I encourage you to go read this entire post by a former professor in Texas who just quit. It is a marvelous bit of insight into the mind of someone who was shaping young minds a few short weeks ago. She is not an educator. She is an activist. It helps explain what’s happening on campuses this week.
No, I quit my dream job because my life is more expansive than just a job and because I have irreconcilable differences with my employer, the Government of the State of Texas.
“You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”
My partner, Kate, and I have never felt at home in this state. I will not go into detail so as not to offend the many wonderful Texans I know and love, but this has never been our place.
We loved Seattle, my grad school home, but I know many wonderful people who lived there and then left due to the weather or the people’s reserved demeanor. But Kate and I cherished every moment we spent in the Pacific Northwest. It felt like home to us. Part of this is undoubtedly due to Seattle’s welcoming culture toward LGBTQ people, which we have experienced to a lesser extent here in Austin.
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Since the pandemic, our sense of not belonging in Texas has intensified. The state took a disappointing approach to COVID-19, refusing to let the university require masking and returning us to the physical classroom too quickly.
Our lives didn’t matter to my employer, and this angered me.
The state has since attacked DEI programs, and I’ve watched marginalized students shed tears as centers that were formerly beacons of light for them are now shuttered. I recall a trans student telling me early in my career at UT that they felt so at home because of the awareness and resources available to trans people. I wonder if they would still feel the same way if they were a student here today. I strongly doubt it.
It is one thing to live in a country where the government is regressive and makes decisions I don’t agree with; it is quite another to work for a fundamentalist state with so much control over my job and that regularly threatens to do more damage. The latter has proven much harder for me to reconcile.
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If I had fallen in love with Austin or felt at home in the state, I might want to stay and fight the power. After all, these atrocities are not unique to Texas.
I have spent the last seven years educating young people here, and I frequently tell them that they will one day change Texas. I still believe that. I am leaving them and my remaining warrior colleagues to carry on that work with all my love and support from afar.
Some dreams die harder than others. I can see where pushing DEI in Texas would be an uphill battle, but she voluntarily stepped onto that particular battlefield. The good news for Ms. McClearen is that she’s free to move about the planet in search of her perfect dreamscape.