Academic Freedom at UT Being Dismantled

Much to his surprise, Iván Chaar López learned in February that he would not be awarded tenure at the University of Texas at Austin, despite enthusiastic recommendations from faculty and external reviewers. At some point while the president’s promotion and tenure committee was evaluating his application, his bid for tenure was denied. Chaar López, who has worked at UT since 2020 as an American studies professor, never received an explanation for the denial, but he has theories based on the university’s recent decisions to consolidate ethnic studies departments and restrict what faculty can talk about in the classroom.

Chaar López has since exhausted two out of three options to appeal the decision, he said, and he is currently in the middle of a grievance process, arguing that his academic freedom was violated. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for August.

Iván Chaar López

In an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed, a UT spokesperson said, “Tenure is a privilege, not a right.”

“UT does not rubber stamp decisions of such importance. The tenure review process is handled thoughtfully, fairly, and professionally with a thorough system of checks and balances to ensure the highest standards of teaching and research,” the spokesperson wrote.

Inside Higher Ed spoke with Chaar López about his experience during the tenure review and what he believes is behind the university’s decision to deny him a permanent appointment.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did your research contribute to UT’s decision to hire you?

A: My research is on the history of information infrastructures used for border enforcement since the mid-20th century. My work brings together U.S. borderlands history, U.S. immigration history and history of technology—especially computing. I also write about more contemporary stuff—artificial intelligence, information infrastructures—and its connection to labor. So in American studies, where I ended up, they were very interested in that profile, whereas the history department [where I was interviewing for a separate position] was very interested in the borderlands and history-of-technology side of things. [My research] was central to my hire, at the end of the day.

Q: Over the past six years, did you ever face any pushback about your research?

A: It was the total opposite. I’ve been able to win multiple competitive internal fellowships. I got a fellowship from the Humanities Institute. I’ve got a Ransom Fellowship. I’ve been able to get start-up funding for a collaborative project that I started with two other colleagues, and that came from the provost—not the current provost, but the previous provost.

So I’ve been successful in gaining support, not just from my department, but from the college. Granted, it was from the previous leadership, who were very supportive of the research I conducted connected to border enforcement, but also of new research that I’m currently conducting related to the history of semiconductor manufacturing and assembly along the U.S. borderline since the 1960s. A lot of that new funding came for that kind of work.

Q: During previous review processes, like the third-year review, was anything flagged that suggested you might not get tenure?

A: Not at all. Never. I tend to be very, very careful and deliberate with my planning, and I always overplan. I always make sure that I have a very thorough production pipeline of publications and works in progress. I also establish collaborations outside of the university with scholars in Mexico, scholars in the U.S. So when the third-year review came in, my colleagues were like, “Iván, you’re doing really well, and we have nothing to really say in terms of [something that is] really worrisome.”

The only thing that I had already been [working on] was making sure that I had stronger support in terms of teaching, because teaching 190 students is quite a feat. The class I taught, which I’m teaching again this fall, is Introduction to American Studies. It’s a U.S. history survey, and it fulfills a history requirement, so I got students from all sorts of disciplines and majors, and that class is a challenge for everyone that teaches it. But even though that was a challenge, my colleagues were like, “You’re doing what you’re supposed to do.” There was nothing that was a red flag, or a “Hey, this is a yellow flag” type of warning.

Q: When did you first hear from the promotion and tenure committee that they were likely to recommend you for tenure?

A: The first communication I got that things were moving past stage one was in September. The chair of my department called me and told me that the executive committee met … and unanimously supported my tenure. And then she also … told me, “You have very strong support from your external writers.” When I got my tenure file after [the] denial, I read the letters and they were unanimous in support of tenure as well.

In [late October], the chair of my department called me again and said, “Hey, I want to give you the good news—your [promotion and tenure] case was approved.” I was coming out of my building after teaching a very long day, and I was so happy. So, so happy, and I felt very relieved, because I was told by people, “The early stages are the hardest. If you get through those stages, you’re basically there.”

She told me that the [promotion and tenure] committee met and voted 19 to 2 in favor of tenure.

Q: At that point your case went to the president’s promotion and tenure committee. What did you hear back from them?

A: In January, the chair of my department emailed me: “Hey, the interim dean is being asked to meet with the president’s [promotion and tenure] committee, and he has a few questions.” I wrote responses to those questions very quickly. One of those questions was on whether or not Duke University Press is a prestigious press in American studies. It’s the top press in American studies. The fact that he needs me to explain this, I was slightly surprised.

Later on, when I met with the interim dean and my chair after denial … he explained that he submitted his recommendation and that he, quite strongly, endorsed my tenure. He submits [recommendations] for all the candidates, and then the committee might flag certain candidates to discuss. He got word that I was one of the candidates that they wanted to discuss.

He had to go in and meet with the committee and then discuss whatever questions they had. But the dean … never explained why I was being denied tenure. I asked point-blank what happened, and he literally said, “I don’t know. I can only speculate.” And then he went on to speculate that, probably, the president’s promotion and tenure committee had a negative view of my research, and that the committee had a negative view of my field.

Q: In the backdrop of all of this, we’re seeing increasing censorship at Texas institutions, including UT, but also Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Texas State. Do you feel that the politics of the state had a lot to do with their decision to deny you tenure?

A: It’s very hard not to see a relationship between those. Maybe a week or so before [I was denied tenure], they announced that they would eliminate my department through consolidation with a bunch of other departments, and lo and behold, all these other departments are ethnic studies; Mexican American and Latino studies; African and African diaspora studies; women’s, gender and sexuality studies; [and] American studies—we’re all being consolidated without actual faculty participation. Then there was the controversial topics policy voted on by the Board of Regents.

And that is only UT; if you think of all these other institutions, it’s very hard not to see politics playing a role in decision-making. All the experts that know the fields that I’m in, all of them are unanimously saying yes, but at the end of the day, it is the president’s decision. What the president does is disregard the independent review process, disregard expertise and disregard faculty input—disregard all of those things and make his own decision.

Q: What has the reaction been like from your colleagues?

A: Morale is very much impacted. Faculty participate in the administration of the university through all sorts of committees and evaluative bodies, and their expertise, their input, their effort, their work is being fully disregarded. It feels like there’s a certain sense of helplessness. And then, if you were to ask all the junior faculty—especially in the humanities and humanistic social sciences—there’s incredible amounts of concern.

Q: I’d imagine anyone else on the tenure track is nervous.

A: Super nervous. I wonder if that is what [administrators] want. But if you want a productive university, a generative university that supports the state, its citizens, its neighbors, I’m not sure that you want the workers in this institution to be nervous, to be looking over their shoulders, to be wondering if these are the types of research questions that will raise eyebrows. Academic freedom is not under duress—it’s being dismantled.