Governor Rick Perry’s effort to bring accountability to the Texas university systems is constantly hitting roadblocks. The latest example is the intervention by Republican (that’s Perry’s party) legislators to defend the president of UT-Austin, Bill Powers, by reducing the power of the Regents (nominally, Powers’s boss). Jay Schalin abstracts from this situation to say that this “Texas standoff” is not just an intra-party squabble (although that’s part of it). It also “reflects a division specific to academia, between those who recognize the need for serious reform and those who believe that reform is unnecessary.”