(CNN) Texas' new campus gun law has partly prompted a longtime dean at the University of Texas to quit and take another deanship at an Ivy League school, he said Friday.
"I grew up hunting. I don't see a bunch of quail or pheasant running around the campus," School of Architecture Dean Frederick Steiner told CNN. "Firearms in my view have their place in the world, and the university campus is not one of those places, except for law enforcement and campus police."
Steiner said the new Texas gun law called Campus Carry was "a factor" in his decision to leave the state's flagship university effective at the end of June.
The new law could lead to campus gunfire and self-censorship among faculty who fear their grades or lectures could incite the armed students, Steiner said. He has been the architecture school's dean on the Austin campus for 15 years.
He also cited how the new law doesn't apply to private universities that also receive government research funding, and he described the law as "part of a larger assault on public universities" by state legislators who have cut school funding and appointed regents who "were not sympathetic to a leading research university," he said.
He noted that the new law becomes effective on the 50th anniversary of a mass shooting at the University of Texas in Austin. The campus saw one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history when a sniper in a campus tower killed 15 people and wounded at least 30. That date is August 1.
Smoke rises from a sniper's gun as he fires from the tower of the University of Texas administration building on crowds below in this August 1, 1966, file photo.
"It's very sad, the irony," Steiner said.
He expressed concern about free speech and faculty's academic freedom under the new Campus Carry gun law, though he acknowledged only a small percentage of students now have such gun permits.
"I think that's one possibility, that we start censoring ourselves because we're afraid of upsetting someone with a firearm," Steiner said. "Faculty or deans often are put in a position where we're responsible if somebody misbehaves, we tell them to stop misbehaving. If you think of this famous scene in 'Animal House' where the dean is telling the fraternity guys to behave themselves, imagine the guys in 'Animal House' with guns."
Classrooms, architecture studios, and grading can be highly stressful settings, he added.
Worst mass shootings in the United States
Parents wait for news after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday, February 14.
At least 17 people were killed at the school, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. The suspect, 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, is in custody, the sheriff said. The sheriff said he was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.
Investigators at the scene of a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, November 5, 2017.
A man opened fire inside the small community church, killing at least 25 people and an unborn child. The gunman, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, was found dead in his vehicle. He was shot in the leg and torso by an armed citizen, and he had a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, authorities said.
A couple huddles after shots rang out at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, October 1, 2017. At least 58 people were killed and almost 500 were injured when
a gunman opened fire on the crowd. Police said the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, fired from the Mandalay Bay hotel, several hundred feet southwest of the concert grounds. He was found dead in his hotel room, and authorities believe he killed himself and that he acted alone. It is the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
Police direct family members away from the scene of a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. Omar Mateen, 29,
opened fire inside the club, killing at least 49 people and injuring more than 50. Police fatally shot Mateen during an operation to free hostages that officials say he was holding at the club.
In December 2015,
two shooters killed 14 people and injured 21 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, where employees with the county health department were attending a holiday event. The shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, were later killed in a shootout with authorities. The pair were found to be radicalized extremists who planned the shootings as a terror attack, investigators said.
Police search students outside Umpqua Community College after
a deadly shooting at the school in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015. Nine people were killed and at least nine were injured, police said. The gunman, Chris Harper-Mercer, committed suicide after exchanging gunfire with officers, a sheriff said.
A man kneels across the street from the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina,
following a shooting in June 2015. Police say the suspect, Dylann Roof, opened fire inside the church, killing nine people. According to police, Roof confessed and told investigators he wanted to start a race war.
He was eventually convicted of murder and hate crimes, and a jury recommended the death penalty.
Police officers walk on a rooftop at the Washington Navy Yard after a
shooting rampage in the nation's capital in September 2013. At least 12 people and suspect Aaron Alexis were killed, according to authorities.
Connecticut State Police evacuate
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Adam Lanza opened fire in the school, killing 20 children and six adults before killing himself. Police said he also shot and killed his mother in her Newtown home.
James Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a July 2012 shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve people were killed and dozens were wounded when Holmes opened fire during the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises." He was sentenced to 12 life terms plus thousands of years in prison.
A military jury convicted Army Maj.
Nidal Hasan of 13 counts of premeditated murder for a November 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen people died and 32 were injured.
Jiverly Wong shot and killed 13 people at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, before turning the gun on himself in April 2009, police said. Four other people were injured at the
immigration center shooting. Wong had been taking English classes at the center.
Pallbearers carry a casket of one of
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Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree on the school's campus in April 2007. Cho killed two people at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and, after chaining the doors closed, killed another 30 at Norris Hall, home to the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department. He wounded an additional 17 people before killing himself.
Mark Barton walked into two Atlanta trading firms and fired shots in July 1999, leaving nine dead and 13 wounded, police said. Hours later, police found Barton at a gas station in Acworth, Georgia, where he pulled a gun and killed himself. The day before, Barton had bludgeoned his wife and his two children in their Stockbridge, Georgia, apartment, police said.
Eric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold brought guns and bombs to
Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999. The students gunned down 13 and wounded 23 before killing themselves.
In October 1991,
George Hennard crashed his pickup through the plate-glass window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, before shooting 23 people and committing suicide.
James Huberty shot and killed 21 people, including children, at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, in July 1984. A police sharpshooter killed Huberty an hour after the rampage began.
Prison guard George Banks is led through the Luzerne County courthouse in 1985. Banks killed 13 people, including five of his children, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in September 1982. He was sentenced to death in 1993 and received a stay of execution in 2004. His death sentence was overturned in 2010.
Officers in Austin, Texas, carry victims across the University of Texas campus after Charles Joseph Whitman opened fire from the school's tower, killing 16 people and wounding 30 in 1966. Police officers shot and killed Whitman, who had killed his mother and wife earlier in the day.
Howard Unruh, a World War II veteran, shot and killed 13 of his neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, in 1949. Unruh barricaded himself in his house after the shooting. Police overpowered him the next day. He was ruled criminally insane and committed to a state mental institution.
"When you have a stressful situation like exams, performance review or studio, I don't see how a firearm can enhance that learning experience," Steiner said. "There's no shortage of examples of stressful work settings that result in people being shot. ... It's not abstract. We see it all the time. So why add firearms to a situation where we know there is stress involved."
The state law carries penalties for university administrators who don't enforce it, Steiner said.
"So I'm put in the position of enforcing a law that I don't believe in," he added. "I don't want to break any laws."
His next job will be dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where he received his master's and doctorate degrees, both in 1986, for city and regional planning.
Steiner has received "a couple of hundred positive responses" from faculty, students, alumni and colleagues at other universities for his stand.
He's also gotten four pieces of hate mail, he said.
"They use negative labels like liberal and go to Massachusetts," Steiner said. "They can't spell very well, and they can't tell the difference between Pennsylvania University and Penn State University."
In a letter to colleagues informing them of his impending departure, he made no mention of the new law in Texas, saying only that "as an alumnus with three degrees from Penn Design, this is an unparalleled opportunity to lead a school at an institution that means a great deal to me."
He was proud of what his colleagues accomplished at the University of Texas the past 15 years, he said.
The new Campus Carry law will allow people who are licensed to carry concealed handguns to carry their guns onto the campuses ofTexas' four-year state universities. The universities will be able to create gun-free zones, but those zones cannot include classrooms.