Updated Sept. 21, 2023.

The UT Austin AAUP Chapter is very concerned about the level of employment protections currently afforded to tenured faculty at the 14 UT institutions.

Texas Senate Bill 18, which was signed into law on June 14, 2023, and took effect Sept. 1, 2023, defines tenure, changes post-tenure review policies, defines 10 reasons to dismiss a tenured faculty member, and adds the option for adoption of summary (immediate) dismissal of tenured faculty members. Of the ten reasons to dismiss a tenured faculty member, seven are vague and open to wide interpretation and abuse. The summary dismissal assumes the faculty member is guilty until proven innocent. Please see the Texas AAUP analysis of SB 18 for more information.

The UT Board of Regents adopted SB 18 with minor clarifications, and these updated Regents Rules now govern the dismissal of tenured faculty at all 14 UT institutions.  This is because none of the UT institutions had enough time to update their campus policies to comply with SB 18 by the Sept 1 deadline because the UT Board of Regents (BoR) had not adopted their changes until August 24.

The changes to the UT Regents Rules are essentially copied and pasted from SB 18.  Here’s a summary of the changes.  Red lines indicate changes released by the BoR on July 27th.  Yellow highlights indicate the mostly minor changes after the BoR received feedback from faculty and administrators.  Very few of the UT Austin AAUP Chapter’s suggestions were implemented.

In short, tenure dismissal policies at the 14 UT institutions are not in compliance with either SB 18 or the UT Regents Rules adopted to comply with SB 18.  At UT Austin, a committee of administrators and faculty senate leaders are developing campus policies for tenure dismissal.  

Every UT component institution will have a lot of work to do this Fall 2023 semester to create their own campus policies to provide strong protections for academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance per AAUP principles:

• The Faculty Senates for the UT component institutions could coordinate efforts through the UT System Faculty Advisory Council of the Faculty Senate Presidents and President-Elects
• AAUP Members and AAUP Chapters at UT component institutions could also contribute. Texas AAUP Conference Interim President Brian Evans is available to help (halftoning@juno.com) — he’s a former Faculty Senate President at UT Austin.
• The Faculty Senate at Texas Tech developed a model policy for implementing SB 18. That effort was led by J. Lewis Held (jerry.held@ttu.edu) who has offered to help other faculty members develop institutional policies.