UT Austin's presidential committee denied tenure to border-surveillance scholar Iván Chaar López despite unanimous faculty approval

In February 2026, the University of Texas at Austin's presidential Promotion and Tenure Committee denied tenure to Iván Chaar López, a historian of border surveillance in the Department of American Studies, despite a unanimous recommendation at every prior stage of review: his department voted 7-0 in favor, external reviewers 8-0, and the College of Liberal Arts' tenure committee 19-2, with the interim dean also endorsing the case. The presidential committee and Provost's office denied the case without providing Chaar López a reasons letter explaining the decision; UT's only public comment was that "tenure is a privilege, not a right." No source discloses the exact day the presidential committee acted -- PEN America's dedicated report, both Inside Higher Ed articles, and the AAUP-UT Austin chapter's press release all place the denial only in "February 2026." The date recorded above is a placeholder for the month; the precise day is not publicly documented.

The denial followed two other actions by UT System governance in the same window: the Board of Regents' adoption, in February 2026, of a "controversial topics" policy restricting classroom speech, and the university's elimination of several interdisciplinary departments on February 12, 2026, including the ethnic and gender studies programs whose subject matter overlaps with Chaar López's own scholarship on border surveillance. The Board of Regents did not itself act on Chaar López's tenure case -- a 2023 state tenure-reform law gives regents final say on tenure denials system-wide, but this case was stopped at the presidential-committee level before it reached them. Chaar López's appeal was later denied, with a final letter from UT Austin President Jim Davis dated May 14, 2026.