\n<\/p>\n
As conservative Texas politicians identify and target faculty who teach about gender identity, officials at six Texas public university systems have ordered reviews of curriculum, syllabi and course descriptions.<\/p>\n
The impetus is clear: Texas A&M University fired a professor, demoted two administrators and pushed out its president after conservative politicians lambasted the institution for a lesson on gender identity in a children\u2019s literature class. Their criticism hinged on the fact that the topic was not reflected in the brief course catalog description for the class. Before he resigned, Texas A&M president Mark Welsh ordered an audit of all courses at the flagship campus, which the system Board of Regents quickly extended to all Texas A&M institutions. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Board has called for immediate and decisive steps to ensure that what happened this week will not be repeated,\u201d the regents wrote in a statement posted on X. \u201cTo that end, the Regents have asked the Chancellor to audit every course and ensure full compliance with applicable laws.\u201d <\/p>\n
Other systems soon followed. On Sept.\u00a029, University of North Texas system chancellor Michael Williams instructed the president of each institution to \u201cconduct an expedited review of their academic courses and programs\u2014including a complete syllabus review to ensure compliance with all current applicable state and federal laws, executive orders, and court orders,\u201d he wrote in a letter. The review is due Jan.\u00a01. <\/p>\n
The University of Texas system is reviewing all courses on gender identity to \u201censure compliance and alignment with applicable law and state and federal guidance, and to make sure any courses that are taught on a U.T. campus are aligned with the direction and priorities of the Board of Regents,\u201d according to a statement from the system. The review will be discussed at the Board of Regents meeting in November.<\/p>\n
System leaders at several public institutions have cited Texas House Bill\u00a0229, President Donald Trump\u2019s Jan.\u00a020 executive order and a Jan.\u00a030 letter from Gov. Greg Abbott that said, \u201cAll Texas agencies must ensure that agency rules, internal policies, employment practices, and other actions comply with the law and the biological reality that there are only two sexes\u2014male and female.\u201d Yet no current federal or state laws prohibit public university professors from teaching about transgender identity.<\/p>\n
A University of Houston system spokesperson told The <\/em>Texas Tribune<\/em> that it is completing a review of general education courses in compliance with Texas Senate Bill\u00a037, which took effect this fall. The law requires public universities to complete a curriculum review every five years, but the first reviews aren\u2019t due until 2027. Texas Woman\u2019s University is also conducting a review of all academic courses and programs, the Tribune <\/em>reported. <\/p>\n Texas Tech University ordered its faculty to ensure that course content complies with Texas and U.S. law, as well as the federal and gubernatorial executive orders that declare the existence of only two genders\u2014male and female. The resulting oral policies\u2014which officials are purposely not writing down\u2014severely limit what faculty can teach about gender identity and effectively erase transgender people and topics from the curriculum.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how each of the six university systems will respond after their reviews are complete, and whether courses will be censored or entirely removed from the catalog. <\/p>\n \u201cFaculty are highly trained experts in their fields of study. It harms education for faculty to be told what to teach by politicians,\u201d Brian Evans, President of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors, told\u00a0Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u00a0by email. \u201cFor example, it is impossible to teach about gender without recognizing that there are countless gender identities and gender expressions across the world, the ideology that there are only two genders being only one of those.\u201d<\/p>\n The conservative politicians who have gone after institutions and faculty for teaching about gender identity have found professors through syllabi and course information posted online. As the risk of doxing grows, faculty are working to keep their information private, but new technology and Texas law are adding complications. <\/p>\n Hundreds of American colleges and universities are now requiring their faculty to upload syllabi to Simple Syllabus, a third-party platform that offers uniform syllabus templates and easy editing; it also allows faculty to embed syllabi into campus learning management systems. According to the company\u2019s website, more than 500 colleges and universities currently use the platform. Institutions may limit who can view the syllabi\u2014for example, Clemson University requires users to log in with university credentials. <\/p>\n But other institutions\u2014including the University of Houston, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin\u2014allow the general public to view their Simple Syllabus pages. This may be in part due to Texas House Bill\u00a02504, a 15-year-old law that requires public institutions to provide publicly accessible syllabi that include major assignments and exams, required or recommended readings, and a general description of lecture or discussion topics. <\/p>\n Andrew Joseph Pegoda, a lecturer in the Women\u2019s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Houston, experienced the risks of this public access firsthand. In August, a conservative news site published a piece targeting Pegoda for teaching two courses that include queer theory in the curriculum and that, according to the news site, exemplify \u201cindoctrination in women\u2019s and gender studies departments.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI realized that they got their information from Simple Syllabus,\u201d Pegoda said. The platform allows users to search posted syllabi at an institution using keywords\u2014for example, searching the word \u201cqueer\u201d on the Simple Syllabus page for one Texas university returned four different syllabi that included the term. <\/p>\n The spotlight on Pegoda came and passed quickly, largely because his name wasn\u2019t included in the article\u2019s headline. \u201cI\u2019m glad it wasn\u2019t worse than it was. It could have been more direct or more vicious,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Simple Syllabus spokesperson Matthew Compton-Clark said the company has not received any reports of targeting via the platform. \u201cWe take data privacy extremely seriously, and are a faculty-first organization,\u201d he wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. \u201cWe provide multiple privacy features, giving faculty the ability to set not just their entire syllabus private, but individual components as well. This same feature also exists for the institution, allowing the school to set the visibility of the entire syllabus, or individual parts of the document based on their state-specific legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n The Texas law does not require the public syllabi to include class meeting times or locations, though many professors don\u2019t amend the public versions of their materials to exclude that information. Pegoda said he\u2019s been advised to \u201cput minimum detail in the public Simple Syllabus and then to provide a more regular syllabus to students,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n But, in the wake of the incident at Texas A&M, that may not work, he said. \u201cNow professors are being encouraged to very specifically detail everything in the syllabus so as to not potentially get fired or have student complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As conservative Texas politicians identify and target faculty who teach about gender identity, officials at six Texas public university systems have ordered reviews of curriculum, syllabi and course descriptions. 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