What We Built
For twelve years, from 2005 to 2017, I served as Vice President and W.K. Kellogg Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where I also directed the Thematic Faculty Hire Initiative — one of the most ambitious interdisciplinary recruitment strategies undertaken at a major public research university.
During that period, we recruited more than 70 faculty across ranks and disciplines, including leading scientists, social scientists, humanists, and interdisciplinary scholars. We exceeded our original hiring goal. These were nationally competitive scholars selected through rigorous searches to build durable intellectual capacity and elevate UT’s research profile.
That sustained investment produced a critical mass of faculty whose scholarship focused on race, diaspora, migration, democracy, identity, inequality, and global systems. Their presence directly supported the creation of Ph.D.-granting departments in African and African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American and Latina/o Studies. These departments underwent rigorous review at the college, university, and system levels. Faculty governance worked as designed. Academic standards drove the outcome.
This remains one of the most meaningful accomplishments of my thirty-year career in higher education.
Why This Moment Is Troubling
Recent reports that UT Austin is closing or restructuring ethnic, gender, and area studies departments are deeply troubling. Units built through sustained scholarship and careful governance should not be destabilized by shifting political pressures. Public universities operate within legislative environments, but their credibility depends on protecting academic freedom and shared governance.
The faculty recruited through this initiative secured major grants, produced influential scholarship, trained doctoral students, and strengthened UT’s national standing. Weakening these departments risks undermining the very research ecosystem that made the institution stronger.
The Stakes for Academic Governance
Universities are judged over decades. Decisions that narrow fields of inquiry or target specific disciplines carry long-term consequences.
I remain proud of the more than 70 scholars we recruited — including scientists whose work advanced discovery across multiple domains. Building those departments reflected strategic leadership and institutional confidence in faculty expertise. Retreating from that foundation raises serious concerns about the protection of academic governance at a flagship public university.
Read the full report from AAUP-Texas: UT Austin Closing Ethnic Studies — AAUP Texas
Dr. Gregory J. Vincent, CEO, Vincent Strategies and Gregory J. Vincent Law | Graduate Faculty, Kansas State University
Banner Photo: “The Texas Union with the Tower in background” by Guðsþegn, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
