People who have been investigated for war crimes or scrutinized for bribing Supreme Court Justices should not be teaching or influencing decision-making at UT.
Unfortunately, with the establishment of the School of Civic Leadership, our conservative administrators have opened the door for such figures to advance a right-wing agenda on campus. Open-records requests by the Texas Tribune expose coordination with state representatives, billionaire donors and academics who advised the George W. Bush administration during the War on Terror. In a sordid twist, the school to promote limited government and individual freedoms is backed by people who literally enabled torture or voted to restrict curriculum about civil rights leaders.
After years of back-and-forth on proposals and funding, the aspirations of the Liberty Institute in 2016 transformed into the Civitas Institute think tank before finally growing into a fully fledged college. The school welcomed its first cohort last fall with a temporary home in the Littlefield House and the Flawn Academic Center.
It’s more important than ever that longhorns understand the ideological forces behind the school, as it will only continue to grow. The school will take over the Biological Laboratories building following a $100 million investment in renovations from the Board of Regents.
University Administrators and Academics
Administrators involved in the development of the new school include Chairman of the Board of Regents Kevin Eltife, former President Jay Hartzell and the new President Jim Davis.
Eltife is a former Republican state senator, whom Governor Greg Abbott appointed to chair the Board of Regents in 2017. He previously served as a city council member and mayor of Tyler, Texas. In 2024, Eltife said that the board felt proud of the crackdown on pro-Palestine protesters and that divestment from Israel was “not an option.”
The controversial deployment of police and state troopers against students led President Jay Hartzell to flee to Southern Methodist University. Eltife and the board elected Jim Davis to take his place in 2025. Davis formerly worked as a deputy attorney general under Attorney General Ken Paxton. He is also the first UT president in over 100 years with no academic background. Since taking the reins, Davis has denied virtually all interviews with local press.
President Davis conferred closely with Chairman Eltife to select the new provost and vice president, William Inboden. The provost influences the academic vision of the university such as faculty hiring and curriculum, making it one of the most powerful positions. He also holds a joint faculty appointment at the School of Civic Leadership.
From 2001-2002, Inboden became a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank where he still contributes articles and reports. He even served in George W. Bush’s National Security Council as Senior Director for Strategic Planning from 2005-2007. Inboden is particularly fond of Ronald Reagan – the president who funded death squads in Central America – describing him as “The Peacemaker.” He is also a member of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Institute.
More recently, Inboden directed the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida – a right-wing institute virtually identical to the School of Civic Leadership. Upon returning to UT, Inboden set forth to consolidate ethnic and gender studies departments.
Provost Inboden has given lectures alongside John Yoo, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the School of Civic Leadership and Senior Research Fellow within the school’s think tank. Yoo is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and various other conservative programs on college campuses. In the 1990s, he briefly worked as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Most infamously, Yoo worked in the Department of Justice when the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. During that time, he authored the “Torture Memos,” arguing a legal justification for the mental and physical torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Yoo delivered a broad interpretation of presidential power, arguing that the president wasn’t bound by the War Crimes Act of 1996 or the Geneva Conventions. He also backed the use of warrantless wiretapping. Since then, he has been questioned by the House Judiciary Committee, investigated by the DOJ and been the subject of criminal complaints in Spain and Germany for aiding and abetting torture.
Republican Politicians
Emails investigated by the Texas Tribune revealed the involvement of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and State Senator Brandon Creighton in promoting and drafting proposals for the new school.
Patrick started out as a popular Houston sportscaster in the 1980s with his own sports bar chain called Sportsmarket. During a time of economic downturn, Patrick filed for personal bankruptcy and morphed into a conservative talk radio host. He ran for Texas State Senate in 2006, where he established the state’s very own Tea Party Caucus. This growing brand of fiscal conservatism opposed the Affordable Care Act, federal income taxes and amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Now 76 years old, Patrick has held the position of Lieutenant Governor for over 10 years and hopes to win another four years this fall. More recently, President Donald Trump appointed him to chair the new Religious Liberty Commission, which is being sued for only including Christians – with the exception of one Rabbi.
As far as his views on education, Patrick supported legislation in 2021 to eliminate public school requirements on the writings of Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. In 2022, he tweeted “I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with Critical Race Theory. We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed. That’s why we created the Liberty Institute at UT.”
Similarly, Brandon Creighton waged a legislative war against diversity, equity and inclusion policies in public education. With a Bachelor of Arts from UT and a Juris Doctor from the Oklahoma City University School of Law, Creighton went on to become a member of the Texas House and the Texas Senate. He introduced laws protecting Confederate monuments and authored the 2023 law banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices at public universities.
During his final legislative session, Creighton authored the Parental Bill of Rights that applied DEI bans to public K-12 schools. The bill also prohibits “social transitioning” students and creates a variety of other broad mandates, which are being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union.
In February 2023, Creighton filed a bill to create the Civitas School of Civic and International Leadership at UT, today’s School of Civic Leadership . Now, Creighton serves as Chancellor at Texas Tech, where he recently directed the university to phase out programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Wealthy Conservative Donors
Billionaire Bob Rowling is a disgraced former UT regent worth $8.8 billion. He resigned in 2008 – a time of national economic turmoil – for awarding massive bonuses to staff at the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) despite tanking investments. In 2013, he donated $25 million to the university for a new business building. The Texas Tribune confirmed Rowling’s involvement in developing proposals for the School of Civic Leadership, although his assistant pointed to Bud Brigham as the “real leader.”
Texas Ex Bud Brigham is an oil tycoon with a net worth of $500 million who believes global warming is a “scam.” Since 1988, Brigham gave over $800,000 to conservatives – including $200,000 to Greg Abbott. Both Brigham and Rowling were among the donors who urged the university to keep “The Eyes of Texas.” After the 2022-23 state budget was approved with $6 million earmarked for the new Liberty Institute, Brigham donated $10,000 to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s campaign.
Another billionaire involved with advising and strategizing around the new school is none other than Harlan Crow. Yes, the conservative megadonor who lavished Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with gifts and vacations. He is the Chairman of Crow Holdings, which manages $34 billion in real estate assets. Crow is also on the Board of Trustees for the American Enterprise Institute.
Ironically, Crow said the best gift he’s ever given someone is “a book,” in an interview with the Harvard Business School Club of Dallas. He also said he cares deeply about free enterprise, and his greatest fear is Marxism. In emails revealed by the Tribune, Crow attempted to wrangle a professor from the conservative institute at Princeton to advise President Jay Hartzell. He told the Tribune he wants to counter “leftist advocacy” on college campuses.
The entanglement of university administrators with right-wing politicians and men of insurmountable wealth is corrupting the integrity of the university. After slashing faculty councils and consolidating liberal arts departments, it’s clear that the university only holds a listening ear to powerful figures on the right. You cannot expect the pursuit of truth in an institution upheld by those who warp history and the law to their own benefit and biases.
