Opinion: In DEI Purge, Who’s UT Coming After Next?

These brief comments were prepared for a planned town hall on the campus of UT-Austin with students and staff. UT administration officials and [state Sen. Brandon] Creighton never responded to the extended invitation to discuss [Senate Bill] 17 and the mass firings of DEI staff, and the town hall was canceled.

As a staff member who has not been fired for DEI work – or not yet – I have so many questions on behalf of those of us who remain, most of which boil down to just this: Who y’all coming for next? My name is Jim Kuhn and I work as an associate director for an archive on campus. I’m here today speaking solely on my own behalf and not as a spokesperson of the unit where I work. My question is not rhetorical. It relates directly to academic research, to campus service, and to higher-ed best practices.

First, academic research: I served as primary investigator here at UT on a grant funding highly collaborative and award-winning work in gay and lesbian history. Are you coming next for people like me, staff without tenure, engaged in research support for topics that the statehouse disapproves of? One clear way to describe this mass firing is censorship and viewpoint discrimination – a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to more of the same.

Second, campus and professional service: For years, I co-chaired a DEI committee here at UT. I’ve also engaged in careerlong DEI-related work with professional associations. You’ve already moved the goalposts once. So are y’all coming to retaliate against the rest of us next, who are proud to have DEI work in our past UT service and current professional service? Again, these are not rhetorical questions: You’ve just fired people who were engaged in this sort of leadership prior to Jan. 1, and who like the rest of us have been assured for months that we have all been in compliance with SB 17. I also happen to also be a lifetime member in PEFSA [Pride and Equity Faculty and Staff Association]; I know y’all have easy access to databases about all those shut-down affinity groups. Are you coming after me and my fellow PEFSA members next? Let’s be clear: This mass firing isn’t just viewpoint discrimination, but also discrimination and bigotry, pure and simple.

Third, best practices in higher ed: I display on my LinkedIn account a Dynamics of Diversity continuing ed certificate issued to me in 2021 by UT. Like it or not, those courses still represent best practices for all of us committed to higher education. I’m proud of my certificate and it isn’t coming off my profile, no matter how much you’d like us all to just pretend it didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. There are many, many staff on this campus who are graduates of this program. You coming for Dynamics of Diversity certificate holders next? What is obvious to everyone except apparently those in power is that this is vandalism – a ransacking of the university aided and abetted by a leadership willing to stand down in the face of direct interference in our academic and intellectual freedom.

“Who y’all coming for next” is very much not a rhetorical question. “The rest of us” is the obvious answer, and clearly remaining silent is no guarantee of safety. All I can say is: Good luck with faculty, staff, and student recruitment if these firings aren’t rescinded. Staff will of course move on, whether we get fired, leave voluntarily, or get recruited away. In the end it is the students that suffer most at the hands of purges like this one. Let me close by reframing my question: “Why in the world should staff and students with any other options choose to stay?”

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Jim Kuhn is an associate director at the Harry Ransom Center at UT-Austin where he also served as founding co-chair of the center’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee before it was shut down in compliance with SB 17. Jim is also a member of UT’s Pride and Equity Faculty and Staff Association. In addition, Jim serves on the boards of Austin’s Texas After Violence Project and Austin Book Arts Center.