Chris Tomlinson: Dan Patrick's attacks threaten innovation that drives Texas’s economy

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick takes me back to my halcyon days fighting bigotry and promoting economic growth at the University of Texas at Austin. Patrick’s rant against “critical race theory,” “the woke left,” and “Marxist professors” reminds me of my college years, when conservatives railed against multiculturalism, political correctness, and, you guessed it, Marxist professors. Demagogue Dan uses a tried-and-true playbook to silence minorities, censor dissidents and drive away intellectuals. He doesn’t care that tenured faculty make important discoveries and drive economic growth. Patrick’s assault on academic freedom is already causing problems for freethinkers, but if he convinces the Legislature to eliminate job protection for professors, he will blow up Texas’s engines of innovation.

Our lieutenant governor has always been an intolerant Christian nationalist. He frequently promises that his religious beliefs take priority over his political party or the laws of man. But now that the Republican Party is adopting his brand of populist authoritarianism, he’s going for broke. “I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with Critical Race Theory. We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed,” he tweeted on Feb. 15. Patrick followed up with a press conference where he said fighting tenure at public universities was his top legislative priority in 2023. He wants to make it illegal for administrators to offer tenure to new professors, and he wants to expand powers to take it away from existing faculty. Tenure is a tradition designed to protect intellectuals from politics. Academics spend their lives studying, writing and helping people better understand their world. At their best, universities are places to discuss and debate this research without fear of retribution or cultish dogma.