University of Arkansas at Little Rock scrubbed two race-focused history lectures from its website citing state law

On January 24, 2026, Arkansas Times reporting revealed that University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) administrators had pressured organizers of the school's "Evenings with History" lecture series to alter or withdraw two upcoming talks on race, citing the state's 2025 ACCESS Act, a law restricting certain discussions of race and diversity at Arkansas's public colleges and universities. According to a December 19, 2025 memo history professor Barclay Key wrote to Faculty Senate President Angela Hunter, Dean Jeremy Ecke and university general counsel Charles Lyford asked Key, earlier that week, to retitle a February 3 lecture on "Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and the Death Penalty in Arkansas and the United States" and to add disclaimer language to an April 7 discussion with historian David Roediger about his memoir "An Ordinary White: My Antiracist Education." Vice Chancellor for University Affairs Emily Cox told Key the titles risked drawing the attention of conservative state lawmakers who could move to defund the university.

Key refused to change either lecture, writing in his memo that the ACCESS Act "explicitly allows the discussion of ideas, history, and public policy that may be controversial," and that Cox and Lyford both confirmed to him that the lectures did not violate the law. The next day, Ecke asked Key to delete the two events from the university's website; Key declined, and the two events' listings were subsequently removed from the site.

Rather than accept the administration's proposed changes, UALR's history department voted to suspend its participation in the entire six-part lecture series. A university spokesperson confirmed to Arkansas Times that UALR had "temporarily removed the History Institute's event notices from its promotional platforms" and said the university was "reviewing its participation in the lecture series for compliance with applicable legislation." A separate UALR spokesperson, Carrie Phillips, told The College Fix the lecture series was a joint effort between the university's history department and the University History Institute, a nonprofit that "serves in an advisory capacity to the university and may independently host events."

Updates

2026-01-15 — History department chair resigned over the lecture cancellations [3]

Barclay Key told Faculty Senate President Angela Hunter in a January 15, 2026 email that he would resign his chairmanship of the history department "because of this decision by the provost's office." Arkansas Times reporting on the resignation — published February 2, 2026 and drawing on internal UALR emails obtained through a public-records request — also disclosed that the university's own associate general counsel had privately warned administrators on December 10, 2025 that one of the two lecture descriptions risked violating the ACCESS Act, a concern administrators did not share with Key at the time.