Half of Texas Tech Faculty Censored Courses for Race, Gender

Restrictions on race, gender and sexuality instruction introduced late last year at Texas Tech University led faculty to change or field requests to change content for 277 courses, according to a new survey first reported by The Texas Tribune. More than half of respondents said they are considering jobs at other universities because of the new teaching restrictions. 

The survey, conducted by the Faculty Senate in May, also revealed that 18 percent of faculty made changes to their research, and 7 percent said administrators asked them to change their research, even though the current restrictions do not apply to existing faculty research. In the open comment section of the survey, 7 percent of respondents expressed support for Chancellor Brandon Creighton’s memos about the restrictions and the end of DEI at the university. Most of the comments—85 percent—were negative and indicated that faculty are concerned about loss of reputation, effects on student and faculty recruitment and retention, damage to academic freedom, and a climate of fear at the university. 

“We really just want to capture for posterity what’s going on here,” Alan Barenberg, chair of the Faculty Senate committee that drafted and sent the survey, told the Tribune. “Because it may be that we can’t change or affect the outcome of things, but people ought to know what took place here.”

A spokesperson for Creighton told the Tribune that the system relies on “sound methodology and representative data, not self-selected samples” and that therefore the chancellor “places greater weight on the findings of the course content review process.” According to the administrators, fewer than 60 of the more than 14,000 courses offered at Texas Tech system institutions were recommended for changes after the systemwide course review.