Education Group Says UT Austin Twisting ‘Academic Freedom’ to Impose Critical Race Theory

Originally Published on The National Review

The head of the National Association of Scholars Affiliate claims the University of Texas at Austin is twisting “academic freedom,” long a conservative mission to restore pluralism and intellectual diversity on college campuses, to impose critical race theory and gender ideology into curricula.

On February 14th, 2022, the Faculty Council at the University of Texas at Austin voted on a resolution “affirming the fundamental rights of academic freedom in its broadest sense, inclusive of research and teaching of race and gender theory.”

NAS Affiliate Head and Associate Professor of Finance Richard Lowery said the pledge’s language is misleading because its signers intend to teach radically progressive pedagogy on race and gender to the exclusion of more mainstream perspectives. The resolution came in response to a recent Texas law that prohibits instructors at public K-12 schools and universities from promoting radical ideology on race and sex, including the idea that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.”

Lowery was one of five faculty members on the panel to reject the resolution.

The UT Austin administration has “done so much to suppress what anyone else can say on campus and beyond…We have a policy now where all faculty for promotion and hiring are supposed to be expressing their support for diversity, equity, and inclusion as defined by the critical race theorist group,” he told Fox News in an interview…