How Now, Woke Longhorn? An Open Letter to University of Texas President Jay Hartzell

How Now, Woke Longhorn? An Open Letter to University of Texas President Jay Hartzell

[Note: The following is an open letter from Louis K. Bonham, intellectual property litigator and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, to the president of the University of Texas, Jay Hartzell. As with Mr. Bonham’s previous open letters to them, neither President Hartzell nor UT responded to requests for comment.]

President Hartzell,

For the last several years, various organizations as well as concerned UT alumni and faculty have sounded the alarm that UT’s embrace of the woke agenda, particularly at the expense of bedrock academic principles, would negatively rebound on the school.   UT was repeatedly warned that things like its woke speech codes and DEI Faculty Initiative (both of which were the hobbyhorses of certain radical faculty members) were illegal, poor policy, downright immoral, and likely would eventually result in blowback (including from the Texas Legislature).

These programs began in earnest when former UT President Greg Fenves went all-in on the woke agenda at UT.  When you replaced him, you had the opportunity to heed these warnings and change UT’s course.   But because either you supported this woke agenda, or simply were afraid to confront the professional grievance-mongers on the faculty who were pushing it (e.g., Edmund Gordon, whom you instead made UT’s Vice President for Diversity), you chose not to do so, and for whatever reason doubled down on the woke agenda at UT.

For instance, despite your pious postulations as to the importance of intellectual diversity and free speech on campus, you did absolutely nothing in response to the Law School’s preemptive surrender to campus activists when it imposed ideological handcuffs on its new Law and Religion Clinic (which ironically is part of the Law School’s newly endowed First Amendment Center) — unprecedented restrictions not placed on any other UT law clinic, especially ones backing openly leftist causes.  Nor did you take action against instances of cancel culture being employed by UT administrators against UT faculty.

When I wrote you for comment on what you would actually do to address UT’s abysmal reputation on free speech, you refused to respond, as you did with similar inquiries about taxpayer-funded UT awards for programs such as how to teach Kendian “anti-racism” to four year old children.

After some alumni donors and faculty took you at your word that UT needed a variety of opinions on campus, and organized to bring in some intellectual diversity in the form of the proposed Liberty Institute (which would have functioned autonomously, à la Hoover Institute at Stanford), the Texas Legislature backed that effort.  But after campus wokesters threw a tantrum about having anything on campus that might contradict the woke monoculture, you surrendered to them immediately, lobotomizing the program and retaliating against the proposed institute’s faculty backers after they blew the whistle on your “bait and switch” of the Texas Legislature.

Most significantly, you aggressively backed the cornerstone of the Fenves DEI edifice, UT’s DEI Faculty Initiative.   When a draft of this radical program was leaked, you initially downplayed concerns about it that were voiced by the National Association of Scholars and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).   Then, when it was too late in the session for the Texas Legislature to do anything in response, you adopted it.  Afterwards, when a UT faculty member publicly warned you that experts had opined that this program was likely illegal, you smirked and quite literally laughed at that possibility (as shown on this video at the 45:45 mark).

I daresay you are not laughing now.

UT’s speech codes have been excoriated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and UT remains the worst ranked public university in FIRE’s rankings of campus free speech.  UT’s DEI programs and your full-throated endorsement of the woke agenda were a big part of why the Texas Legislature passed SB17 in the last legislative session, which on paper required UT to dismantle its DEI programs.  And of course the Supreme Court has now made it clear that race conscious admission programs in higher education — such as those UT has long embraced and defended — are indeed illegal.

More importantly, with the re-election of President Trump the chickens are coming home to roost:

• Likely new National Institute of Health head Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is already floating the denial of federal research funding to universities that have poor FIRE rankings for free speech and expression on campus, and I suspect other federal agencies may follow suit. Given UT’s poor FIRE ratings, your embrace of woke cancel culture may well now severely impair UT’s ability to secure what are likely going to be increasingly scarce federal research funds.
• The Department of Education is widely expected to issue a directive to schools advising them that the DoEd considers programs that discriminate for or against people on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, etc., in admission, hiring, tenure, promotion, or funding are illegal under federal law. (Indeed, President Trump has summoned DEI arch-enemy Christopher Rufo to Mar-a-Lago to brief him on how to gut DEI in higher education nationwide, as well as throughout the federal government.)  Expect to see a DoEd requirement that UT’s nondiscrimination certification (required for eligibility for federal funds) must include a sworn statement that all DEI programs have actually been dismantled.
• Unlike Texas SB17 (which, thanks to the Phelan Machine [an alliance of Texas RINO’s and Democrats that controlled the Texas House] watering it down, has few real consequences for individuals and schools who fib about discontinuing their DEI programs), false nondiscrimination certifications to the feds carry potential criminal liability for university officials who sign them. Schools that obtain federal funds through use of such false certifications will also be violating the federal False Claims Act, which would also open them up to private qui tam lawsuits by whistleblowers.  (I predict a growth industry for lawyers filing qui tam suits against recalcitrant universities for fun and profit — and there are plenty out there who would gladly take a swing at UT.)
• UT will no longer be able to rely on the DoEd’s Office of Civil Rights simply ignoring UT’s winks at federal law by continuing to participate in designedly discriminatory programs like the Forte MBA Fellowships.

Additionally, with the Phelan Machine now defenestrated, UT can no longer to rely on its traditional protectors in the Texas House of Representatives.  UT could well face a day of reckoning in the form of a tsunami of adverse state actions from hostile conservative legislators, Lt. Gov. Patrick, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.  Indeed, in responding to faculty wishing to “resist” implementation of SB17, you recognized and reminded them of this changed political climate (as shown in this transcript at pp.14-16 and associated video).

In short, your choices have now painted UT into a tight corner, leaving you very few options. The activist faculty and staff at UT — whose numbers have skyrocketed under your administration — know that you fear them, and thus will continue to frustrate and resist efforts to change the woke campus monoculture.  Proponents of reform (including state legislators) know your history of actively supporting DEI and cancel culture at UT (including smugly dismissing those who have tried to warn you of the consequences), as well as your duplicity with the Liberty Institute and your vindictive efforts to silence faculty critics.

With multiple storms now heading for UT, and the foreseeable consequences of your actions leaving you with a dearth of allies . . . how now, woke Longhorn?

Very truly yours,

Louis K. Bonham

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