FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 20, 2025
CONTACT: Nicole Hill, press@texasaft.org
Statement from Texas AFT President Zeph Capo and Texas AAUP-AFT President Brian Evans, PhD, on Senate Bill 37, a sweeping attack on faculty governance and the freedom to learn, teach, and research in Texas public higher education institutions, which will be heard in the Senate Education K-16 Committee today:
Zeph Capo, Texas AFT president
“This Legislature wants to boast about how competitive our colleges and universities are, both nationally and globally, while at the same time undermining the academic environment that allows them to remain competitive. SB 37 adds an unnecessary layer of government oversight to university operations, denies the expertise of the faculty who make Texas higher education excellent, and consolidates power over higher education under Gov. Abbott’s appointees, to an even greater degree than in our pre-K-12 schools.
Bafflingly, at a time when this Legislature has banged the drum on ‘school choice,’ SB 37 also undermines student choice by putting minors and certificates on the chopping block if they fail to meet arbitrary enrollment thresholds, even when our students find them valuable in their workforce preparation.
If this bill is truly intended to ‘safeguard taxpayer investments,’ I would ask why it implements an unaccountable, unelected bureaucracy to micromanage universities and meddle in curriculum. If implemented, SB 37 would drive more of our esteemed faculty away from Texas universities, make it near impossible to recruit top talent, and diminish the learning opportunities for our students. In this way, it’s a true successor to last session’s SB 17.”
Dr. Brian Evans, Texas AAUP-AFT president
“SB 37 is fundamentally incompatible with Texas’ stated need for high-quality, competitive teaching and research in our public community colleges, universities, and health institutions. The bill’s author claims it creates ‘accountability’ and ‘efficiency’ in our higher education institutions – two things that already exist on our campuses and would be actively hampered by this legislation.
Texas faculty are experts in their field. Each year, faculty graduate doctoral students and win billions of dollars in research grants to give Texas more top-tier research universities than any other state. Faculty also train students to meet Texas’ workforce needs. SB 37 would sideline the faculty in a field when designing and updating what is taught in that field.
Meanwhile, faculty senates and councils, one of the direct targets of this legislation, are democratically elected bodies that facilitate communication and coordination among students, staff, faculty, and administration, and provide recommendations to the president. The president is the sole and final decision-maker for the institution. Yet, these faculty advisory bodies are critical to everyday functioning, as well as in managing crises.
Our faculty senates are not radical cabals of rogue faculty. They are our mechanisms to have a voice in our learning and research environments, and allow collaboration with administrators that, ultimately, helps the president of the higher ed institution make the best decisions in the interests of our students.
If anything is radical here, it is SB 37, which would take curriculum out of the hands of the subject matter experts. Instead, decisions about what we teach in the fields we have spent our lives studying would be left to unelected bureaucrats, who would have the power to apply their own ideological litmus tests to what is considered appropriate curricula. That is indoctrination, not education, and it would be a death knell for Texas’ standing as a top-tier education and research destination.
In short, SB 37 would de-professionalize the governance of our higher education institutions and instead politicize academic decision-making about what and how we teach.”
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The Texas American Federation of Teachers represents 66,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, support personnel, and higher-education employees across the state. Texas AFT is affiliated with the 1.8-million-member American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO.
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