Democrats’ Texas Takeover Could Reshape Boards and More

Democrats’ election capture of Texas’s top statewide offices and its House of Representatives could have major consequences for the state’s numerous public colleges and universities, especially regarding Board of Regents appointments, higher ed legislation and related litigation. And it likely spells the end of the state’s position as a poster child for conservative higher education overhauls.

Under Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas passed more restrictive higher education laws than even Florida. The Republicans followed up a sweeping ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programming with a law last year saying that only an institution’s governing board can create a faculty senate and only college and university presidents can pick its leaders.

In his 2025 State of the State Address, Abbott said, “Professors have increasingly pushed woke agendas” and “have too much influence over who is hired to educate our kids,” necessitating legislation that bars them “from having any say over employment decisions.” And Patrick crowed when the Legislature passed the faculty senate overhaul last year, saying it settled a years-long score.

On X, he wrote that the UT Austin Faculty Senate, back in 2021, had “arrogantly stated that they were not accountable to the Texas Legislature or UT Board of Regents” and vowed “to teach Critical Race Theory to UT students.” But, Patrick said, the new law meant the Faculty Senate “had their power stripped and found out the Legislature does have authority over faculty senates after all!”

“These looney Marxist UT professors should find a friendly blue state to move to so we can fill their roles with quality conservative professors who will teach critical thinking,” Patrick added. “Yippie Ki Yay! Adios! Sayonara! Auf Wiedersehen! Au Revoir! In every language you can possibly think of: Goodbye!”

On Wednesday, UT Austin drama professor Charlotte Canning quoted that last line back to Patrick on X after Democrats not only ousted him and Abbott but also took the state attorney general’s office and won a U.S. Senate seat in Tuesday’s elections. By Wednesday afternoon, the Associated Press also made the call that Democrats had wrested the state House from GOP hands, leaving only the state Senate with a Republican majority.

“People are floating on air,” said Teresa Klein, president of the Texas American Association of University Professors–American Federation of Teachers, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed. “We have a lot of happy folks around the entire state. We’re getting congratulatory calls from all over the country. And looking at how this is going to impact our students in the future, we’re just so hopeful.

“This morning, I already heard from one member saying, ‘Oh, now I can teach something without being nervous about it,’” Klein said.

Two faculty members used the word “repudiation.”

“It does feel like a repudiation of a party that has, for decades, argued for smaller government that would not get in the way of certain institutions doing their work, [yet] the Republican Party in Texas has done the exact opposite with public education,” said Lina Murillo, an associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at UT Austin. “They have done the most—creating policies and legislation that [directly involves politicians] in the way that teachers and professors can teach.”

Like Florida, some boards in Texas appointed former state legislators to lead university systems, including John M. Zerwas at the UT system, Glenn Hegar at Texas A&M and Brandon Creighton at Texas Tech. Todd Wolfson, president of the national AAUP, said his group will now “put significant pressure to get rid of, for instance … Creighton, who is a cretin.”

“There is a real opportunity to go after SB 37 [the faculty senate law] and to make sure that higher ed workers in Texas are in a much better position,” Wolfson said. “And so—while we haven’t been able to transform Florida the way we wanted to—I think Texas is a huge opportunity for us to actually roll back all the pretty antagonistic legislation we’ve seen there and move up an agenda that strengthens higher education.”

But the GOP’s success in keeping the state Senate will complicate any attempts to roll back Republican laws. The lieutenant governor position in Texas leads the Senate, and though Democrat Vikki Goodwin now holds that role, her power will be limited over a chamber where her party is in the minority. Democratic control of the House and governor’s mansion does give Democrats more control over universities’ budgets, which can influence their behavior.

Perhaps the biggest lever for direct changes across Texas university systems will be new Board of Regents members. The terms of board chairs and some other members will soon expire, and newly elected Democratic Gov. Gina Hinojosa will get to appoint replacements—though they require Senate confirmation to stick.

“The battle now is in the universities themselves, on the Boards of Regents,” said Leonard Bright, president of the AAUP chapter at Texas A&M University’s College Station campus.

Board Chairs

The terms for the Board of Regents chairs for the Texas A&M, UT, Texas Tech, Texas State and Texas Woman’s University systems all expire early next year. Cody Campbell, the outgoing Texas Tech chair, has publicly expressed his displeasure with the election results. After outgoing Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn congratulated incoming Democratic Sen. James Talarico Tuesday on X, Campbell reposted it with a denouncement.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Campbell wrote to Cornyn. “This Senate race is one thing, but the down-ballot effect that is going to gut the great Texas ‘economic miracle’ is a true travesty.”

Inside Higher Ed reached out to the Texas Tech, UT and A&M systems for reaction, but only a spokesperson for A&M responded, writing in an email that “at this point it would not be appropriate to make assumptions or predictions about the direction that newly elected leadership in Texas will take.”

Faculty have accused universities of going further than Republicans’ legislation has required; Texas A&M and Texas Tech passed comprehensive restrictions on how faculty can teach about gender, sexuality and race. The AAUP has sued Texas A&M’s board over a policy limiting discussion of “race or gender ideology” in class unless preapproved by an institution’s president, and the group has sued Texas Tech over its restrictions, too. Texas Tech’s plan to close all programs “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity also bans students from creating “degree-culminating” research or theses on such topics, according to a memo from university leaders. UT Austin combined four of its area studies departments into one.

Texas A&M leaders asked a philosophy professor to remove passages from Plato from his syllabus. And universities have fired multiple faculty, including Tom Alter, a tenured Texas State University professor who said he learned he was fired via a Facebook post from Texas State President Kelly Damphousse, who accused him of “inciting violence” for discussing anarchist organizing tactics during a conference talk.

Bright, of the A&M AAUP chapter, said the Democratic victories provide an opportunity to “re-ask” questions: “What is the proper role of our regents, what’s the proper role of higher education in Texas, what’s the proper balance?”

As governor for more than a decade, Abbott was able to appoint every regent in the state, and those regents have increasingly intruded into the classroom, Bright said. Texas was heading toward becoming “a factory of conservative political ideology,” he said.

“That future—right now, at least—has been delayed for a few years, and we hope that it can be completely undone,” he said. He added that laws will be harder to change than the institutional policies implementing them, and he sees those policies as more damaging.

Karma Chávez, president of the UT Austin AAUP chapter, said that “with the Senate still being in the hands of Republicans,” it will be harder for the Democratic governor-elect to get her appointees confirmed.

“I’m hoping that Republicans are sufficiently chastened to at least let her be able to appoint the regents that will be on deck to be newly appointed in February,” she said.

Klein, the statewide Texas AAUP-AFT leader, said the increased power SB 37 gave to Boards of Regents could now actually work in faculty’s favor if the new governor’s appointees are approved.

“We hope that we’re going to have more of a seat at the table this time than we have had in the previous 30 years or so,” Klein said.