Forced participation in DEI is well beyond "equality of all citizens". In fact, if you notice, the very word "equality" is banned there - you must say "equity", because equality is not enough. As Kendi teaches us, "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination". I don't think this has anything to do with "equality" - and yes, the fact that people are required to participate in this discrimination, advocate it and advance it, lead efforts to implement it, and "develop and implement a pedagogy and/or curriculum that promotes a race-conscious lens" - yes, I think this is as bad as banning a person from criticizing the government. In fact, it's worse - at least it doesn't force you to publicly agree with the government and actively lead the efforts to conform to the government and implement the government diktats and government-led discrimination in your pedagogical and scientific endeavors. At least the silence could be you refuge. It is worse when even a silent disagreement is declared to be "violence".

Many people believe what they teach works toward equality for all citizens, many people believe it undermines equality.

Regardless, teaching one side of a current controversy as fact in mandatory school is manipulation.

"Anti-racist rhetoric" is a very recent ideological phenomenon that is not yet proven to be effective solution for past and present racial injustice. It is possible for it to be flawed, prone to be implemented badly, or self-defeating and thus worthy of critique without being fired from academia (as in parent comment's example of California, or in Bret Weinstein's case).

It is also commonly defended and advanced by progressives. So it seems appropriate to categorize it as progressive.

Naming is not the be-all-end-all. If you think about the nomenclature of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is opposition to that country equivalent to "telling on yourself" as being against Democracy, Republics, Korea, or popular rule?

Seems pretty clear from the article that the expectations for professors was that they had to adhere, not to a general "don't be racist" code of conduct, but instead to a specific ideologies ("that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles"). I think it is reasonable to describe those ideologies as "progressive" (at least in the sense that they are promoted and promulgated almost exclusively by people who would describe themselves as progressive)...

Not sure what you mean by this - regardless of whether you agree with antiracism or progressivism- if you take them at face value, ie “progressivism” = reforming society to improve the average human condition, and “antiracism” = reforming society to be less racist, they seem fairly aligned, no?

Also I suspect that the venn diagram of politicians who self-identify as anti-racist, vs politicians who self-identify as progressive is something very close to a circle.

The binary nature of antiracism - if you’re not in agreement with antiracism you’re a racist - is not something I would associate with a middle of the road politician.

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> What actually happened is that the parliament slightly restricted the number of reasons the Supreme Court is allowed to use to overrule decisions of the government.

This seems a bit misleading. There's a lot more to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israeli_judicial_reform

> The Supreme Court can declare Knesset legislation unconstitutional. The reform would permit the Knesset to override such a ruling by reintroducing the legislation and approving it with a majority of Knesset members.

> Levin and the ruling government coalition have stated that the above is the first step in their judicial reform, and that additional steps are planned, including changing the appointment process of legal advisors to government ministries, such that they are appointed and dismissed by the ministers; making their legal advice a recommendation rather than binding on the ministers; and making them subordinate directly to the ministers rather than to the Justice Ministry's professional oversight.

> The coalition is also advancing a number of other bills concerning Israel's judicial system and the balance of powers, including reforms to widen the authority of the Rabbinical Court, allowing them to act as arbitrators in civil matters using religious law, if both parties consent; bills limiting the ability to call for a no-confidence vote and other methods for dissolving a sitting Knesset; bills prohibiting criminal proceedings against sitting Prime Ministers; and bills permitting key public service positions to be positions of trust appointed by politicians rather than professional appointments.

I would mention that there is basically zero separation between executive and legislative powers in Israel (to form the government to need to have majority in Knesset and you get to choose all the ministers). Reducing the power of the only independent branch in this case is highly questionable to say the least

Switching?

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That doesn’t mean that government employers must allow employees to say whatever they want: https://www.acludc.org/en/know-your-rights/federal-employee-...

For public employee speech to be protected, you must be speaking:

> 1) as a private citizen, > 2) about a matter of public concern, and > 3) your speech does not interfere with your job

A government-employed lecturer speaking within the scope of her lecture isn’t speaking in a private capacity, hence it’s not a free speech issue.

> The biggest reason we have free speech in this country is so that the government cannot punish people for speaking up against it.

I’d go a step further and say it’s the only reason since the first amendment only applies to government retaliation.

The government can punish employees when the speech is pursuant to their position as a public employee. A DMV worker saying "lets go Brandon" to everyone coming through the door while they're at the desk is not protected speech. That DMV worker getting off the clock and attending a Trump rally is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcetti_v._Ceballos

Not really, I wrote fired, not jailed.

Free speech doesn't mean that the others have to listen to you and agree with you, it means that you can say it and not have your freedom of movement restricted because of it. The exact opposite of what many dictators do.

There are no country on earth with "full" free speech because there are always limitations especially regarding threats to the safety of others.

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I think when we have the government having regular meetings with major social networks, instructing them who to ban and which topics to exclude from discussion, and when we have the pipeline from foreign security services through the US government to the all major social networks which allow them to ban anybody without as little as cursory review - we are way, way beyond "family and friends" situation here.

Both her parents are doctors but both parents' made alot of money from for profit schools preying on veterans (NAU http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/for_profit_report/Conte...) and that help pay for the campaigns to start her mothers political career so not a lot of self introspection being done in the family.

Are you really arguing that this hasn't happened many, many times in the past and yet people still take professorships at public universities and schools?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demers_v._Austin

This case wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for a prof getting attacked by the state for stating something in a classroom. It's happened many times in the past too. Note this was the first time any court said there was a constitutional protection, and doesn't apply across the whole US currently.

Yes, I do agree if this continues on it could be an interesting court case to watch as it makes it up the courts. Will the 5th circuit agree with Demers? Will we have a circuit split? Who knows.

What does that tell us?

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I can't speak on modern American conservatism as I am not one. Looking from the outside, I would chalk this one up as part of the culture wars that is fueling the conservative movement, rage against "critical race theory" etc.

FWIW, George HW Bush is buried next to the Texas A&M main campus. There is also a school of foreign policy named after him there. Both Bushes, the father and son, cultivated an image of a likable goof, even if you differed with their politics, were someone you could go to a baseball game with and shoot the breeze over a couple of beers. The modern conservative movement is not like that.

The FBI is investigating him but no federal charges have ever been filed. The state situation is also a bit more complicated than the grandparent suggests. There have been both jurisdictional struggles and a county government refusing to pay sizable fees for outside special prosecutors (not state prosecutors).

The guy belongs in prison but is not just refusing to be prosecuted, nor does he have the ability to do so.

Well, tech workers here don’t make up a significant voting block in state-wide races. Not to mention we mostly got the conservative tech bros from NYC and Cali anyway, so they’re not really bothered.

That said, Williamson County flipped blue last election which was surprising. A lot of the wealthier, slightly older suburban tech/business Austin crowd lives there.

Bad.

We feel bad about being under that.

I'm trying to improve things where I can, but I'm a singular young person in a state where it's not uncommon to want people like me "gone".

I live in Austin and I hate it here. I vote in every local and statewide race but it seems like it's getting worse.

I'm pretty close to selling my house and moving to Colorado but as third generation Texan I feel like I'm abandoning my home and leaving it to the crazies.

I don't like it. Texas's leadership when not corrupt is cruel, and when not cruel manages to give the appearance of cruelty. It's also increasingly dumb, doing things like trying to strangle the incredible renewable energy generation growth that has kept the power on during recent heat waves.

Texas has always been a one-party state (Democrat until the 1980s and Republican since) but it managed to be mostly pragmatic until 2016 or so.

I wouldn't be happy living under one party government in California (the corruption on California high speed rail makes Texas look squeaky clean) or Hawaii either. But when I can I'll likely move somewhere more reasonable.

Tech worker in Austin here. I'd like to throw Abbott and Patrick in the Rio Grande.

Going by Blind comments, they are enthusiastically cheering the demise of California. For every "lived in texas, found a company" commenter there's like ten "relocated my job to a more sufficiently republican locale" fascist enablers.

I'm no fan of these nutjobs at the wheel, but one important thing to consider is you don't have to be a leftist to be a "tech worker". There's lots of right-leaning tech workers out there. And since Texas has a few tech-focused cities in the South, there's quite a mix of people. Its not like there's just a some leftist tech workers in a sea of right-wing ranchers in Texas.

I know a lot of people who are pretty smart tech people who would argue for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, are pro school vouchers, want a flat tax rate, want to see prayer in schools, etc.

It's easy to close your eyes to politics when you have the capital to cushion you from them.

Like cities with dense populations should operate as city-states and that the current federal model is broken.

> the journalism school extended a written 5-year tenure-track offer

The original offer wasn't tenure-track, it was tenured — she already had tenure at the far-superior and more-liberal institution 100 miles west of TAMU (of which I'm a graduate). "After hearing about the concerns, McElroy agreed to a five-year contract position without tenure, which would have avoided a review by regents. On Sunday, she received a third offer, this time with a one-year contract and emphasizing that the appointment was at will and that she could be terminated at any time. She has rejected the offer and shared all of the offer letters with the Tribune." [0]

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/11/texas-a-m-kathleen-m...

> that is an excellent point

It's not, really. It comes from conflating mentions of "free speech" with "the first amendment". The person you're responding to brought up the latter, despite the fact that the person they were responding to said the former.

Private entities are immune from corruption and never collude with politicians? People do not get fired for political reasons at private institutions?

You show a mechanism through which the government can abuse its power, which is terrible and everyone should agree that it’s bad and change how this works. But how not having that implies that a chancellor picked by a board with no oversight could not be worse? The problem is the lack of checks against abuse of power and mechanisms to guarantee a basic independence level for the professors. Once you have those in place, how is a university better merely by being private?

I wish free-market neo-liberals would apply to themselves what they say every time someone mentions socialism: pure ideology might sound good but does not work in the real world.

That’s an incredibly aggressive intentional misinterpretation of what I said.

In the last 3 years we had government officials directing, in very strong language, various tech companies on what was and was not allowed on their platforms. While many people might argue that tech platforms are not public squares and should be free to censor however they like, everyone should have a problem with politicians directing tech companies on what can be said on their platforms.

As an addendum, I’m always curious to hear what that camp has to say about net neutrality after arguing so vigorously against its core principles.

IMHO if you want to operate as a mass market platform and are pursuing a winner takes all business strategy you should be regulated as a common carrier (Uber, Facebook, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, cloudflare, etc).

yes I totally agree. Not sure why anyone would think the government should be doing that... in fact we should make it illegal for anyone to sell/share private data like that.

You can be a public employee without being a direct report to the Governor.

All of them. State employees have very broad 1st Amendment protections.

I've worked in unclassified roles (not faculty). Academia likes to talk a good game about freedom but their annual appointments make it clear the money you get is at the governor's discretion. It's probably a mistake to exercise that discretion, but it's a mistake faculty are powerless to stop: "If you come at the king, you best not miss."

> Every investigation of a professor, which fails to result in any official disciplinary action, should be equally condemned?

Every publicly announced investigation or action that did not include information about the evidence that caused it to be announced that then failed to result in disciplinary action and then refuses to explain what evidence they acted on should be condemned.

> ... Do you condemn all those actions, too?

I think my above clarification of your misunderstanding of my position should address all those questions sufficiently as to my position on them.

Now, all that said, I think I might have conflated UTMB and A&M's actions slightly. I thought A&M announced their investigation and suspension publicly, while it's UTMB that was public in their condemnation of the visiting and speaking professor, and I thought A&M had been more public, when I'm not sure they were in further review.

I think UTMB's actions should be condemned unilaterally. They sent out an email stating they did not afgree with the professor and that they were formally censuring her with no evidence as to why, and still have refused to indicate why.

I think A&M's conduct was not great, but at least somewhat defensible. They took an announcement of formal censure with zero evidence, and then when they followed up and could not get not get UTMB to cooperate with more info suspended her pending additional investigation. They had evidence, in that UTMB's formal censure was itself "evidence" in their eyes, but not great evidence given there were no concrete details other than that. I suspect, as the article alludes, that the environment of petitioning for funding had something to do with their knee-jerk reaction.

That said, I see no reasonable justification for UTMB's actions, where they publicly and formally censured the professor with no evidence given then or since.

We have absolutely no idea what comments she was censured for, they aren't saying. They certainly didn't claim she was censured for factual discussion about opioid crisis, as you've implied (and the reporter, without evidence, also implied).

UTMB is a prestigious institution. Issuing a statement of censure is a pretty big deal.

Occam's razor would suggest that it wasn't done arbitrarily.

Objectively looking at the known facts without a political bias, it seems to me that the most likely scenario is that she made some inappropriate comments, got censured, but no one wants to embarrass her further or risk liability by repeating hearsay.

People make mistakes.

We don't have any facts that would support the narrative that the government encouraged the censure or the investigation in any way.

I'm not sure why there's so much passion around insisting that particular narrative when there are limited known facts.

Of course I'd change my opinion if more information comes to light.

Would you?