Texas legislature passes bill to crackdown on campus protests
Texas lawmakers finalized SB 2972, a bill that would give university administrators more control over the timing and location of disruptive campus protests, especially in response to anti-Israel demonstrations.
The bill’s author emphasized that ‘while the world watched Columbia, Harvard and other campuses across the country taken hostage by pro-terrorist mobs last year, Texas stood firm.’
State lawmakers are taking action against nearly two years of unruly, anti-Israel demonstrations at Texas’ biggest colleges and universities.
The Texas House and Senate have both passed Senate Bill 2972, which aims to empower university administrators to have greater say over the time and place of potentially disruptive campus protests.
The measure was sent to Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday and is awaiting his signature.
State Sen. Joan Huffman celebrated the bill as a win for free expression. According to the Texas Tribune, she stressed that the limits it would put in place “work to ensure that our academic environments remain spaces for open dialogue and learning, fostering an atmosphere where diverse perspectives can thrive while maintaining safety.”
The act would also prevent students from wearing masks during protests or otherwise employing tactics that conceal their identity.
State Sen. Brandon Creighton—the bill’s author—emphasized the need for the regulations in SB 2972 by comparing how anti-Israel protests were handled at the nation’s top universities with how they were managed at Texas colleges, stressing that lawmakers have a responsibility to ensure public spaces are not monopolized by proponents of a single viewpoint.
“While the world watched Columbia, Harvard and other campuses across the country taken hostage by pro-terrorist mobs last year, Texas stood firm. UT allowed protest, not anarchy,” Creighton told the Austin-American Statesman. “No First Amendment rights were infringed—and they never will be.”
Conversely, some free speech advocates, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), worry that the new measure might stifle free expression, stressing that university administrators’ current powers are sufficient to regulate harmful forms of expression.
FIRE referred Campus Reform to an open letter the organization sent to Gov. Abbott last week. The letter expressed FIRE’s concerns and called on the governor to slow the bill’s progress through the legislature.
“We understand the Legislature’s concern over campus protests elsewhere that may have crossed existing legal lines. But SB 2972 is not the solution,” FIRE wrote. “Texas does not need a bill that both weakens speech protections for students and exposes institutions to liability.”
A Gallup poll released earlier this year suggested that conservative students are less able to freely speak their minds than their liberal counterparts.
The poll revealed that while 74 percent of students think that their school protects and promotes free speech, only 53 percent of students believe that conservative viewpoints can be freely expressed.
Campus Reform has reached out to Creighton for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.