The Texas Tech University System is restricting professors from teaching race and gender identity lessons, citing a need to align with recent state laws and Trump administration policies.
The five-university public system also instructed administrators in a Monday memorandum that it recognizes “only two sexes, male and female,” pledging to review curricula accordingly.
“The integrity of this process depends on the earnest participation of every faculty member,” Chancellor Brandon Creighton wrote in the memo. “Noncompliance may result in disciplinary action consistent with university policy and state law.”
Mr. Creighton took charge of the Lubbock-based system last month. He is a former Republican state senator who wrote a law placing public university administrators in charge of faculty senates.
His memo cited the law in announcing that the Texas Tech Board of Regents will henceforth review gender and sexuality course materials to ensure compliance.
The memo forbids professors from indoctrinating students in the belief that one race or sex is inherently discriminatory or “oppressive” against others.
“Advocacy or promotion means presenting these beliefs as correct or required and pressuring students to affirm them, rather than analyzing or critiquing them as one viewpoint among others,” Mr. Creighton wrote.
Dozens of universities have reversed course on classes promoting transgender identity and notions of systemic racism in U.S. social structures under President Trump’s education policies.
The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funding from universities that flout the president’s executive orders banning such ideas under the umbrella of diversity, equity and inclusion.
“DEI policies have turned universities from free marketplaces of ideas to purveyors of manufactured ideological conformity, chilling free speech and undermining academic rigor,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Wednesday after a White House roundtable on the topic.
Texas laws backing up those orders led the University of Texas to review its gender identity courses. Also, Texas A&M University announced a new policy last month requiring administrative approval for any classes that “advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
At the same time, enrollment in race and gender identity courses has dried up along with federal support in recent months, leading other schools to cut back voluntarily.
Academic freedom
On Tuesday, Maryland’s public Towson University announced plans to dissolve its women’s and gender studies department next year, citing a drop to just 11 students majoring in it this fall.
Founded in 1973, the women’s studies program includes an LGBTQ Studies minor and is among the oldest in the nation. Towson said students will still be able to take the courses for interdisciplinary credit after it closes.
The department’s website asks: “Are you interested in learning about women’s history or the political activism of women of color?”
Reached for comment, some higher education advocates said the Texas Tech memo signals a growing erosion of academic freedom to teach such topics.
“In authoritarian countries, politicians decree what universities can and can’t teach,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the private University of Pennsylvania. “And that’s what Texas Tech is doing.”
But Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, noted that the Texas Tech memo addresses only professors who teach their political views as facts. He said that could limit any legal efforts to overturn it.
“I think a lot will depend on how the policy is enforced,” Mr. Blackman said in an email. “Teaching about topics is permissible, but indoctrination is not.”
According to advocates on either side of the DEI issue, it remains unclear whether the Trump administration’s policies will have any lasting impact on higher education.
“A great many college and university presidents hope to wait out Trump and conservative legislative majorities,” said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars. “The question is whether the post-DEI pedagogies and curricula can be institutionalized before the racialists get a chance to re-impose their regime.”
One racial justice advocate said that recent trends show Texas Tech and other schools were never sincerely invested in promoting DEI.
“They’re tired of the progress made,” said Omekongo Dibinga, a professor of intercultural communications affiliated with American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center. “A new presidential administration that believes in diversity will have to be as aggressive in pushing a diversity agenda to force these universities and other places to support DEI.”
