Faculty members at the University of Texas are walking silently through campus for 15 minutes at noon, Monday through Thursday, wearing black and carrying signs as they protest a string of changes they say have narrowed academic freedom. The walks began after Sept. 21 and have become a daily-looking act of resistance that is quiet in delivery but pointed in its message.
Karma Chávez said the walks are meant to hold space for grief as much as to make a statement, calling them ritualistic. She said the group has grown to about 20 faculty members from several schools, and that passersby have thanked them for being there. The slogan on the protest flyer is “Let Longhorns Learn,” and the flyer includes a QR code that leads to a timeline of changes on campus since 2020.
That timeline matters because the complaint is not about one decision but a sequence of them. Faculty point to Senate Bill 17 in 2023, which forced the closure of diversity, equity and inclusion offices at state-funded schools such as UT; to February, when UT announced it would consolidate four departments into a Social and Cultural Analysis department; and to August, when UT President Jim Davis revealed plans to overhaul the university's core curriculum requirements. Many of the changes have hit the College of Liberal Arts, where faculty also note that certain majors have been eliminated.
Chávez said the protest is aimed at those changes, yet she also described it as something slightly different from a conventional demonstration. “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,” she said. That softer framing sits uneasily beside the substance of what is happening on campus: a visible, repeated challenge to university policy that faculty say has gone too far, while the UT AAUP chapter, Chávez said, is ignored by the administration.
The walks are likely to remain the clearest public sign of faculty dissatisfaction for now. UT's Faculty Council was abolished in August 2025, and the faculty members involved in the walks have no formal sign that the administration is preparing a response. For the moment, they are relying on the same simple routine each day at noon: black clothing, signs, and a slow march meant to keep the pressure on.
