AUSTIN, Texas – A University of Texas dean is blaming his departure on a new law approved by state lawmakers in 2015 that allows students to carry concealed weapons on public college campuses.

Texas School of Architecture dean Fritz Steiner is taking a job as the new head of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, but said he wouldn’t be leaving if it wasn’t for the new law, the Associated Press reports.

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“I would have never applied for another job if not for campus carry,” he told the Texas Tribune. “I felt that I was going to be responsible for managing a law I didn’t believe in.”

The new law goes into effect Aug. 1 by allowing those with concealed handgun licenses to carry their firearms on public university campuses and in school buildings, though it does allow schools to create “gun-free zones” that don’t include classrooms, according to the news site.

Steiner said concerns about the law in faculty and student meetings illustrate that most oppose the new law. He told the Tribune the University of Pennsylvania approached him in the past about openings, and he declined, but when he was approached again last fall, the opted to apply.

The AP reports he previously worked for the college.

“Penn is a great institution and I am very happen to go to Penn, but I was approached … and, if it wouldn’t have been for campus carry, I wouldn’t have considered it,” he said.

Students for Concealed Carry issued a statement about Steiner’s departure, noting the new law is taking a “real, measurable toll on the state’s institutions of higher education,” but placed the blame on irrational fear of guns, rather than the law itself, as the reason, according to the Tribune.

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“Just as witches were not to blame for the Salem witch trials, and just as vaccines are not to blame for the negative results of the anti-vaccine movement, campus carry is not to blame for the current atmosphere of fear on Texas college campuses,” the statement read.

The news site noted that UT-Austin’s architecture school was ranked seventh in the nation this year by Architectural Record, and Steiner’s decision will undoubtedly impact the quality of the program.

“Fritz is a planner and urban designer whose work has benefited his fellow faculty members and students, and I know they will miss him,” UT-Austin President Greg Fenves wrote in an email to the campus about the dean’s departure that did not mention the campus carry aspect.

Fenves issued rules last week for guns on campus, though he has stressed he doesn’t support the law. Steiner said campus carry is impacting the school’s ability to recruit top teachers.

“I can report that it’s already part of the conversation when I was trying to recruit and retain faculty and recruit graduate students,” he told the AP. “It’s certainly on the minds of many faculty and students.”

Steiner stressed he’s not opposed to gun ownership in general, but believes it could have a chilling effect on academic freedom, according to the news service.

“I grew up hunting. My father was a Marine and a policeman. I’m not a stranger to firearms in any way,” Steiner said. “I grew up believing there was an appropriate place for guns and it was not a place of higher education and higher learning.”