Dear Jay C. Hartzell, An Op-Ed to an Op-Ed
by Amanda Tovar
As a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin I was dumbfounded by an op-ed penned by Jay C. Hartzell, the president of the University of Texas at Austin, on May 2, 2024. It was his response to the police violence hoisted against students protesting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, that stated UT Austin has a “proud history of protest” that he was “grateful” for. Likewise, Hartzell spent the majority of the op-ed attempting to justify his invitation of Texas’ Department of Public Safety’s State Trooper’s and amplifying the University of Texas Police Department’s presence on campus. My two sentences that summarize his words demonstrate that not only is he in direct contradiction with himself, but he is also incompetent.
Allow me to explain.
Hartzell argued that the protests and protesters themselves posed a risk of safety to the student body, that there was a collective responsibility not to disrupt education, that protesters had to adhere to predetermined University of Texas at Austin rules to utilize their first amendment right. Further, he bolstered that “occupying” the University at any capacity could lay ground for setting “alarming precedent” for anyone who wants to “establish encampments in the future.” Again, these statements are in blatant contradiction with each other. How does quelling student protest not establish a dangerous precedent for future protesters? How does allowing state violence against the student body not establish a dangerous precedent? And what exactly does it say about him that he fears the possibility of encampments on campus grounds of a public university while the city of Austin, Texas is nearly impossible to afford? But I digress.
What his op-ed is covertly saying is that students at the University of Texas at Austin can exercise their first amendment right so long as the student body request and receive permission and so long as they do not demand the University divest from weapons manufacturing. Essentially, he is requiring the student body be subservient to his desire for authority and his complete and total disregard for the first amendment right. Even worse, he obviously lacks a basic education on the very foundation of the United States.
Hartzell’s op-ed makes me wonder if he believes the Sons of Liberty, responsible for the Boston Tea Party, asked the King of Great Britain and Ireland George III for permission before dumping tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of excessive taxation? Or if Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale asked the Ku Klux Klan to start the Black Panther Party? Or if David Wojnarowicz asked the Reagan Administration for permission to create and wear a leather jacket that read “IF I DIE OF AIDS – FORGET BURIAL – JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A.” in protest of the lack of response to the AIDS crises on the 80’s?
Every aspect of the “American Dream” that resembles freedom derives from direct action protests.
What is it about Jay C. Hartzell that makes him believe his authority supersedes the Bill of Rights and its First Amendment? To be concerned about safety is one thing, to suggest it was only after witnessing the “horrors” unfold at other Universities is what prompted his request of police presence is another. It was indicative that police presence on campus would escalate non-violent protests against a genocide to extremely violent. And to further point out his contradictions and incompetence I want to highlight his November 2020 Hartzell’s UT News article he titled There is No Higher Education Without Free Speech where he wrote “I believe the goal of a public research university, as an educational institution, is to open the minds of our students, expose them to different perspectives and beliefs, and prepare them to lead extraordinary lives after graduation.” It’s interesting that he would pen this following the Black Lives Matter righteous uprisings that threatened white-nationalists and prompted violent counter protests that swept the nation that summer. I believe he was intentionally platforming and priming racists to say and do what they want with impunity.
I wonder why Hartzell believes it is okay to say there can be no higher education without free speech and in his next breath is vehemently against the expression of free speech. Is it because he does not want to condemn U.S. nationalist rhetoric while simultaneously condemning those who want to see a free Palestine? Is it because the physical bodies of Palestinians are not white, but U.S. nationalists…are?
To me it is clear that Hartzell’s recent message is one that highlights his hypocrisy. It is one that calls for the silencing of those in opposition of an ongoing genocide, on occurring colonialism, and the furthering of what Palestinian scholar Fayez A. Sayegh, Ph.D. calls the tragic fate of Palestinians: foreign domination, exploitation, and dispossession (Sayegh, 50). The University of Texas at Austin’s investments in weapons manufacturing and its refusal to divest strengthens this argument. Hartzell, and all of the reagents and CEOs of weapons manufacturing companies, want to ensure the fate Sayegh wrote about in 1965 to keep their bank accounts fat.
They all benefit from this manufactured genocide.
In Marcus Aurelius’ infamous Meditations, he writes that injustice is a blasphemy, that nature designed rational beings for each other, to help each other (Aurelius, 117). Further, he states we should not harm one another, and doing so is to engage in blaspheme “against the oldest of Gods,” and that nature and truth are synonymous (Aurelius, 117). He moves on to suggest that doing harm in general is to commit harm against the self, which is an injustice that “degrades you” (Aurelius, 119). And finally, he states that one can in fact commit acts of injustice by doing nothing (Aurelius, 119). What is interesting about Aurelius’ Meditations is its affiliation with CEOs and capitalists who herald it as a sacred while placing it on their “must read” list for success. However, it is often forgotten that Aurelius is one of the most profound practitioners of Stoicism; meaning he believed in being of good moral character, good intentions, and good actions (Aurelius, 65). Thus, placing Aurelius in conversation with Hartzell, a man who holds a PhD in finance, is necessary. How could one be in a position of leadership and claim to want to protect the students at the University of Texas at Austin and yet every move he makes is in opposition of being a good leader? His actions to call in Texas State troopers on young adults who will “change the world” reveals that his intentions are not good and thus neither is his moral character. He is willing to harm another.
Perhaps what is most insidious to me is that while he is the University president, he is only one piece of the puzzle. He follows Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s orders on command, which demonstrates that unlike UT at Austin’s student body, he lacks the ability to think for himself and critically. Not only did Abbott celebrate the arrests of students, but he also cartoon villainously stated that they should be expelled. It is clear that Hartzell is a sycophant and does not possess the tools necessary to lead students at the University of Texas at Austin.
He barely understands history and, again, constantly contradicts himself.
Further, his own research is limited to the realm of finance with a heavy emphasis on the Bible. In Is Higher Calling Enough?: Incentive Compensation in the Church Hartzell states that Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the Bible are some of history’s most “influential” texts in the “Western” world. (Hartzell, et al., 510). He states that Adam Smith and Apostle Paul understood the “value of a sound remuneration system for members of the clergy” (Hartzell, et al., 510). With very little digging it is clear to see where his convictions lay—capitalism and Christianity—with capitalism being his priority. Hartzell’s reliance on capitalism and the Bible is even more alarming when you consider his alignment with Texas conservative GOP leaders when you consider their rejection of a ban on association with neo Nazis and antisemitism.
There is nothing more antisemitic than aligning with white supremacists like Nick Fuentes and far right extremist organizations such as Defend Texas Liberties. Again, this is another one of Hartzell’s contradictions that he will have to face sooner or later.
With that in mind, we must consider the letter written by Alums for Campus Fairness and signed by nearly one hundred former UT students in support of Jay Hartzell’s actions against students. Moreover, we should take a closer look at the alumni’s financial contributions to political organizations and PACs. They have funneled thousands of dollars into far right wing PAC’s. Ultimately their funds make their way to the pockets of Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick—the biggest beneficiary of Defend Texas Liberties PAC. Only when we examine the signers’ financial contributions to politicians can we see an intentional far right political alignment of the University of Texas at Austin’s president and it is not one that truly respects the Constitution. With Aurelius and Hartzell’s scholarship in mind, I want to emphasize how un-Godly Hartzell, Abbott and company truly are. Their desire for capital and greed removes them from any claim to religiosity. They are not practitioners of faith. They worship the dollar. They do not mind if the collective is harmed. In fact, I don’t think they care. It is precisely because of this “Free Palestine” becomes poised for an antisemitic label, and yet associating with someone (ahem, Nick Fuentes) who has openly expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and does not believe the Holocaust occurred not antisemitic?
Further, what reasoning does Hartzell have to claim that there were weapons on campus when there is no indication such? Why would students protesting for the end of the genocide of Palestinian people while simultaneously calling for the divestment of weapons manufacturing bring weapons to a peaceful protest? How would the student body (who not too long ago protested UT Austin’s open carry policies with dildos) magically become a student body of gun carrying individuals? And more, on May 5, 2024 the student body present at the May Day protest in solidarity with Palestine blew bubbles and again called for a permanent ceasefire.
How does any of this justify a grown man calling for an obscene amount of police presence that enabled the violence that followed be justified at all?
The truth is that it cannot.
Jay Hartzell IS incompetent and roughly 600 faculty members agree as they casted a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Additionally, nearly 10% of the graduate student population stands in solidarity with faculty and students. How Hartzell can stand firm in his position at the University and have the audacity to pen an op-ed to justify himself is pathetic. A friend of mine, Shantilly, pointed out to me that Hartzell clearly has a real stake in obfuscating the real conversation at hand. To Shantilly, Hartzell is bitch made white supremacist intentionally muddying the waters by throwing around words like racism, and antisemitism when they clearly don’t give two fucks about the realities of racism or antisemitism. Instead, he is hiding behind his intentional scare tactics via state sanctioned violence to uphold academia, another institution that maintains white supremacy.
Prior to the genocide of Palestinians, what was Hartzell doing to protect Jewish students on campus from white nationalists? Nothing. Writing his UT-website published piece on “Free Speech.” What was he doing for the Jewish students on campus when a synagogue was subject to arson? Nothing. What has he done for students who have been attacked by white nationalists and Islamophobes? Nothing. He has done nothing because as my friend, Holly, pointed out Hartzell has no real understanding of religiosity and therefore cannot truly care for students of any denomination. His religion is money, and his convictions begin and end there.
Hartzell should resign. Immediately.
As I write this, the only “safe” place in Palestine is Rafah and it is being bombed. Al Jazeera has been banned from the nation state of Israel, and it is unlikely that the whole truth of UT’s connection to these atrocities will be told on any mainstream media source.
The students at The University of Texas at Austin among many other campuses across the world are protesting for an end to an ongoing genocide, they want an immediate cease fire, they, the generation that has seen more horrific mass-shootings than my millennial self who was in 4th grade during Columbine, want an end to weapons manufacturing, they want LIFE to persevere, and somehow they are agitators affiliated with and moving on behalf of other countries.
Nah, they’re tired of witnessing the U.S. participate in a genocide that will destabilize communities for years to come. Having taught many students as an Assistant Instructor (a student teacher/professor) I know firsthand that these young adults see the possibilities of a just world. And that is all they are asking for. Student protesters across the world assembled peacefully en masse and I imagine for a capitalist that is scary. But what these students are doing is embodying the just thing to do. They are exemplary of truth and nature. They know that Palestinian right to life supersedes every aspect of comfort afforded to them, and us. I know this. I know you know this.
These students do not fear death, guns, batons, tear gas, a military like police force on horses, going to jail, getting doxed, and so many other things. No, what they don’t want is to be is contempt by capitalists who will exploit them and others for the sake of land and money, they are essentially spitting in the faces of everyone who has told them that everything, including freedom, is attainable through “peaceful means” (Flores Magón, 166). They do not want to be cogs in the wheel of never ending cycles of imperialism, colonization, and the genocides that accompany the aforementioned. They want to be free. They want their comrades to be free. They want us to be free.
Why, then, are university presidents intent on disarming the only thing they have in this world? Their voices, and chants, and tears, and moments of happiness, and their solidarity with the people in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, Congo, Cuba, Black Lives, and so many others will reverberate throughout time and beyond the ethers.
How then do any of their actions imply unsafe conditions when the only interruption to a quality education is Hartzell himself.
With love and solidarity to all,
mandee
