(Todd A. Smith)
Many Texas college professors want to leave the state, and who could blame them with the political climate surrounding higher education, especially in red states thanks to President Donald Trump.
Milla Surjadi of the Houston Chronicle reported, “A greater percentage of Texas professors want to leave the state this year than last year, citing its political climate and concerns about censorship, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors.
“Of more than 1,000 Texas respondents, about a third said they had applied for a job in another state in the last two years, and about 35 percent said they planned to do so in the next hiring cycle. That’s an increase from last year, where about a quarter of respondents answered that they had applied for a job or were planning to do so.”
Before I devoted myself full-time to running my company, Regal Media Group, I worked as a journalism/communications professor at Texas Southern University (TSU) in Houston and Lone Star College in Cypress, Texas.
I come from a family of educators.
But most of my relatives focused on grade school and not higher education.
I liked the college atmosphere because I could talk about real world issues, and I could better relate to my students because, at the most, I was only 10 years their senior.
The liveliest conversations came from my Law and Ethics of Journalism class at Texas Southern University.
My students would get angry at past and current Supreme Court rulings.
But I can vividly remember telling them that they did not have to agree with the law because Supreme Court justices often disagree with the majority rulings.
We would even talk about current election issues.
I remember my former student Doneisha getting upset with me for voting to keep red-light cameras.
Most Houston voters agreed with Doneisha on that one.
But those disagreements are what prepared them for the real world, and hopefully having a professor who even welcomed them to disagree with him helped them develop critical thinking skills that all people need.
But now since many White conservatives fear that their country is slipping away from White folks, Republican lawmakers want to block the First Amendment rights of their professors and students by telling them what they can and cannot discuss in the classroom, as if young adults are infants who should only hear the teachings of their mommies and daddies.
The thing that makes college so special is that you are exposed to people from so many backgrounds, it forces one to grow more in those four years than they ever could in the 18 years they lived with mommy and daddy.
College students should learn actual American history, not just the whitewashed propaganda that makes racist White people comfortable and happy.
College students should be exposed to people of other religions.
And if a parent did a good job anchoring their child in their faith, that believe system should hold up against other religious beliefs.
When I was in college, I was exposed to underground hip-hop from regions of the country that I had never visited.
At Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., the locals exposed the visitors to New Orleans bounce music.
The Texas students exposed their classmates to chopped and screwed music.
Students from Washington, D.C. hipped me to go-go music.
And I tried to hip my non-religious suitemates to the gospel music that I liked.
That is what college is about: growth and exposure.
Now, Republican lawmakers want to make it about conservative indoctrination because they fear losing political power to college graduates who tend to sway more to the liberal side.
Republicans will say that liberals are trying to indoctrinate college students.
But if the conservative viewpoint is so much better than the liberal perspective, conservatives will win out at the end of the day because the truth always comes to the light.
My mother made my sister, and I go to church and Sunday School, even when she did not attend.
She had confidence that she had raised her children right when it comes to introducing them to Jesus Christ.
Therefore, she had no problems when I had to learn about existentialism in 12thgrade.
So, if a high school student is not indoctrinated by a different belief while still underage, why are Republicans worrying about grown a$$ men and women being exposed to something they do not like?
They do not have to believe what their teachers and classmates believe if they do not want.
But the real loss in this political foolishness is that losing the best professors will mean Texas students lose in the long run because all professors are not created equal.
I was an O.K. professor, and many students enjoyed my class.
But many professors could teach circles around me.
One of the most popular journalism professors at Texas Southern is and was Serbino Sandifer-Walker.
Texas Southern students adore her, and they have learned so much from her over the years.
Additionally, students from around the country marveled at some of her sessions at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention.
In 2012, I remember some recent graduates from Rutgers Universities that instantly adored her like her students from TSU at hearing her speak that year in New Orleans.
Texas Southern could afford to lose me and keep on pushing.
But their communications department cannot afford to lose a teacher like Sandifer-Walker.
Colleges across the country have professors on that caliber.
And losing them would mean increasing the likelihood that their students and graduates lose in the long run.
Some high school students might simply just choose to leave the state to learn from some of the best and brightest professors in the country, and who could blame them?
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