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Texas lawmakers on Thursday opened a sweeping review of campus speech with a call to restore civil discourse, saying student reactions to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk exposed deeper problems with intimidation, hostility and uneven responses from universities.
“Freedom of speech is not the freedom to threaten, harass or disrupt,” said Rep. Terry Wilson, R-Georgetown. “Academic freedom is not the license to defy public accountability.”
Kirk was killed Sept. 10 while speaking at a college in Utah. State leaders announced the formation of bipartisan committees to discuss campus speech and related policies two days later. The Senate and House Select Committee on Civil Discourse and Freedom of Speech in Higher Education convened jointly Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in Austin.
Lawmakers heard from 11 invited witnesses, including University of Texas at Austin leaders, state higher education officials, law enforcement representatives and the student body presidents from UT-Austin and Texas A&M.
Wilson, who co-chairs the committee, said hearings next year will include public testimony.
UT-Austin’s response to large pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year was still top of mind for several lawmakers. UT students were arrested and several were disciplined after the on-campus protests. Lawmakers held that kind of response up as the kind of approach they want to see universities to take under Senate Bill 2972. That new law restricts overnight expression, limits amplified sound and allows universities to treat outdoor areas as limited public forums rather than fully open ones.
Lawmakers noted that nearly half of the people arrested were not students or university employees and therefore did not face any consequences after the county attorney declined to prosecute them. A few questioned whether any of those individuals were paid to participate, though a Department of Public Safety official told the committee the agency had no evidence of that.
UT-Austin’s general counsel, Amanda Cochran McCall, told lawmakers that SB 2972 is helping the university by giving it authority it did not previously have to keep disruptive outsiders off campus.
“This law allows us to protect the functioning and the point of the institution as an educational place,” she said.
She added that the authority would have been helpful during last year’s protest, when more than 50 final exams had to be moved because of noise.
Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, asked her whether UT-Austin would cancel events or charge student groups more if a controversial speaker drew protests and required police presence. She said the university would not penalize student groups and would instead manage any disruptions, an answer Hall called “the right answer.”
Student groups persuaded a federal judge to temporarily block parts of the law on First Amendment grounds. Ryan Walters, a deputy attorney general, called the ruling “fundamentally flawed” and said the state will vigorously defend the law on appeal.
He also offered lawmakers an update on the state’s investigation into the University of North Texas, which began after a student accused classmates of celebrating Kirk’s killing and said the university failed to look into the incident. He told the committee that it appears the university “was not following its own procedures” and added that a video the student took and posted to social media “speaks for itself.”
The hearing was also meant to examine how universities are implementing Senate Bill 37, the new law that shifts oversight of curriculum and hiring from campus decision-makers to governor-appointed regents. Wynn Rosser, the state’s higher education commissioner, said a committee required under the law has already begun meeting to develop recommendations on whether Texas’ 42-hour core curriculum should be streamlined and reduced. He said his agency is also helping stand up the new Office of the Ombudsman. The ombudsman is charged with ensuring universities comply with both SB 37 and the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion officers, programs and training.
Lawmakers pressed Rosser on how universities are expected to comply with older transparency laws. Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, pointed to her 2009 bill requiring syllabi and course information be posted online and asked what penalties exist when universities do not follow it. She said the recent firing of a Texas A&M English professor after a secretly recorded classroom exchange on gender identity was posted on social meia show why accurate course descriptions matter. Rosser said he did not have the statute in front of him and could not recall its enforcement provisions.
Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, warned against “knee jerk” disciplinary reactions driven by political pressure and then asked UT-Austin President Jim Davis how it approaches complaints about faculty.
Davis responded that UT-Austin works to verify facts before taking action.
“We have rules in place to make sure we are protecting people from allegations that are not true, and we are also taking appropriation action when things are true,” Davis said.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said lawmakers initially hoped to hear from Devion Canty Jr., the Texas State student whose viral video mimicking Kirk’s killing prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to call for his expulsion. Canty was not invited after members saw social media posts saying he had left Texas “for his own safety.”
Legal experts have said the behavior seen on video, which was offensive to many, is still likely protected by the First Amendment.
Other campus reactions to Kirk’s death include a Texas Tech University student’s arrested on a misdemeanor charge of simple assault after allegedly striking the cap off a Kirk supporter.
The scrutiny comes amid new data suggesting that many students are open to taking action against speech they disagree with. A national survey released by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression on Sept. 9, a day before Kirk’s killing, found that one-third of students said it is at least “rarely” acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech, and larger shares said it was acceptable to shout speakers down or block access to events.
The committee ended the hearing by listening to UT-Austin and Texas A&M student body presidents, who said their campuses have largely come together in the weeks since Kirk’s death. But Dylan Seiter, a member of the Texas A&M Chapter of Turning Point USA, a group Kirk founded, said some professors refuse to grant excused absences for students who want to attend political events, which he said can discourage participation.
Bettencourt called this comment “one of the jewels” lawmakers hoped to hear in the free speech review.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
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