Censoring Courses Isn’t the Law in Texas. Public Universities Are Doing It Anyway. By Katherine Mangan When Texas Senate Bill 37 was approved last year, faculty groups had one reason to feel cautiously relieved. While early versions of the bill had set sharp restrictions on how faculty could teach about race and gender across the general-education curriculum, those rules, after aggressive lobbying, had been removed during the final, closed-door negotiating sessions.
But, in recent months, Texas board members and administrators have reinserted strikingly similar requirements.
Thousands of courses have been reviewed, hundreds altered, and an unknown number canceled for including race- and gender-related content, including on world religions and ethics in public-policy courses. College leaders say they’re complying with state law. But nothing in SB 37 requires them to censor specific content.
“We keep hearing the public university systems saying, 'We’re following SB 37.’ I’m sorry, no, SB 37 does not give you the mandate to violate people’s academic freedom and free speech,” said Brian L. Evans, president of the Texas conference of the American Association of University Professors. “This kind of micromanaging curricular matters is not in the bill.”
Earlier versions of the bill outlined specific topics that faculty members were warned to avoid. Classes could not “distort significant historical events” or teach “identity politics,” one version said. They couldn’t teach that people of one race are inherently superior or that they should feel guilty because of actions taken by others of the same race. Instructors shouldn’t require or attempt to require students “to adopt an ideology.”
Critics countered that the terms were overly vague and the restrictions too sweeping. Faculty members would be walking on eggshells, they argued, trying to avoid topics that might get them in trouble. Law professors warned that a law that censors course content could suffer the fate of Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, a 2023 law limiting how race and gender can be discussed in public university classrooms. A federal judge blocked the law after it was challenged as an unconstitutional restriction on speech. A Mississippi law banning the teaching of “divisive topics” was blocked last year for similar reasons.
During months of debate and multiple revisions of Senate Bill 37, lobbyists from the AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Texas Faculty Association, along with civil-rights and free-speech groups, converged on the capitol to warn lawmakers that the changes could spark a faculty brain drain, hollow out education, and raise potential accreditation problems.
The lobbyists wrote dozens of opinion pieces and trained hundreds of faculty volunteers to testify as private citizens about how the proposed legislation would affect their disciplines.
In a late May negotiating session, members of the Texas House and Senate hammered out a final compromise version of SB 37 just 48 hours before the end of the legislative session. It eliminated language that would have banned teaching “identity politics” or theories about systemic racism and sexism in American institutions.
“We were relentless,” Evans said, in pushing for that “small victory.”
In addition to severely restricting the role of faculty senates and allowing boards to hire provosts and deans, SB 37 ultimately calls for university governing boards to conduct a comprehensive review of each campus’s core curriculum at least once every five years. Core courses, it says, should all provide a foundation for a sound education, and be necessary to prepare students for civic and professional life.
The law went into effect September 1, and within months, the state’s major university systems announced policies asserting their governing bodies’ newly enhanced authority over the curriculum. All of the new policies extended their scrutiny to electives and graduate-level courses.
'Common Sense’ Restrictions? The Texas A&M University system voted in November to ban courses that “advocate” for race or gender ideology and topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity, unless faculty have prior approval from their campus president. The policy was expanded in December to include teaching the same topics, causing widespread confusion. Six courses were canceled for the spring semester and many more altered; in January, a philosophy professor revealed he’d been told to remove sections on race and gender ideology that included readings from Plato.
In December, the Texas Tech University system’s new chancellor, Brandon Creighton, banned faculty from teaching content that promotes the ideas that any one race or sex is inherently superior to another, that anyone by virtue or race or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, or that “meritocracy or a strong work ethic are racist, sexist, or constructs of oppression.” Students shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for actions of others of the same race or sex and faculty can only recognize the male and female sexes in their courses.
The terms were familiar to those who’d hashed out the various versions of SB 37. They were the ones that ultimately had been removed.
Perhaps no one was more familiar with the language than Creighton, who, as a Republican state senator, had authored SB 37, as well as other legislation that restricted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
In a December conversation with The Chronicle, Creighton said the system is “making sure that course material is relevant and necessary for obtaining a professional license or certificate.” The “common sense” restrictions on teaching about race and gender help accomplish that, he said.
In a statement to The Chronicle on Tuesday, Creighton said that as the university reviews course content, “our focus is simple: not just meeting the letter of SB 37, but delivering on its intent.” He said the board “is committed to ensuring every course is rigorous, relevant, and clearly tied to the degree students are pursuing.”
In the Texas Tech system, all courses — not just those in the core — are being scrutinized and the fate of more than 500 courses is now up in the air, faculty leaders told The Chronicle. University officials have declined to say how many courses have been canceled or changed under the new policy, or how that determination is being made.
Andrew W. Martin, a professor of studio art at Texas Tech who heads the university’s AAUP chapter, said the damage has already been done; to protect their courses from elimination, faculty have preemptively scrubbed content the board might disapprove of.
Because of the university’s restrictions on topics including race and gender, “We think of this policy as the law Chancellor Creighton wanted to pass” but couldn’t, Martin said.
As board members were meeting last week, a group of faculty members and students gathered outside to protest the new restrictions, including TJ Geiger, an associate professor of English. Geiger said he submitted for review one of his courses on rhetoric of health and medicine because it included readings about female physicians in the 19th century that “I thought perhaps crept into the territory the chancellor’s memo covered.”
“Students at Texas Tech deserve a full, accurate, complete, and robust education,” he said.
Last month, the University of Texas system regents rolled out their own version of the policy that restricts teaching in a way that some find even more vague.
Faculty members are required to carefully review the topics they’re covering in class to make sure they’re sticking to the syllabus and avoiding “unrelated controversial or contested matters.”
The UT rule also states that “Instructors must not attempt to coerce, indoctrinate, harass, or belittle students, especially in addressing controversial subjects and areas where people of good faith can hold differing convictions.”
Kevin P. Eltife, chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents, said the board recognizes the importance of academic freedom. But in a board meeting announcing the policy, he added that “that freedom comes with many responsibilities that faculty must adhere to in order to preserve academic integrity, ensure our students rights are protected, and comply with the state and federal directives.”
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