It happened slowly, then all at once.
I’ve taught at the University of Texas at Austin for more than 30 years, and I’ve always been proud to do so. UT has long been both a top-tier university and one of the most accessible. While other states boast excellent public institutions — Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan — their in-state tuition can cost up to five times more than UT’s. The top students at every high school in Texas are guaranteed a spot at UT, meaning that each region sends its best and brightest to Austin.
UT powers the city’s and state’s economy, attracting innovators in technology, business and the arts. For almost 150 years, we’ve prepared Texans for meaningful work and purposeful lives.
Today, however, UT is being dismantled piece by piece. Those who see higher education as a threat are intervening directly — breaking norms, rules and even constitutional protections — in an effort to suppress and punish controversial opinions among our students and faculty. Since 2024, we’ve witnessed actions and threats in several areas, including:
Attacks on students and faculty
Curriculum and research control
Meanwhile, alarming developments at other Texas universities have deepened the chill on free speech, showing how severe the consequences of dissent can be: violations of the First Amendment, disregard for due process and suspension of long-standing personnel protections.
These are not just attacks on UT or on higher education. They are attacks on every American’s First Amendment right to speak freely, to question authority, to teach and to learn without fear. The science of gender, the history of racism and other legitimate fields of inquiry are being treated as “thought crimes,” as if Orwell’s satire were state policy. People are losing their jobs for doing their jobs.
I speak only for myself, representing only my own broken heart rather than these broken institutions. This is no longer the profession I have served with joy for 35 years. We are being pushed to retreat from the hard-won knowledge and progress of generations. Yet, like the medieval monks and nuns who buried precious manuscripts to hide them from the kings who burned their abbeys, we will preserve this knowledge and progress for another time in the future. In the meantime, we know the truth, and that keeps us free.
Lisa L. Moore is a professor at The University of Texas at Austin. She is expressing her views as a private citizen.
