Increasingly concerned that Texas will lose more college students and has already missed numerous opportunities to recruit the best and brightest academics to its public universities, Democratic legislators are planning to introduce new laws that will protect free speech for everyone — not just those who support a GOP agenda.
Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus Committee on Free Speech and vice chairs the House Committee on Higher Education, hosted a public hearing this week on free speech at college campuses, and the response was staggering.
More than a dozen professors from Texas State University, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin and other institutions said no one wants to work in the Lone Star State anymore.
Qualified professors aren’t asking about salary when they interview for jobs; they want to know about safety and censorship, said Texas State professor Rolf Straubhaar at the December 9 hearing.
“We’ve lost extraordinary candidates because of the political climate that exists here in the state because of recent activity,” he said. “I personally know four colleagues, people I know from conferences who admire our program and the work we do, who were excited about the possibility of working with us, who told me directly, ‘I love what y’all do, but there’s no way I’m coming to Texas right now.’ We are shrinking our own talent pool. They are telling us openly, I cannot risk my job working in a place that depends on whether a politician likes my opinions.”
Hypocrisy has long existed when it comes to free speech on college campuses, some speakers said. For example, Christian students can host campus gatherings with impunity but Muslim groups are heavily scrutinized.
“Over the last few months, we’ve seen a wave of attacks on the First Amendment on university campuses,” Howard said, referencing a viral video of a discussion on gender identity in a children’s literature class that led to the firing of a Texas A&M professor and the resignation of the A&M president.
Then the September assassination of Christian conservative activist Charlie Kirk sparked reactions from students across the country. Some Texas college students expressed grief over Kirk’s death and others showed outrage over what Kirk advocated and stood for, Howard said.
“Both groups of students have every right to express themselves and should be allowed to do so,” Howard said. “However, instead of respecting their right to freedom of speech and expression, Republican leaders called on university presidents and boards of regents to use their powers to silence and expel students.”
A committee co-chaired by Houston Republican Senator Paul Bettencourt was appointed to study the issue of free speech on college campuses but Howard said the panel held just one meeting and members heard only invited testimony from “self-identified conservative student representation and no faculty, leaving out many of the affected voices.”
At that hearing, “several lawmakers raised concerns that universities either overreact to political pressure or fail to enforce existing rules, depending on which viewpoints are involved,” according to Texas Policy Research, a nonpartisan public policy organization.
“Testimony from university leaders, law enforcement, and policymakers reinforced a central theme. Texas campuses are struggling to walk the line between protecting free expression and maintaining civil discourse. And in that struggle, constitutional rights are often the first casualty,” the TPR report states.
Republican Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, sponsored Senate Bill 18 in 2019 to “protect constitutional free speech on college campuses,” but it appears now that “the goal was not to protect everyone’s rights and liberties but to ensure conservative voices were prioritized,” Howard said.
Senate Bill 2972 passed in June, limiting how, when and where people can demonstrate on college campuses, striking a key provision in the 2019 bill that established all common outdoor spaces on a public campus as traditional forums where anyone can engage in expressive activity.
Students at UT Austin and the University of Texas at Dallas filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SB 2972, and a district judge handed down a temporary injunction earlier this month halting enforcement on the new law while it’s being deliberated in court.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, all Republicans, have championed the installation of Turning Point USA, Kirk’s activist group, at every high school and college in the state. The legislature’s recent actions have created an atmosphere of censorship, confusion and fear, Howard said.
“It’s clear to me that we’ve lost sight of the true mission and purpose of a university campus, which is to shape the next generation of innovators and leaders,” she said. “College campuses should be spaces where students and professors can engage in free, robust and uninhibited debates.”
Joey Fishkin, a professor of law at UCLA who grew up in Austin and previously taught at the University of Texas, said educators “open up the world” to young students who are interacting with international peers and accessing different ways of thinking “in an atmosphere of curiosity, honesty and uninhibited, wide open free speech.”
“People in universities disagree all the time,” he said. “This is a key part of what makes our universities the cultural, intellectual and economic engines that they are. Certain governing elites from one political party are making a fateful and destructive choice to turn away from free speech and instead use their political power to punish campus speech they don’t like. It seems to be primarily gender, Israel-Palestine and race.”
“I have had several conversations with bright young scholars in 2025 questioning whether they should go to Texas or they should stay in Texas,” Fishkin added. “This danger is real and it’s serious. We actually can’t have great universities when either the government or university leaders micromanage what we can and can’t say.”
Fear and Retaliation
Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, was a student at the University of Texas last spring when Texas DPS officers responded to a pro-Palestine protest organized by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee in response to the Gaza war.
The law enforcement response was excessive and no clear direction was given to students to disperse, Zwiener said. The incident led to multiple arrests and created a disruptive and dangerous situation while students should have been studying for finals, she said.
“I was not an active part of the protest,” she said. “I was just observing. The confusion was rampant. Everything I saw was the excessive law enforcement presence exacerbating a situation that could have been a single-day process and not blown up. Instead, because of the big-scale response, we saw a continuation of protests for the next couple of weeks on campus because folks were so angry about that first incident.”
Zwiener represents the district that encompasses Texas State University, where tenured history professor Thomas Alter was fired in September for making a speech at a socialism conference that was not affiliated with the university. He claims a “self-identified facist” took a secret video of his remarks, edited it to make it appear that Alter was referencing his employment situation from the podium and shared it on social media.
Alter was fired in a Facebook post by the university president shortly after the video became public, he said.
After Alter’s termination, a Texas State freshman was forced to withdraw from classes for mimicking Kirk’s death at a protest. A video of the incident was tweeted by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who called for the student’s expulsion.
“This was the governor of the state of Texas bullying a 19-year-old college freshman,” Zwiener said, adding that responses to Abbott’s tweet included comments that the teenager should be placed in front of a firing squad and, “Make Blacks afraid again.”
That young man has received death threats, said Straubhaar, who represents the Texas State Employees Union.
“He no longer feels safe being in the state of Texas,” Straubhaar said. Following the student’s withdrawal, a Texas State staff member was fired for posting support for the student on her personal Facebook account. Another was fired for encouraging their social media followers to attend a No Kings protest.
“People are being fired not for wrongdoing but for inconvenience, for saying something that might irritate someone in power,” Straubhaar said. “It’s performative loyalty at the expense of real people’s lives.”
The incidents at Texas State sparked a debate over the definition of free speech. Critics say it’s one thing to have a spirited debate over political ideology; it’s another to mock someone’s death, incite violence or use hate speech. There was some discussion during Tuesday’s hearing about vague language regarding what constitutes “inciting violence” or “inciting criminal activity” that makes law and campus policy difficult to enforce.
For example, an abstract threat to “overthrow the government” doesn’t meet the definition of inciting violence, said ACLU government relations coordinator Andrew Hendrickson. A tweet announcing, “We should go to war with Iran,” could be classified as inciting violence but it’s protected because no imminent threat is posed.
“The First Amendment matters most when the speech is most offensive,” Hendrickson said. “We are not going to ask for a show of hands about who can speak freely and what they can say. That is not how that right works. That’s not how it should work.”
The culture of fear at Texas universities will result in brain drain, Zwiener said.
“People who can go elsewhere are going to go elsewhere,” she said. “That’s going to diminish the quality of our institutions, both for our students and for research. We are playing with fire, and I hope we can reverse that and bring true freedom of expression back to our institutions in Texas.”
Alter, who is appealing his termination, testified in Tuesday’s hearing via video message while traveling to an international conference where he was asked to speak on human rights and free speech.
“For years, higher education has been under attack by far-right politicians slowly chipping away at programs encouraging diversity and innovation that have made public universities in the United States models of learning around the world,” he said. “What we are experiencing now is a full-blown assault by the far right on higher education seeking to do away not only with tenure and academic freedom but the most cherished and basic of rights for everyone: free speech, freedom of the press and the right to assemble.”
Rep. Salman Bhojani, D-Euless, is a Muslim-American born in Pakistan. He said he’s heard from numerous students and professors over the past two years that they’re afraid to speak freely for fear of retaliation.
“No student should lose their education or live in fear simply for participating in civic dialogue,” he said.
Potential Long-Term Ramifications
New data presented in November by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression showed that no major Texas university earned a passing grade for its free speech climate, meaning the state is failing in its efforts to protect academic freedom and intellectual diversity, according to the report.
“Students report fear of expressing controversial opinions and dissatisfaction with administrative responses to protests, disruptive behavior, and speaker invitations,” the report states.
Sameeha Rizvi went to UT Austin to study public health and social work in a setting that fostered the free exchange of ideas. She joined the Student Government Association and advocated for what she refers to as marginalized communities. She also wanted a safe atmosphere for Muslims to gather in prayer.
Rizvi graduated from UT in December 2023 and now works as an advocacy coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. She testified in the hearing this week about a Muslim student prayer gathering at the University of Houston that was disrupted by a man who shouted anti-Muslim insults through a megaphone and threw a copy of their religious text, the Quran, into a small controlled bonfire.
“Imagine being a student, away from home, doing something as basic and protected as prayer and watching your holy book burn while you’re being screamed at,” she said. “That is targeted intimidation.”
The man who disrupted the prayer gathering was later identified as Waco street preacher Christopher Svochak. He’s facing felony charges for a hate crime stemming from a similar incident of disturbing religious assemblies at the University of South Florida.
The UH Muslim Student Association said in a statement that “what happened at UH is part of a broader pattern of coordinated Islamophobic incidents violating the First Amendment rights of the Muslim students across the nation.”
Such incidents have created what many say is an unsafe campus atmosphere and confusion around what is acceptable free speech and what is not.
“Free speech isn’t real if it only protects a select few,” Rivsi said.
Texas A&M professor Leonard Bright reiterated the sentiment that professors don’t want to work for Texas universities.
“We’ve witnessed increasing attacks on faculty for simply doing their jobs: teaching, discussing and providing information to students essential to their fields and degrees,” he said. “Even our most prominent administrators are unable to protect the most vital aspects of our classrooms.”
“Case in point: we recently had a Texas A&M president who profusely promised to defend academic freedom with every breath,” he added. “Two years later, he summarily dismissed a professor after a student objected to a routine lesson on gender identity, an action taken only after the governor publicly threatened the president’s job.”
“I believe that the state of Texas and Texas A&M are on a brazen mission to challenge the precedent,” he continued. “If they succeed, this will be the kill shot for academic freedom and will possibly cripple democracy.”
The A&M professor said Texas A&M University is now, sadly, becoming a joke.
Straubhaar noted that political repression corrodes the entire university system, drives talent away, weakens campuses and tells students that their identities and viewpoints could someday cost them their education.
“It tells folks that their future in Texas is conditional on silence, compliance and a willingness to be invisible,” he said.
Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, pointed out that controversial topics are supposed to be discussed in research and academic settings. The controversy could also diminish the value of a degree from a Texas university, he said.
“You’re supposed to push new ideas and new thinking,” he said. “One of my greatest fears in all of this is not only the brain drain but that we’re setting our society on, ‘Let’s not push our boundaries, let’s just stay where we’re comfortable.’ That’s not a society that develops and innovates and discovers.”
Jessica Pliley, a history professor at Texas State, said economic growth has been consistent in Texas for the past 40 years but the attacks on free speech undermine the ability to recruit and retain faculty.
“This was a place where the freedom of imagination could thrive,” she said of the Lone Star State. “I’ve heard from numerous junior faculty that they are looking to flee Texas, especially after the firing of Tom Alter.”
It doesn’t stop there. Undergraduate and graduate students, some of whom are native Texans, are planning to leave, Pliley said. A K-12 educator who grew up in Texas and has studied and researched Mexican-American women’s activism is applying to Ph.D. programs and said she’ll go “anywhere but Texas,” Pliley said.
“She sees no future for her, her talent, nor her family in the state where she was born and raised,” she said. “I find this somewhat shocking.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.