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It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

Late last week, Texas lawmakers advanced Senate Bill 18.

It reads in part that public colleges and universities in Texas, quote, may not grant an employee of the institution tenure or any type of permanent employment status. Now SB 18 is part of a slate of legislative

actions aimed at fundamentally restructuring the Lone Star State's system of higher education.

Senate bills 16 and 17 legislate restriction on faculty speech in the classroom,

eliminate funding for diversity,

equity, and inclusion efforts, and establish sanctions for faculty members who violate these laws.

The American Association of University Professors has criticized SB 16, 17, and 18, saying that,

quote, taken together these bills and the efforts to pass them

would have a pervasive chilling effect on academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas

on college and university campuses.

Here with us is Sergio Martinez Beltran, a reporter with the Texas Newsroom.

Sergio, welcome to the takeaway.

Hi, thanks for having me.

And also with us is Professor Karma Chavez, who is Professor and Department Chair of Mexican American and Latino Studies at U.T. Austin.

Karma, welcome to the takeaway. Thanks so much for having me.

Professor Chavez, I want to begin with you just to kind of get it out there. What is tenure at the

higher ed levels so that folks can understand it? This is such a good question because I've learned

in the last few weeks that a lot of people really have no idea what tenure actually means.

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