It is unclear how the student research content ban will be enforced and whether faculty will be required to report students for violating the rule.
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Texas Tech University’s plans to phase out and eventually close all programs “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity also prohibit students from creating “degree-culminating” research or theses on such topics, according to a recent memo from university leadership.
After current sexuality and gender studies majors and graduate students complete their teach-outs, “no degree-culminating student research within the TTU System will be permitted to center on SOGI topics,” the memo states. “Graduate theses and dissertations may only center on SOGI topics as a strictly temporary teach-out exception, explicitly limited to currently enrolled students completing their degrees within formally identified teach-out programs.”
One exemption remains for student work: “General independent student research,” like standard term papers, and “student-selected performance pieces” are not subject to the content restrictions. Undergraduate theses, like those produced at the end of an independent study, fall into a gray area. Texas Tech spokespeople did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s questions by deadline.
The new policy is an escalation of the five-campus system’s efforts over the past year to snuff out any sexual orientation and gender identity content, and it’s the first policy that doesn’t fully exempt student work. It’s the most extreme case of censorship of students’ work that nonprofit PEN America has seen since it began tracking such policies five years ago, said Amy Reid, program director for PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program. She called the policy a “sledgehammer.”
“Chancellor [Brandon] Creighton’s April 9 memo makes it all too clear that providing students with fact-based instruction has never been the point,” Reid wrote in an email. “The limits this will place on what faculty can teach, what students can learn, and what graduate students can research shows just how afraid the pro-censorship movement is of students exercising their right to learn and research in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.”
Texas Tech faculty are, so far, appalled and confused by the new rules, said Andrew Martin, a studio art professor at Texas Tech and president of the American Association of University Professors chapter. It is unclear how the student research content ban will be enforced and whether faculty will be required to report students for violating the rule.
“What I interpret it to mean, what I think my colleagues interpret that to mean, is that student research, scholarly work, creative work that in any way centers on those topics, is not happening here at Tech,” Martin said. “It’s difficult for faculty to comprehend how a major R-1 public university can think it’s legal and desirable to censor their students’ content of work in this manner.”
The Texas Tech AAUP slammed the memo in a public letter to Creighton.
“The policies you are attempting to institute represent politically motivated control over the curriculum of Texas Tech University to the point that our institution will become an indoctrination mill for your preferred political views,” the group wrote. “To be absolutely clear: you are now creating the lasting damage to Texas Tech University that we previously warned against.”
In a statement, Graham Piro, faculty legal defense fund fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the foundation has been sounding the alarm about the state of academic freedom in Texas and it’s very concerned about the new restrictions at Texas Tech.
“By singling out specific topics and ideas for prohibition, the university system creates a chilling atmosphere for scholarly inquiry and classroom discussion. Broad, vague directives that target specific ideas open the door to self-censorship among both faculty and students, harming the educational environment on Texas campuses,” Piro wrote.
In December, following months of vague verbal policies on the issue, Creighton issued a policy outlining the ways faculty can and cannot teach about gender and sexuality. Creighton called it a “first step.” The April 9 memo could be considered the “second step,” but not the last, Martin said.
“This level of escalation of censorship is extreme. What I’m hearing is that people are concerned that our research is next,” Martin said. “The norms that we’ve expected to be present at an institution of higher ed generally, and particularly at an R-1 public, do not seem to be regarded [by leadership] as in any way important.”
