Some say ‘no’ to UT due to campus carry

Professor’s remarks on effect of new gun policy hold up to scrutiny.

A University of Texas English professor says a law enabling Texans with state permits to carry concealed guns into classrooms has already caused prospective faculty, students and even speakers not to come to the Austin campus.

Lisa Moore said in an NPR interview aired Aug. 7, six days after the campus carry mandate took effect: “We already have concrete examples of faculty who have declined to apply for jobs here at the university or who, once offered jobs, have turned them down when they realized that this policy would go into effect, students changing their minds about coming to our graduate and undergraduate programs, and invited speakers declining to come when they realized that we couldn’t guarantee that they would give their talk in a gunfree space.”

“Concrete examples” is definitive. So, how about details?

It’s worth noting that since 1995, Texas law has allowed any individ-

ual with a concealed handgun permit to carry a gun on public college and university sidewalks, streets, parking areas and other grounds. In 2015, state lawmakers widened the law by voting to let permit holders also carry guns in campus buildings, except in areas excluded under rules adopted by each school’s president.

Moore, asked to for concrete examples, initially responded with an email reminding that an out-ofstate candidate for a UT deanship said he bowed out of consideration in 2015 due to the gun law.

A February AmericanStatesman news blog post quoted Siva Vaidhyanathan, a University of Virginia professor of media studies who’d previously earned UT bachelor’s and doctoral degrees, saying he’d been contacted by a search firm helping the university find a dean for the Moody College of Communication — and, the story said, was later told he was a finalist.

But the gun law weighed on him; the story said that if chosen, Vaidhyanathan said, he’d have felt compelled to side with faculty members seeking to bar guns from classrooms. “I told the search firm I was no longer interested in the position,” he said.

Moore also forwarded a November 2015 email sent by a parent, Rachel Zucker, to a UT mailbox. The message says: “Dear UT, I want you to know that my son, Moses Goren, is a straight A student at Hunter College High School (in NYC) who has expressed interest in applying to your Plan II program at UT (Austin).

He and I have decided, however, that he will not apply to any schools that have campus carry laws,” the message continued.

Moore also noted the departures of two UT faculty members by 2016. In each instance — architecture Dean Frederick Steiner’s move to the University of Pennsylvania and economist Daniel Hamermesh’s shift to opportunities abroad — news stories and emails we fielded from the men describe the gun law as a factor, though not the only factor, in the departures.

Hamermesh urged us to consult UT history professor Joan Neuberger, who responded by emailing a prospective graduate student’s February 2016 email saying she would decline UT’s offer of admission “due to my misgivings with the campus carry guidelines.”

Moore, asked about speakers deciding not coming to campus, pointed us to Paloma Diaz, an administrator in UT’s Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.

Diaz said that a speaker who teaches at the University of Washington cited the gun law in initially resisting the institute’s invitation to give a talk in fall 2016, though she said the speaker subsequently relented.

Diaz said she didn’t have permission to identify the speaker. Elsewhere, a web search showed the institute has posted a notice that Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, a Washington professor, is expected to visit and give talks Sept. 26. Godoy didn’t respond to our query.

We also became aware of two late-breaking instances of invited speakers deciding not to come to UT, but we couldn’t fairly consider them in our ruling of this fact check because their decisions became public after Moore spoke to NPR.

Still, Duke University professor Karla Holloway wrote UT English professor Phillip Barrish that she was rescinding her acceptance of Barrish’s invitation to speak this fall because of the gun law. And Texas Christian University historian Hanan Hammad has reversed course about speaking at UT, also over the gun law.

Our ruling

Moore told NPR there are “concrete examples” of UT job applicants, prospective students and invited speakers deciding not to come to the university because of gun permit holders being allowed to bring handguns into campus buildings, including into classrooms.

We rate this statement True.