Every manager knows you can’t improve what you can’t measure.
For example, are sales generating expected revenue? Good managers gather and analyze available data, set a baseline of goals, and then monitor progress.
However, when it comes to righting generations of discrimination, injustice and exclusion, Texas Republicans believe historic injustices will correct themselves. gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. gov. Dan Patrick is pushing Senate Bill 17 and other bills to make programs designed to right past wrongs illegal.
They don’t care that a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, known as DEI, will drive out private investment in higher education and disqualify the state from multibillion-dollar federal programs.
When companies pay the fee to be admitted to the University of Texas Energy Institute at Austin, DEI programs for students and faculty are among their top concerns, institute director Brian Korgel told me. Federal and private grant applications always have DEI parts.
“Companies expect us as universities to play a role in promoting the diversity of the student body, both in terms of admissions and in terms of graduation and retention,” he said. “For an individual researcher applying for a National Science Foundation scientific grant, you really need to address diversity in your proposal. otherwise it becomes a real challenge to get the work funded.”
The Energy Institute has joined the Center for Houston’s Future, Exxon, Sempra and other companies to apply for a Department of Energy grant to build a hydrogen center along the Gulf Coast. However, the application asks for DEI efforts. The legislature’s anti-DEI laws put this application at risk.
Patrick and State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Houston-area Republican and author of SB 17, say they want diversity. They simply resist efforts to measure it, understand the barriers to it, or do something about it. They argue that any attempt to improve diversity and create a student body and workforce that reflects the population discriminates against white people.
Reactionaries uneasy about creating a just society have been making this argument since 1865.
After the Civil War, Republicans in the North knew that ending slavery was not enough. They founded the original Black Lives Matter movement by funding the Freedmen’s Bureau and other programs to ensure equal rights for formerly enslaved people.
The Southern Democrats responded by creating militias to terrorize and oppress blacks; the most famous was the Ku Klux Klan. Northern politicians gave up their efforts a few years later in exchange for a political deal, something University of Texas history professor Jeremi Suri suggested in his recent book Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy “ investigated.
As blacks advanced in the early 1900s, southern whites mobilized the Klan again and passed Jim Crow legislation to institutionalize racism. After the civil rights movement made victories in the 1950s and 1960s, President Ronald Reagan reversed regulations intended to correct 350 years of discrimination.
Over the past decade, following the election of the first African-American president and the Black Lives Matter protests, a renewed movement to protect white privilege has attacked DEI programs designed only to fulfill the constitution’s promise of equality.
“Donald Trump and QAnon are 21st-century iterations of (impeached former post-Civil War president) Andrew Johnson and the Ku Klux Klan—Red Hats born of older white hoods this time,” Suri writes in his book. “The story allows us to map the intricate roots buried in the ground, understand how they were planted, and appreciate how they germinated today.”
Patrick and Creighton attended a Trump rally in Houston with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and are super fans. But Suri, thanks to the principle of academic freedom and tenure, is able to reach such conclusions without fear of political retribution.
Abbott, Patrick, Creighton and their GOP allies intend to end these as well.
Professors who violate SB 17 can take unpaid leave and be fired, while universities lose federal funding and face $1 million in fines. Creighton’s Senate Bill 18 would end the term, and Senate Bill 16 would make it illegal for Suri to teach the ideas in his book.
University deans are already complaining that the legislature’s anti-intellectualism is making it difficult to recruit the world’s best minds to Texas. But ending terms and punishing professors for breaking with white supremacist orthodoxy will make it all but impossible.
The best minds want to work at the best universities. The best companies want to recruit from the best universities. When the best professors give up their research and leave, companies will follow.
Culture wars may be good politics for the right, but they will also have consequences for the state’s economy.
Named 2021 Columnist of the Year by the Texas Managing Editors, Chris Tomlinson writes op-ed on money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his newsletter, Tomlinson’s Take, at HoustonChronicle.com/TomlinsonNewsletter or Expressnews.com/TomlinsonNewsletter.
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