Public universities across Texas have instituted sweeping changes in recent months, from canceling gender studies programs to directing faculty to sign a pledge not to indoctrinate students.
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In Texas, public universities are making sweeping changes to course teachings and offerings. The changes are meant to appease concerns from Republican lawmakers that universities are indoctrinating students with what they consider to be liberal ideas. The changes highlight the increasing control that state politicians have over universities after a new law went into effect last September. Camille Phillips from Texas Public Radio reports.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Stop censorship.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Stop censorship.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Stop censorship.
CAMILLE PHILLIPS, BYLINE: In late February, a group of students and faculty gathered at Texas Tech University in Lubbock to protest changes to course content that the university had imposed on professors.
SARA SPURGEON: I hope I don’t get fired for this.
PHILLIPS: American literature professor Sara Spurgeon told rallygoers that the English department had been told they could no longer teach texts written by gay authors.
SPURGEON: We have even been told to censor novels with gay characters in them.
PHILLIPS: Ahead of the spring semester, both the Texas Tech and the Texas A&M University systems announced restrictions on what professors can teach about race, gender and sexual orientation. To ensure compliance, they implemented a review of course materials. Texas Tech hasn’t said how many courses were canceled or modified to comply with the review. Texas A&M says it modified hundreds of syllabi at their flagship university and College Station alone. A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson says he was told to remove a reading from Plato that discusses the possibility of there being more than two genders.
MARTIN PETERSON: I’m not surprised that I wasn’t allowed to talk about race and gender issues. I knew that. But I was very surprised that I wasn’t allowed to talk about Plato. Plato has been dead for about 2,300 years. How can anyone be afraid of Plato now?
PHILLIPS: Other public universities across Texas are also reviewing curriculum. The president of the University of Houston asked professors to review their courses to comply with a new law and make sure they are, quote, “teaching students, not indoctrinating them.” In response to a request for comment from NPR, the University of Houston said in a statement that their faculty, quote, “remain free to teach contested topics.” And the University of Texas Board of Regents approved a policy directing faculty at their 13 institutions to, quote, “exclude unrelated controversial or contested matters from their classes.”
TODD WOLFSON: They do everything bigger in Texas, right?
PHILLIPS: Todd Wolfson is president of the American Association of University Professors. He says Texas has experienced a rapid assault on academic freedom.
WOLFSON: This is about knowledge production, right? Like, who controls what is knowledge?
PHILLIPS: Wolfson says that, in turn, could impact the economy, society and democracy.
WOLFSON: If you can’t be a critical thinker, you can’t critically analyze the statements coming from either the media or your political and elected leaders.
PHILLIPS: Texas A&M Interim President Tommy Williams said in a statement that requiring professors to change their course content was about, quote, “protecting educational quality and not about censoring faculty or restricting academic freedom.” In response to a request to explain further, A&M officials told NPR that academic freedom, quote, “does not create an unrestricted license to teach any topic in any way in any class.”
So why is this happening now? Last year, the Texas legislature passed a law that gives more control over what’s taught at public universities to their boards of regents. In Texas, regents are appointed by the governor, and Republican Governor Greg Abbott has been pushing the idea that, quote, “woke” professors have been indoctrinating students for years. Texas public universities cite the new law as the reason for their course reviews and content restrictions. Former Republican State Senator Brandon Creighton wrote the law. A few months later, he was appointed chancellor of the Texas Tech system.
Republican state leaders say the law was needed to stop what they perceive as indoctrination. But Peterson, the A&M philosophy professor, says public universities are instead using it to indoctrinate students with conservative ideas.
PETERSON: They should be free to make up their own mind, but in order to be free to do so, they must be exposed to different ideas. We can’t just expose them to conservative ideology approved by the board of regents or the governor of Texas.
PHILLIPS: Similarly, UT San Antonio student Marcela Salome Hernandez says the idea that their university indoctrinated them is laughable.
MARCELA SALOME HERNANDEZ: I was a proud Mexican American. I was a proud queer person, proud trans person before I even knew what those words were. And no, I did not learn it in the university level. I did not learn it in school.
PHILLIPS: Professors and students say they’re worried restricting what’s taught in their colleges will diminish the quality of students’ degrees and make it harder for universities to recruit and retain faculty. For NPR News, I’m Camille Phillips in San Antonio.
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