Texas prof quits, partly due to gun law

Steiner’s work in architecture academia is seasoned and varied, and UT Austin’s Architecture school was consistently top-ranked under his deanship.

The University of Houston is expected to release its plan for the new campus carry law this month. Steiner says he can’t be responsible for helping enforce a law he doesn’t believe in.

The law has caused divisions at the University of Texas, with the university’s president Gregory L Fenves stating that the institution had adopted the law reluctantly.

Looking forward to joining the Ivy League, he nonetheless reiterated he never would’ve considered taking the job had it not been for the upcoming law. “Advocates of campus carry will maintain that the law shouldn’t make any difference in curriculum – or create concerns – but judging by the many discussions going on at campuses statewide, those concerns are widespread”.

UT Austin is ranked in the top 10 architecture schools in the USA for undergraduate education, while Penn is among the top rated for graduate schools.

“Once again, what was once the stuff of the Onion is now Texas Reality, 2016”, Sharon Grigsby wrote for the Dallas Morning News opinion blog in a piece headlined “Response at University of Houston is exactly why we feared campus carry in Texas”.

Many members of the UT faculty, staff and student body are supportive of Steiner’s move to his alma mater, The University of Pennsylvania. It’s certainly on the minds of many faculty students.

Concealed carry – possessing a concealed firearm on one’s person – is already legal in North Carolina for citizens over 21 years of age who have a clean criminal record and a license, obtaining which requires the completion of safety and training courses. Indeed, the nationwide trend of liberalizing concealed carry laws over the last two decades has coincided with a precipitous decline in violent crime in the United States.

“With a huge group of students my perception is that the risk that a disgruntled student might bring a gun into the classroom and start shooting at me has substantially enhanced by the concealed-carry law”, economics professor emeritus Daniel Hamermesh wrote in a letter to the university’s president past year. This time, he was open to the idea, he said.

Fritz Steiner said the gun policy was not “appropriate” for higher education and “did not make logical sense”.