This article has been updated since publication.
A tenured professor at the University of Texas at Austin says he was dismissed from his senior administrative post due to “ideological differences,” marking the latest shake-up in Texas’ statewide effort to reform higher education and curb campus DEI influence.
Last week, Art Markman posted that UT leadership had dismissed him in late September as academic affairs senior vice provost. He wrote that he lost his mom to colon cancer days earlier, reflecting on both losses in the post.
Gov. Greg Abbott commented on this four days later, celebrating the dismissal.
“Texas is targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation,” he wrote. “We must end indoctrination and return to education fundamentals at all levels of education.”
In July 2021, UT-Austin promoted Markman—who joined the university in 1998 as an associate psychology professor—to senior vice provost. He has promoted DEI ideology for years.
Markman previously served as executive director of the university’s IC² Institute, which Markman called a “think and do” tank, from 2018 to 2021. In October 2020, UT-Austin gave IC² a grant to “assess and refine tools to measure DEI,” with a May 2021 deadline.
“In order for DEI programs to succeed, they have to be embedded in a framework that allows the university to measure success,” Markman stated when the grant was announced. “This is particularly important for inclusion, which can be harder to measure than diversity and equity. We are taking a comprehensive look at what the university has measured in the past as well as new ways to assess the effectiveness of our programs.”
Markman advocated for DEI’s advancement in the business and academic spheres. During a 2021 panel discussion titled “The Future of the Texas Workforce,” Markman said “creating better diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace is everyone’s issue. It is everyone’s responsibility to step up.”
He also said that workplace diversity panels should not have only “people of color” because that “absolves all of the white people from taking responsibility in this.”
The panel was hosted by UT-Austin’s Office of Inclusive Innovation and Entrepreneurship. A link to the office’s webpage redirects to the main UT-Austin page.
Markman wrote pro-DEI articles during his tenure at UT-Austin that were published in Fast Company. In February 2023, he wrote that organizations don’t need “a grand justification” for DEI in their DEI statements. He pointed to UT-Austin as an example, noting that it “affirms a commitment to diversity without a justification.” He pointed to a paper by Oriane Georgeac and Aneeta Rattan that suggested DEI statements with justifications included, particularly a business-based one, will make people “feel like their presence and performance at the company is being judged based on their identity, in addition to their performance.”
Markman again advocated for DEI in his June 2023 piece. “The aim of these efforts is for organizations to create a broad-based team of employees who all have equal opportunity and compensation and are allowed to bring their full selves to work.”
He wrote about the term “belonging” being added to the DEI acronym. “The concept of belonging focuses on an individual’s sense that they feel like a member of the community and deserve to be there. The sense of belonging matters, because it affects how people deal with adversity,” he wrote.
UT-Austin’s DEI statement (which is no longer online), the 2021 panel discussion, and the IC² DEI project took place under a prior UT-Austin regime, before new state laws took effect.
In 2023, state lawmakers banned universities from establishing a DEI office, using DEI criteria in their hiring practices, or requiring employees or prospective employees to attend DEI training.
In June, UT-Austin selected William Inboden, a Reagan scholar and proponent of academic reform, as the sole finalist for provost and executive vice president and appointed him in July. In August, leadership made interim president Jim Davis, who oversaw Inboden’s hiring, its permanent president.
More changes have rolled down.
In September, in response to an inquiry about a program teaching the LGBT ideology, the university announced it was auditing classes and curriculum. College of Education Dean Charles Martinez, under whose watch the college advanced DEI and LGBT ideologies, announced he would leave after the current academic year. University of Texas System leadership—UT-Austin’s parent body—expressed enthusiasm when the Trump Administration invited UT-Austin to sign onto its reform initiative.
Markman is the latest change in UT-Austin leadership. Juan Dominguez is now the interim senior vice provost for academic affairs. Markman’s UT-Austin profile shows he remains employed as the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing.
Markman provided a statement to Texas Scorecard.
“My only comment is that the LinkedIn post that seems to have started this story was focused on my gratitude to my mom who passed away in September and to all of the faculty, staff, and students who have enriched my 27 years at UT,” he wrote. “I am proud of what my teams and I have accomplished in my time in university administration. I would prefer to focus on that gratitude than to get caught up in political discussions.”
UT-Austin stated that it “doesn’t comment on personnel matters.”
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