For Immediate Release

Contact: Pauline Strong, PhD, President of the AAUP Chapter at UT Austin, strongpolly@gmail.com

Austin, Texas, September 27, 2025– On September 25, 2025, University of Texas President Jim Davis communicated to faculty his plan for complying with SB 37, the new law that places restrictions on Faculty Senates in public institutions in the state of Texas. Our chapter, together with other chapters in the Texas AAUP Conference, strongly opposed this law, and we now strongly oppose the extremely undemocratic form in which the University of Texas has chosen to implement it.

Since 1920, the American Association of University Professors has promoted shared governance as the best means to ensure meaningful faculty participation in the governance of institutions of higher education. The AAUP’s 1966 Statement on Governance of Colleges and Universities was jointly developed with the American Council on Education and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and worked into the governing policies of universities across the country, including the University of Texas at Austin. Since even earlier–1945–the University of Texas Faculty Council has served as an essential mechanism for assuring academic freedom, due process, and faculty participation in university deliberations and decision-making. 

Although SB 37 puts severe limits on the representativeness of Faculty Senates, it does allow for half of the members of a Faculty Senate to be elected by the faculty. Instead, President Davis has chosen to institute a President’s Faculty Advisory Board and a Faculty Advisory Council in which every single member is recommended by Deans and appointed by the President. 

President Davis’s message to the faculty is that he values our guidance, advice, and collaboration. Yet his actions say otherwise. He is replacing an elected Faculty Council with a highly authoritarian, centralized system that will seriously limit the advice that he receives from our highly distinguished faculty. Our chapter President, Pauline Strong, says, “At a time when the University is promoting civics education, it is shocking that the University is instituting such an undemocratic form of governance. What message does this give our students? We strongly urge President Davis to reconsider this decision so that he will receive a wide range of advice from the faculty as a whole, not just those whom Deans and the President deem worthy of being heard.”

Every other public university system in the state has reinstated representative Faculty Senates that conform to SB 37. While these are a pale shadow of our former systems of shared governance, they are still far superior to the system instituted by the University of Texas. We call on President Davis to modify his plan to include elective faculty representatives to the extent allowed by SB 37. We also call on President Davis and Provost Inboden to communicate directly with the faculty–and not only with Deans–with further details about the new faculty advisory structure and how it will affect our crucial rights to academic freedom, due process, and participation in university deliberations–particularly deliberations in those areas in which faculty have particular investment and expertise: the curriculum, hiring, promotion, tenure, faculty grievances, and academic freedom. ### 

Since 1915, the American Association of University Professors has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s colleges and universities. AAUP chapters at campuses across the country work to advance the mission of AAUP.