u2019t follow that law or the DEI ban. <\/p>\n
The lead author listed on all three laws is Sen. Brandon Creighton, chair of the Texas Senate education committee. Having overhauled higher ed statewide, he\u2019s about to get the chance to further his vision at one large university system: On Thursday, the Texas Tech University System plans to name Creighton the \u201csole finalist\u201d for the system chancellor and chief executive officer job.<\/p>\n
His hiring by the system\u2019s Board of Regents\u2014whose members are appointed by the governor with confirmation from the Senate\u2014marks another example of a Republican politician in a large red state, namely Texas and Florida, being installed as a higher ed leader. The trend reflects an evolution in how Republicans are influencing public universities, from passing laws to directly leading institutions and systems. For universities, having a former member of the Legislature in the presidency can help with lobbying lawmakers, but it could also threaten academic freedom and risk alienating faculty. <\/p>\n
Creighton wasn\u2019t the only, or even the highest-ranking, politician considered for the position, which historically pays more than $1\u00a0million a year. As The Texas Tribune<\/em> earlier reported, Rep. Jodey Arrington, chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee and shepherd of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which affected higher ed nationwide, was also in the running. Unlike Creighton, Arrington has worked in higher ed\u2014specifically as a vice chancellor and chancellor\u2019s chief of staff in the Texas Tech system. Arrington, who didn\u2019t provide Inside Higher Ed <\/em>an interview, issued a statement Sunday congratulating Creighton. <\/p>\n Faculty leaders offered a muted response to Creighton\u2019s impending appointment. Neither the president of the Faculty Senate at the main Texas Tech campus, the president of the university\u2019s chapter of the American Association of University Professors nor the state AAUP conference publicly denounced Creighton. In an emailed statement, the state conference said, \u201cWe have concerns about the future of academic freedom and shared governance in the Texas Tech University System given the positions Sen. Creighton has taken in the legislature.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope that Texas Tech\u2019s strong tradition of shared governance and academic freedom continues so that Texas Tech can thrive,\u201d the statement said. <\/p>\n Cody Campbell, the system board chair, said Creighton is \u201ca fantastic fit with our culture and is clearly the best person for the job.\u201d He added that he likes the higher ed legislation Creighton has passed. (Creighton was also lead author of a new law that lets universities pay athletes directly.) <\/p>\n \u201cHe shares the values of the Texas Tech University System,\u201d Campbell said. Both the system and the wider community of Lubbock, where the main Texas Tech campus is located, are \u201cconservative,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not subscribe to the ideas around DEI and are supportive of a merit-based culture,\u201d Campbell said, adding that Creighton is well positioned to continue the system\u2019s growth in research, enrollment and academic standing. <\/p>\n For Creighton, the job could come with a big payout. Retiring Texas Tech system chancellor Tedd L. Mitchell made $1.3\u00a0million in 2023, ranking him the 12th-highest-paid public university leader in the country, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>\u2019s database. The system didn\u2019t respond to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s open records request for Mitchell\u2019s current contract in time for this article\u2019s publication, and Campbell told Inside Higher Ed <\/em>Creighton\u2019s pay is \u201cyet to be determined.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe contract or the compensation were never part of the discussion with any of the candidates,\u201d Campbell said. <\/p>\n Creighton didn\u2019t provide Inside Higher Ed<\/em> an interview or answer written questions. But he appeared to accept the position in a post on X. <\/p>\n \u201cOver the past six years, no university system in Texas has taken more bold steps forward,\u201d he wrote. \u201cServing as Chairman of the Senate Education Committee and the Budget Subcommittee has been the honor of a lifetime\u2014especially to help deliver that success for Texas Tech and its regional universities. I feel very blessed to have been considered for the role of Chancellor. There is no greater purpose I would consider than working to make generational changes that transform the lives of young Texans for decades to come.\u201d <\/p>\n Campbell said he doesn\u2019t recall whether Creighton and Arrington initially expressed interest in the position to the board or whether the board reached out to them. Dustin Womble, the board\u2019s vice chair, declined to comment. Campbell said the board \u201cactively recruited\u201d some candidates. <\/p>\n \u201cThere wasn\u2019t really a formal application process, necessarily,\u201d he said. But dozens of candidates across the country expressed interest in the \u201chigh-paying position\u201d leading a large system, he said. <\/p>\n The system says it has more than 60,000 students across five institutions and 20 locations, including one in San Jos\u00e9, Costa Rica. The five institutions are Texas Tech (which has multiple campuses), Texas Tech Health Sciences Center (which also has multiple campuses), the separate Texas Tech Health Sciences Center El Paso, Angelo State University and Midwestern State University. <\/p>\n Asked about Creighton\u2019s lack of higher ed work experience, Campbell said that wasn\u2019t unusual for system chancellors, contrasting the position with those of the presidents who lead individual institutions on a day-to-day basis. <\/p>\n \u201cOur past chancellor was a medical doctor, the chancellor before him was a state senator, the chancellor before him was a former U.S. congressman and a state politician; we\u2019ve had businessmen in that position, we\u2019ve had all different types of people,\u201d Campbell said. <\/p>\n Aside from serving in the Senate for a decade and the state House for seven years before that, Creighton is an attorney. <\/p>\n Andrew Martin, the tenured art professor who leads the Texas Tech University main campus\u2019s AAUP chapter, noted that \u201cour chapter has actively opposed some of the legislation that Sen. Creighton has authored.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur hope now is that Sen. Creighton, in apparently assuming the role of chancellor, will spend time learning more about the campuses in the TTU System and will meet as many students, faculty [and] administrators on our campuses as possible to see how these institutions actually operate day in and day out,\u201d Martin said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure how clear that\u2019s been from his perspective as a lawyer and legislator.\u201d <\/p>\n Martin\u2014who stressed that he was speaking for himself and colleagues he\u2019s spoken to, but not on behalf of his university\u2014said the AAUP is concerned with maintaining academic freedom for faculty and students, upholding tenure protections, and preserving the faculty\u2019s role in determining curriculum, conducting research and exercising shared governance. <\/p>\n When the Legislature passed Senate Bill\u00a037\u2014the Creighton legislation that, among other things, upended faculty senates\u2014Creighton issued a news release saying, \u201cFaculty Senates will no longer control our campuses.\u201d He said his legislation \u201ctakes on politically charged academic programs and ensures students graduate with degrees of value, not degrees rooted in activism and political indoctrination.\u201d <\/p>\n Among other things, SB\u00a037 requires university presidents to choose who leads faculty senates. Ryan Cassidy, a tenured associate librarian, was elected to lead the Texas Tech University main campus\u2019s Faculty Senate before SB\u00a037 took effect, and the institution\u2019s president has allowed him to stay in that role. <\/p>\n Asked about Creighton being named chancellor, Cassidy said, \u201cI haven\u2019t really had time to reflect on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Creighton\u2019s bio on the Legislature\u2019s website touts his conservative values outside of higher ed, too. \u201cHe has relentlessly hammered excessive taxation, pursued \u2018loser pays\u2019 tort reform, passed drug testing for unemployment benefits, stood up for Texas\u2019 10th Amendment rights and effectively blocked Obamacare\u2019s Medicaid expansion,\u201d the bio says. <\/p>\n Martin said Texas Tech aspires to become a member of the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of top research universities, of which UT Austin and Texas A&M University are already members. That would be hard if faculty are \u201cmarginalized,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t get there without the huge investment of faculty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2023, Texas became one of the first red states to institute a sweeping ban on diversity, equity and inclusion in public colleges and universities. Following pro-Palestinian protests and a police crackdown on an encampment at the University of Texas at Austin in 2024, the Texas Legislature this year passed another law restricting free speech<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1653,4166,2274,960,620,812,1010],"class_list":{"0":"post-19024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-banned","9":"tag-chancellor","10":"tag-dei","11":"tag-senator","12":"tag-set","13":"tag-tech","14":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cowing Faculty Senates<\/h2>\n