Republican lawmakers around the country are moving quickly to remake higher education in their conservative vision.

Bills in states including Florida, Texas, and Ohio have alarmed proponents of academic freedom, who say that the efforts to limit or mandate certain courses or the teaching of certain topics, restrict or end faculty tenure, and defund and ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs will damage higher education.

In Florida, a state that’s received a lot of attention for Gov. Ron DeSantis’s takeover of the New College of Florida or laws that ban the teaching of concepts like critical race theory or intersectionality, the laws have already been signed and take effect in July. In other states, such as Montana and North Dakota, efforts have stalled due to pushback from students and faculty. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, legislators in 20 states have introduced more than 30 bills targeting DEI programs.

Public opinion on the matter has become divided. A 2022 Pew Research survey found that 76 percent of Democrats believe colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country, while less than a third of Republicans did. About 76 percent of conservative Republicans said colleges affect the country negatively.

Ultimately, these bills threaten democracy, said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the organization that has long promoted the benefits of faculty tenure and intellectual freedom. By the AAUP’s count, there have been more than 50 such bills in 23 states.

“The bills have produced a chilling effect on academic freedom,” Mulvey said.

She talked to me about what’s behind these bills and why all academics, even those in blue states and even those with tenure, are under attack. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Fabiola Cineas

How has your job changed this year since these bills have been introduced?

Irene Mulvey

My job this year, when I’m serving as president in my first year of retirement, feels about 100 times harder than when I was doing the job while I was a full-time faculty member. This year is incredible because the bills keep coming up all over the country in different states. It’s like playing whack-a-mole to try and address them. Every day brings some new fresh outrage.

In the past, it was that an individual’s academic freedom has been violated at a certain institution. We would look into that, issue a statement, and have some people talk about it. Now in red states, attacks from the state legislature, the governors — people elected to serve our country — are damaging higher education and its role as a public good in a democracy. These bills are being turned out at a fever pitch and they are very damaging, not only to higher ed, but to democracy. Education in a democracy is essential. You have to educate voters; you have to have experts who can criticize the government or expose corruption.

Fabiola Cineas

Who or what is behind these bills?

Irene Mulvey

The bills are being drafted in right-wing think tanks funded by dark money. It’s a well-funded, well-orchestrated, decades-long campaign. It’s not just springing up out of nowhere since the language in the bills is very similar.

Fabiola Cineas

It feels like Florida’s legislation is getting the most attention. Why is that?

Irene Mulvey

Florida’s getting a lot of attention because the governor’s running for president and doing all he can to get the most press and generate the most clickbait and sound bites. But the bills, like the ones out of Texas and Ohio, for example, are equally as bad. Florida is leading the race to the bottom for sure.

Fabiola Cineas

What elements of the bill stand out to you as damaging?

Irene Mulvey

In all the bills, they’re attacking key elements of higher education; they’re attacking academic freedom and they’re attacking governance. They’re attacking tenure, either limiting tenure or outright getting rid of tenure. Tenure exists to protect academic freedom, which is essential to democracy. If you don’t have academic freedom, you end up in an authoritarian state where the government gets to tell you what is true and what you can and can’t learn. In an authoritarian state, the public is in the dark.

Fabiola Cineas

What do you say to academics who may already have tenure and live in states where these threats aren’t present? Or academics who work at private institutions and believe these threats won’t affect them?

Irene Mulvey

It’s a very selfish point of view to think this can’t affect a certain kind of academic. The majority of faculty in higher education do not have tenure, are not eligible for tenure, and will not ever see a tenure decision because they are contingent faculty. This has been going on for about four decades where that’s an attack on academic freedom. These contingent faculty members do not have academic freedom. It’s up to the faculty who have tenure to speak up on behalf of the profession. Our colleagues who do not have tenure are not able to speak up.

For example, if there’s someone doing work on climate change, and a Board of Governors member who has made their wealth in the fossil fuel industry says, “Get rid of that guy. I don’t like where his research is going,” he’s gone. The person who has to speak up against that is the tenured faculty because those people do not have the protections, the power, nor do they have the voice. Tenure is not for the individual; tenure protects academic freedom. And the academic freedom it protects is not for the individual, it’s for the work. The work, the research, and the teaching have to be allowed to go wherever they lead without interference from politicians, board members, governors, or state legislators. It’s up to all of us in the profession to protect our colleagues who do not have the protections of academic freedom that are necessary in a democracy.

Fabiola Cineas

Take me back to 1915, when AAUP was founded. What similarities exist between then and today?

Irene Mulvey

The current moment is an exact parallel to our origin story. In 1915, the American Association of University Professors was founded because, at the time, the people in charge of universities were railroad magnates and people who had made their money in various industries. They were insisting that anyone doing research that was critical of the industry they made their wealth in be fired.

It was inappropriate interference from the people who had the power that led to our founding. And then our founding principle is that higher education is different from businesses in the sense that you hire these faculty members for their expertise and then you allow them to teach and conduct their research with the full academic freedom required so that we learn what is true. One of our founding documents points out that faculty are like judges in the sense that they are appointed to their job by the Board of Trustees. But once they’re appointed, they are not beholden to the Board of Trustees. They’re only beholden to academic freedom, to their scholarship and to education as a public good.

If their research or teaching is found to be unfavorable to the person that appointed them so be it. If the research in the work or the teaching are evaluated positively by the scholars who are experts at the cutting edge of this field, then that’s where we are. So this is our origin story and it’s our entire 108-year history. We have been fighting off inappropriate interference in higher education, whether it’s from a board of governors, whether it’s from wealthy donors, like in the Nikole Hannah Jones case at the University of North Carolina, or from governors or state legislators.

Fabiola Cineas

There are also specific parts of the bills that ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. What are the immediate and long-term consequences of this?

Irene Mulvey

It’s absolutely devastating. I’ve testified in Texas and Florida and have listened to students who say they are benefiting from DEI programs. And I’ve listened to people who are 20 or 30 years out of college, who are testifying to the benefits of these DEI programs, that they wouldn’t be where they are without these programs. For faculty of color and students of color, it’s demoralizing in an existential way. These states have completely mischaracterized DEI programs that are there to make our campus communities welcoming to all. Anti-DEI efforts make the campuses unwelcoming.

It’s also going to have a devastating effect on recruitment and retention of faculty in Florida. Everybody’s looking at their options. The academic chatter right now is that one person after another is leaving Florida. It’s very difficult for faculty to move and pick up their families. The attack on DEI efforts is truly a dog whistle to people who want to revive the prejudices of the past. This is an effort to halt, thwart, and undo the real but limited progress we have made toward a multiracial democracy. It feels like a last-ditch effort to revive the prejudices of the past and it saddens me deeply.

Fabiola Cineas

So what else is at the heart of all this? Why are red states doing this now?

Irene Mulvey

What they’re identifying are not problems in higher education or things that need to be fixed.

A lot of it is made up. There are real problems in higher education to fix, like decades of underfunding. There is the problem of contingent faculty that have no academic freedom. So to argue that this is indoctrination in higher education is completely made up. There’s no evidence that’s happening. The rationales for these bills are a completely made-up mischaracterization of what’s happening in order to drag higher education into the culture wars, to make higher education a political talking point for voters who may not be paying attention to what’s really going on.

They want higher education to become a football like [critical race theory] or abortion. They’re dragging higher education into the culture wars to serve a political agenda. The damage it will do to higher education is the real story. They may be doing this just to get some votes, but the damage to public higher education will take decades to undo. The damage to higher education is essentially a domino and democracy itself is at the end of this line of dominoes.