Soon-to-be-former UT Archicture School Dean Steiner (courtesy tclf.org)

“A University of Texas dean said Thursday he’s leaving the school to pursue a different job in large part because of the new Texas law that will allow concealed firearms in public college classrooms,” foxnews.com reports. “Fritz Steiner, dean of the Texas School of Architecture, [above] was named dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. He said he wouldn’t have considered leaving if not for the new law, which takes effect prior to the start of the fall semester Aug. 1. ‘I thought I would be responsible for enforcing a law I don’t believe in,’ Steiner said.” Needless to say, Dean Steiner thought wrong. He wasn’t in charge of “enforcing” campus carry. He was in charge of running UT Architecture Department. Ready for more derp? Here ya go . . .

Steiner said he’s not anti-guns, but doesn’t want them in the halls of higher education. Texas faculty have worried allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms.

“I grew up hunting. My father was a Marine and a policeman. I’m not a stranger to firearms in any way,” Steiner said. “I grew up believing there was an appropriate place for guns and it was not in a place of higher education and higher learning.” . . .

[University of Texas President Greg] Fenves has said allowing guns on campus will make it harder to recruit and retain top faculty and students. Steiner’s departure would be the most immediate high-profile result of that prediction.

“I can report that it’s already part of the conversation when I was trying to recruit and retain faculty and recruit graduate students,” Steiner said of the campus carry law. “It’s certainly on the minds of many faculty and students.”

Here’s an idea: campus carry’s introduction into the Texas university system will trigger beneficial unintended consequences, like helping to weed out intellectual weaklings like Dean Steiner and other educators unfamiliar with the freedoms protected by the United States Constitution. Just a thought.

 

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140 COMMENTS

  1. I hope campus carry passes in AZ. Maybe we can start cleaning house at ASU, NAU, U of A and the various community colleges via self deportation.

        • “Her intolerance and lack of acceptance of others got her ass *fired* on Wednesday:”

          Man, that’s some good news. Glad to hear someone grew a set and did the right thing in regard to that piece of trash.

          Maybe being unemployed will give her a chance to meditate on the subject of “Me thinking you disagree with me does not mean I get to use physical force to ‘persuade’ you to my thinking.”

        • Being unemployed will let her play the “They’re picking on me!” card.

          She’ll be a pity hire to some other like-minded school, I’ll bet.

          Oh, and watch for her to write a book about her ‘ordeal’…

        • I’m going to have me one more drink to that, before bed.
          Here’s to a petty dictator getting her comeuppance.
          Slanche!

        • This pretty much puts paid to here academic career. Jobs at the level she was at aren’t that easy to get. You don’t just walk into a large state university and pick up an assistant profs job. She may have some political connections that she can rely on but there are some things you just don’t do if you’re a professor. What she did to that journalism student is one of them. She screwed the pooch.

        • Melissa Click wasn’t fired for her actions at the protest, or her radical viewpoints in and out of the classroom. She was fired for the same reason football coach Gary Pinkel suddenly “stepped down” because of health reasons. Alumni contribute a lot of money to any university. When the Mizzou Alumni started closing their checkbooks, people start to take notice. Parents don’t want to send their children to a shitshow instead of a college, when enrollment suffers, people notice. Melissa Click will find another job, and probably make more money. The left always rewards their failures, as long as the are loyal to the party line.

      • Hadn’t thought of that. Actually an amusing possibility.

        Either way, I’m laughing this dude all the way to Pennsylvania. Let’s see, under the previous circumstance, only people willing to perform illegal acts would have guns on campus. Now, those without evil intentions can do so and possibly protect themselves and the unwilling from any evil doers. To me, that looks like an upgrade on paper.

        I have a Bachelor’s and a Professional Doctorate in my field, so I am no stranger to higher education. My anecdotal experience has been that the halls of academia have a few brilliant minds doing great work for the world and a large, large contingent of educated idiots. Having memorized a lot of shit and jumped through a lot of hoops does not give one critical thinking skills.

        • Just looking at the “studies” that cone out of graduate programs at top universities should be enough to know that no one there has any math, logic or critical thinking abilities.

          I’m not even just talking about gun related studies but anything where even just looking at their abstract is enough to see the flaws.

    • Precisely. The liberal dems headed out can be replaced by persons with a real head on their prospective shoulders (I would have said ‘some balls’, but my mother happens to be very pro-gun and a professor as well. You know, we’re so PC ‘ round here). If someone quits because of their student body gaining back a civil/constitutional right, they don’t belong there regardless. This guy must be concerned with his popularity, or lack thereof…

    • 56 comments and not one person here gives a flying f__k what hair profressor thinks or that he quit .
      He was probably a pri_k and would flunk you if you weren’t progressive enough .
      What ever , by by birdie .

      • Exactly.

        I was wondering why these a-hole academics thinks the world cares that they quite their jobs or why. They really DO think they are the center of the universe.

      • I guess you can say that I care that he quit. I care that he will be replaced by someone who can at least tolerate teaching there with a few peaceful armed students around who could potentially save his life.

        I hope many others follow suit.

    • Steiner loves invoking “the law” when he agrees with it but as soon as he doesn’t then he throws a temper tantrum. Libtards use every means necessary to get what they want and they don’t truly care about laws unless it’s the one they sign off on!

  3. I did my 4 (well more than that) at a university and I quite frankly don’t remember a time when any sort of physical violence ensued, much less with a weapon. Maybe the experience has changed since.

  4. Jeez. When I went to college in the Dark Ages there were professors there who THOUGHT, and encouraged us to do the same.

    What has happened to “higher education”?

    • The radicals of the 60s and 70s who claimed to have wanted open and free discussion on campus got what they really wanted; control of campus. Independent thinking was abolished in favor of speech codes and diversity, now upping the ante with microagressions, safe spaces and inclusiveness.

      They’re not institutions of higher learning anymore, just progressive activist indoctrination factories. Just ask Ben Shapiro, Christina Hoff Sommers or any local YAF chapter.

  6. I think the average IQ of the school he just quit just bumped up a bit. If I lived in Texas, I would tell him not to let the door hit him in the ass as the leaves.

  7. “Texas faculty have worried allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms”

    Uh, no. Socialist SJW teachers have a chilling effect on the above.

  8. So Steiner is worried that allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms?

    Frank discussions about architecture? Really? Are you serious? I guess that the “Frank Gehry is better than Mies van der Rohe” battle royals are getting out of hand.

    If this is the kind of assh0le that UT is dealing with, it means that the school’s hiring standards have been lower than the local motor vehicle department.

    This can’t be about freedom of discussion, since schools hate freedom of discussion. This isn’t about academic freedom either, unless academic freedom means power and control. This is about professors being stripped of power by the people who pay those little tin gods. This is about the hatred of a culture that professors do not want to understand.

    This is about taking back our schools.

  9. well, ya gotta start somewhere. hope more of the wimpy leftists move north of the red. wonder what else we can do to help them leave?

  12. He’s full of it. He would be taking that job regardless; he just wants to play the martyr. If that job were not on offer, I guarantee he wouldn’t have stormed off in protest to start his own firm or otherwise do productive work. Sooooo much of “liberalism” is just rich honky lifestyle posing…

  15. YET they allow guns on campus at colorado and CU boulder has little problem getting top staff. the argument that somhow top people will turn down good jobs because guns is so stupid its amazing this guy is smart enough to be a dean

  16. I think the most ironic argument the campus carry hand wringers make is that it will quash the free exchange of ideas and speech…considering the Melissa Click, trigger warnings and oppression of speech deemed offensive…at institutions of “higher education”.

  18. Good riddance.

    This law is actually helping us to get rid of the last vestiges of the hippy generation from Academia … we will all be better off for it.

  19. Everyone … sing it with me now!
    — Na, na, na, na . . . na, na, na, na . . . hey, hey, hey . . . good bye!

  20. Yeah, get used to this, everyone who quits for whatever reason for the next 6months to a year is just going to add campus carry as the cherry on top for the reasons why they are leaving. I got an email announcement on my student email account a few days ago about this and there was no mention of campus carry. Dude got a better job offer at his alma mater and he left. Just like that dope from the physics department who had been planning to leave for years and decided to make himself a crusader against campus carry at the last minute and suddenly it was only ever about campus carry. What a steaming pile of bullshit.

  21. “Texas faculty have worried allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms.”

    Wrong. Colleges are echo chambers. And the professors like it that way. No freedom of thought and ideas to be had, unless your professors agree with you.

    The useful idiots can be easily indoctrinated by these “intellectuals”, but the rest of us just roll our eyes, do what we have to do to get through the class, and carry on thinking the way we thought before.

      • “That is the liberal notion of “free thought and expression”…only if they agree with it. ”

        Actually they can tolerate disagreement, so long as it doesn’t offend any person or object.

        • Being able to offend is the cornerstone of free speech and the free expression of ideas.

          The PC Nazi’s use “being offended” as an Ace up the sleeve to shut down opposition.

          Don’t buy into it.

          • “Being able to offend is the cornerstone of free speech and the free expression ideas.”

            I think much of the populace considers that notion quaint and irrelevant in an advanced society.

        • I think you speaking for the masses is utter nonsense. It’s absurd when politicians do it, and it is even more so, when random people on the Internet do it.

          And, the SCOTUS has held, even in “modern times”, that free speech is there to protect unpopular speech.

          So, even if you could read the minds of the masses, which you cannot, despite your assertions, it does not matter if people don’t like one’s comments.

          Be offended, if you choice, but buying into the notion that anyone, but yourself, cares about your feeling is only going to leave you with a broken heart, sugar plum.

          • I’m not sure what your commentary is all about. What I said is mere mockery and irony. The left was accused of being unable to tolerate disagreement. I said they could tolerate disagreement so long as it did not offend any person or object. So, think it through: what disagreement would not be offensive? Chocolate v. Vanilla? Beer v Wine? electric car A v electric car B?

            Disagreement that does not offend is of a silly nature, insular and devoid of patience for having one’s fantasy world upset; special snowflakes all.

        • To be honest, you are hard to get a bead on – you are all over map.

          You just carpet bomb with ambiguous comments of possible support or dissent, which are hard to peg. You’re both hot and cold – I think it’s on purpose to create division and angst. But, I’ll never know. And honestly I don’t care.

  23. Are you sure he’s the dean of the architecture school? Because it seems like he would be a better fit in the drama department.

  24. This may help purge some of the really radical anti-america types out of the higher education system. Note that no professors resigned when Melissa Click violated a student’s first amendment rights.

  26. “Steiner said he’s not anti-guns, but doesn’t want them in the halls of higher education. Texas faculty have worried allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms.”

    Hmm… and socialist, and leftist propaganda spewing professors who hold career ending and/or influential power over the grades of students doesn’t have a “chilling” effect on academic freedom either?

  27. In five years after nothing happens it will be a none issue for recruitment, assuming it is even one now.

    Other states have had campus carry for years with few if any issues.

  28. The guy’s an architect. Now he can go design gun-free zones in the City of Brotherly Love. No crime there, right?

  29. Gee, I live in Philly and fortunately gun rights are doing pretty well here. This guy is delusional. I guess he’ll be cloistered in that ivory tower. Public streets run through the U. and everyone I know with a LCTF is free to walk on down the road.

    • 6, I was reading my way down the comments, prepared to take the same approach you did. I live just a bit west of the city, but I’m on Penn’s campus at least once a week. Certainly the streets and sidewalks of the campus are public property, and concealed carry is widely practiced in the city. Steiner has not reduced his exposure to guns by the move. In fact he has moved to a campus with a noticeably higher crime rate. If he drives six blocks in the wrong direction he better be a praying man.

      I suspect Steiner was just using the guns-on-campus bit as a BS justification for seeking another job, a justification that could hide the real problems he was experiencing. I suspect PA has more guns per person than TX.

  30. Well, not surprised. I’m in Arch school myself and the large majority of people, both students and faculty are hugely anti-gun. There’s only a handful of people that I know, and really the only good friends I have, who are pro-gun. Other friends I have are more or less indifferent towards them. But the anti’s reign supreme. Heck, just last week I got called into the Dean’s office because someone saw me reading either TTAG or TFB and saw a gun and filed a complaint against me.

    • Hang in there Mike. If I can make it through the liberal wasteland of UofH graduate school of Social Work, you can get through Arch school. The “tolerance” of liberals is anything but tolerant of conservative values. There needs to be misfits like you and me to guide the dipshits to “the light.”

      • Yeah, it sucks I can’t carry at school. Hell, they don’t even allow you to store in your vehicle. I think the biggest thing I fear is finding work, most of the bigger arch firms out there are all in the cities that are super anti-gun ie. Chicago, NYC, LA, etc.

  31. “Texas faculty have worried allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms.”

    Yeah because this is how you promote having a frank discussion, someone does/says something you don’t agree with so you cut and run? Yeah that makes sense.

  32. Yeah, okay, good riddance.

    “If only I had thought of already breaking the law and bringing my gun on campus anyway then I could have used my gun to shoot someone I disagree with.”

    Now that the law is out of the way for half of it I am sure people won’t mind breaking the law for the other half… the more serious and morally reprehensible act of murder. It is truly the end of times for all Texas college and university campuses. Now nothing stands in the way of mass slaughter and halls running with waves of blood. If only the Texas legislature hadn’t legally allowed concealed weapons on campus we could avoid this oncoming bloodshed.

  33. This is a great day for Texas….there are not heated arguments in architecture studies…duh. hopefully any others like him will leave as well. Any professor who refuses to follow a law should be fired. He can believe anything he wants on his own time, but remember, he is nothing but a state employee, just like cops and firemen and higway workers.

  35. One down. Good trend, let’s keep it going!

    “Here’s an idea: campus carry’s introduction into the Texas university system will trigger beneficial unintended consequences, like helping to weed out intellectual weaklings like Dean Steiner and other educators unfamiliar with the freedoms protected by the United States Constitution.”

    Exactly what I pontificated about here yesterday — I think it’s a possibly wonderful unintended consequence.

  36. I became an architect at a different liberal arts school but, it was also full of pansies just like this big cry baby. I once had a professor break down into tears because we told him we were going to the sand dunes out in Oklahoma for a weekend of ATV’n. He was so devastated that we were going to leave tracks in the sand that he got all teary eyed. Seriously………..what’s wrong with these people???

  39. He got his doctorate and two master’s degrees from Penn. He’s also taught there in the past. He’s been a researcher with Penn’s Institute for Urban Research since 2013, long before this campus carry law was even a bill.

    It’s clear he’s been angling to return to Penn for quite some years now. He’s just tacking on this campus carry objection as cover for himself and to get a little anti-gun publicity. How pathetic.

    • So I don’t know anything about him, but this is the first thing that I thought when I read this, that he wanted some excuse to leave. I happen to work at an institute of higher learning and don’t hold a knee jerk contempt for academics. It is very difficult for me to believe this guy is actually that much of an idiot.

    • Exactly. “You have to hire me because….guns!”

      I actually have an adult prof friend there, as well as one family friend student. Safety is not the hallmark of the school. The students often need to work in the studios late into the evening at this ghetto-wrapped school.

  41. Right, what really happened is he already was on his way out to take a new position and he’s using the opportunity to throw a hissy fit. On top of that, not a very convincing one.

    If he was actually concerned he’d not be running to Philadelphia where carrying on a college campus has never been against the law and “no guns” signs don’t carry the force of law. Also about 1 in every 6 people have a concealed carry permit, which costs 25 bucks. That and a ton of UofP students and faculty that carry.

  42. Dear Narcissistic Professor,

    You will be so missed that the students will be talking about your brave move for a whole 30 seconds after your departure. Thank you for your service.

  45. Excellent! More faculty positions opening up for those of us who are pro-gun and would-be academics!

  46. Does it mention whether this goober is agoraphobic? Because I don’t see how he summons the courage to go to the grocery store in Texas, what with all the hidden guns all around him.

  47. LMAO. He’s going to go from Austin, TX into downtown Philadelphia for safety? Austin violent crime / 100,000 = 396. Philadelphia violent crime / 100,000 = 1,021 or about 250% higher.

    I wonder what his tune will be five years from now?

  48. As patriarch of a family who lived in ATX for almost 30 years and put several children through UT in both bachelor and advanced degree programs, i can truly state that UT will be better off with as many as possible panty wearing liberals leaving. I don’t have the time or energy to relate just how many times I’ve had to reenter my kids when they would come home warped from a liberal indoctrination session. My daughter would be the worst, as she would come in, just fuming about, how can a supposedly educated person not know what was stated as well as fought for in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and think like that. All family members are card carrying the NRA life members.

  49. “Fritz Steiner, Dean of the Texas School of Architecture (UT), Quits Over Campus Carry”

    Good Riddance.

    Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
    There will be a Dozen potential Architecture Professors in line to take your place.

  50. “A University of Texas dean said Thursday he’s leaving the school to pursue a different job in large part because of the new Texas law that will allow concealed firearms in public college classrooms,”

    I call bullshit. Either the dean is a total moron (which is doubtful), or he has a hidden agenda. Campus carry is not going to stop a shooter from blowing the dean’s face off. Campus carry is going to allow individuals the option to carry a firearm for self defense. This could help the dean – not hurt the dean. If someone wanted to shoot the deans head all over the wall – a sign that says “no guns allowed!” isn’t going to stop that. The dean knows this – and is using it as a publicity stunt to garner sympathy for freedom-hating Marxists in schools. Furthermore, it was already legal to carry on the campus – just not in the classroom. Seriously… by extending campus carry from the grounds to the classroom – the Dean is all of a sudden in danger? Total bullshit.

    “I grew up hunting. My father was a Marine and a policeman. I’m not a stranger to firearms in any way,” Steiner said. “I grew up believing there was an appropriate place for guns and it was not in a place of higher education and higher learning.” . . .

    Then get your a$$ out of your office and stand guard outside for mass shooters. Your opinion about “appropriate placement” for guns isn’t going to stop mass shooters, campus rapists, or people who need space to destroy.

    I say good riddance. Pack your S, and GTFO.

    • I absolutely reject the notion that Americans cannot be responsible people and need to be nannied by the state by taking things and responsibilities away from them. We should be promoting more responsibility as individuals – not less – this includes being responsible for our own safety. The state simply cannot accomplish this task.

  52. An architect with a grandiose sense of superiority – what a shocker. Good riddance to another gutless beta male. Gun free paradises only get good people killed.

  53. Does anyone feel a great disturbance in The Force? Neither do I.

    Maybe now Dr. Tenure will have to get a real job. Nope – he’ll probable draw retirement.

  54. Hope he’s a teetotaler if he’s headed to Pennsylvania. They have bar carry there, and they don’t even have a .08% BAC limit like Iowa.

  55. Sooo…Fritz is on the fritz. Don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.
    Steiner said. “I grew up believing there was an appropriate place for guns and it was not in a place of higher education and higher learning.” . . .
    but the crazies and hoods do and the GFZ does not stop da boyz in da hood from campus carry.

  56. Practically all of these liberals, these college campuses will be long gone in 50 (or however many) years due to being replaced by MOOCs. Or whatever they’re called at that time.

    Brick and mortar colleges are a dying industry even though it may not look like it now. It’s being kept alive with easy FedGov money. One of the next crashes.

    The Internet Reformation will alter the educational landscape so much that someone reading this article in 2066 won’t be able to imagine this situation existed.

  59. What a joke…

    Acting like you are “all about” legal, responsible gun ownership and then quitting your job over legal carry?

    Riiiiiiight.

    Dems (public and closet) are all about spin. Acting like someone would pull a gun on your ass over “frank discussions” shows how out of touch this guy truly is.

  61. It’s downright embarrassing for American academia that an actual dean thinks he has anything to do with “enforcing” a law that does nothing other than allow people to do something they previously were not?

  65. Robert, you left off the best part the original article:

    Students for Concealed Carry issued a statement Thursday that didn’t address Steiner’s departure, but criticized educators “overwhelmed by unjustified fear.”

    “Intellectually, these professors are no different than someone whose actions are defined by an irrational fear of sharks, witchcraft, or vaccines,” the student group said.

  67. That will teach UT a lesson they will never forget, Fritz!

    Looking at his picture, he appears that he could be close to retirement age. This way he goes out with fanfare and states his liberal philosophy.

    There’s probably 100 applications for his position in HR as I write this. No one cannot be replaced… no body. So who gives a flip? Just turn in your key to the bathroom and turn out the lights when you leave, Fritz.

    Oh yeah, don’t let the door his you in the a** on the way out.

  68. My guess is that he was leaving anyway and used the opportunity to make a political point. If he was really committed he would have told us he took a job with less money.

  70. Sorry. He did not leave over campus carry. He left because Penn is a better school! The legendary Louis I. Kahn taught there. Pretty much a no-brainer. Penn>University Of Texas

    As an architect myself I completely understand his decision. But I do think his portrait pose and attitude glasses are trite and too Steve Jobsy for me to have any respect for him otherwise, not to mention his ‘I’m not a gun-hater BUT…’ garbage. This guy has absolutely no originality.

  71. Good! A limp d**k hippie if ever I saw one. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out ‘ol buddy boy.

    I hear California calling him. 😀

    Charlie

  73. I would say that if you are a hoplophobe you can’t consider yourself a “top” student or faculty. It indicates a flow in your logic and a skew in your worldview.

  74. Finally, a UT Prof with the strength of his convictions. Every other post about this has been how they’re going to not do their job or break the law, but still collect their paycheck. This man has strong enough convictions that he’s willing to put his cushy tenured job on the line. I applaud him, and fully support his decision to leave UT’s educational system.

  75. This is just an added bonus to the law. If it can get most/if not all of these liberal candie asses out of our institutions Great ! They pollute our kids minds too much as it is.

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