From Erwin to Hartzell: 60 Years of Conservative Politics at UT

The scene outside Gregory Gym on Wednesday, April 24 (Photo by John Anderson)

Before Jay Hartzell there was Frank Erwin.

Known today primarily as the namesake of the Frank Erwin Center (which is being torn down), Erwin led the University of Texas System Board of Regents from 1963 to 1975. These were the years of the Vietnam War, when UT earned a reputation as a university with a large progressive voice, and students and faculty constantly clashed with Erwin.

He was on the wrong side of history in struggles like the Battle of Waller Creek and the Chuck Wagon Incident. He responded to the frequent and huge anti-war protests that defined the era by working to remove professors he considered unpatriotic and attempting to shut off campus access to groups like Students for a Democratic Society and Young Socialist Alliance. After four students were killed at Kent State University in 1970, Erwin fought students and faculty who planned walkouts to protest the shootings. Twenty-thousand marched nonetheless.

In fact, conservative forces have tried, and failed, to silence UT’s progressive community for most of the university’s existence. So the recent establishment of the right-wing Civitas Institute; the university’s promotion of the Salem Center, where far-right propagandists masquerade as academics; and the current university president’s approval of the arrests of his own students don’t represent a break from the past. They’re just the latest manifestation of the perennial work of Texas’ conservative establishment to silence student expression.

At least, the expression they don’t agree with. In 2019, Gov. Greg Abbott actually defended a state law that codified the right to free speech in outdoor spaces at public universities, as seen in a resurrected X post that went viral last week for its hypocrisy. In it, Abbott says the First Amendment guarantees free speech on college campuses. Last week, he tweeted that student protesters “belong in jail.”

In contrast to Hartzell and Abbott, UT faculty and staff came out in full force last Thursday to show support for their students in a rally against Hartzell’s overreach. They have since circulated an open letter to Hartzell and a petition for a formal vote of no confidence, which as of press time had garnered 644 signatures out of 3,000 total faculty.

At the faculty protest on Thursday, April 25, Roger Reeves, an associate professor of English, said, “I worry about the safety of our students. I am not disturbed by students assembling to talk about genocide that is being funded by the U.S. government, funded by some of these universities’ investments. In fact, I want to see it – they’re being patriots.”

We talked to Amy Sanders, an associate law professor and journalism professor, the following day. She said, “The show of force that occurred was really designed to intimidate students’ freedom of expression. It had nothing to do with attempting to keep our students safe. Students shouldn’t have to fear being arrested or spending the night in jail for exercising their constitutional rights on a public university campus. By and large, we’re talking about college students on a public university campus where they pay tuition. The idea that that’s a criminal trespass just doesn’t sit well with me.

“I think what we are seeing around this country is a historic moment in the same way that the Vietnam War protests were a historic tipping point in the country,” Sanders continued. “It has to do with what’s happening in Palestine but also, on a more global perspective, it has to do with the rise of authoritarianism and America’s role in the world.”