On the University of Texas campus, students, staff and visitors will see the same sight at noon, Monday through Thursday: faculty members silently marching through campus for 15 minutes, wearing black and holding signs.
“There’s a part of it that really is just a place to put our grief, so there’s a piece of this that really is ritualistic in that way,” said Karma Chávez, UT chapter president of the American Association of University Professors and professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies.
Since Sept. 21, Chávez and other faculty members have protested changes at UT Austin that include department consolidations, course cuts, the elimination of certain majors and what they consider a loss of academic freedom. Many of those changes have hit the College of Liberal Arts.
“We came up with the slogan, ‘Let Longhorns Learn,'” Chávez said. “We’ve connected it to the closing of the ethnic, gender, and area studies programs. But we hand out a flyer with a QR code that links people to a timeline we’ve created with the dizzying amount of what we would describe as very negative changes that have happened on campus since 2020.”
Universities across Texas have changed in the past few years. The passage of Senate Bill 17 in 2023 forced the closure of diversity, equity and inclusion offices at state-funded schools, such as UT. In February, UT announced it would consolidate four departments—African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies—into a Social and Cultural Analysis department. In August, UT President Jim Davis revealed plans to overhaul the university’s core curriculum requirements.
Chávez said the university has not contacted the AAUP chapter about the near-daily walks. UT Austin did not respond to a request for comment from Chron by the time of publication.
Chávez also said faculty have had less opportunity to communicate their grievances to the university. UT’s Faculty Council was abolished in August 2025, and Chávez said the UT AAUP chapter is “ignored by the administration.”
“I think faculty feel really frustrated at UT and also feel dejected and like there’s not a lot we can do,” Chávez said.
Chávez said the walks have grown to about 20 faculty members across several different schools and have received support from passersby, who have thanked the faculty for being there.
“We really just are keeping the attention on all these changes and saying, ‘we’re not going anywhere.’ So it’s not really a protest, exactly,” Chávez said. “It’s about grief, but maybe it’s also about accountability and visibility.”
