A pro-Palestine protest held at the University of Texas, Austin resulted in the postponement of a rally against the university’s dissolution of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office and firing of personnel.
On Wednesday, the Texas Student Employees Union intended to hold a rally called Stop the Purge in protest of the firings and dismantling of UT Austin’s DEI office. The rally was to be a multi-group event attended by members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Trans Texas, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Austin Justice Coalition.
Instead, the rally had a monkey wrench thrown into its plans by a separate left-wing oriented event, organized by UT Austin’s Palestine Solidarity Committee. Tens of students walked out of class in protest of Israeli actions during the ongoing war with Hamas. The rally, subsequently, prompted a significant response from law enforcement, who arrested at least 57 people. The group scheduled another rally to occur at the same time on Thursday.
The attempted rally, which has now been postponed to Monday, stems from the decision of UT Austin to comply with the anti-DEI Senate Bill 17, now law. UT Austin fired 60 DEI-related personnel and closed their Division of Campus and Community engagement.
The non-DEI programs formerly associated with the division have been redistributed to other divisions on campus, and earmarked funds have been repurposed for research. The measures follow a pattern of action taken at other universities across the country who have made the decision to comply with their states’ newly-minted anti-DEI regulations.
While the Stop the Purge ralliers may have expected opposition, it is questionable whether they expected another group of potentially like-minded people to foil their attempts at protesting.