Texas A&M Closes Women’s and Gender Studies

Texas A&M University is closing its women’s and gender studies program, effective immediately, to comply with a new system board policy that limits discussions of “race or gender ideology” on campus.

“[As] part of the broader implementation of the recently updated System policy, we made the difficult decision to begin winding down Women’s and Gender Studies academic programs, including the BA, BS, Graduate Certificate and the Minor,” Alan Sams, Texas A&M’s provost and executive vice president, wrote in a letter to faculty and staff Friday, according to a copy published by KBTX, a local TV news station in College Station, Tex. “This decision is based on the requirements of System policy and limited student interest in the program based on enrollment over the past several years.”

But free expression advocates and Texas A&M faculty decried the move, which they said was the result of an opaque process and represents another threat to academic freedom.

“Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas A&M has served generations of Aggies and advanced the core values of the institution throughout its history,” the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote in a public statement. “The AAUP remains steadfast in its opposition to Interim President Williams’s draconian decision, which represents a threat to the entire university community by devaluing student degrees, undermining faculty governance, and diminishing its institutional reputation.”

Texas A&M first began offering women’s and gender studies courses in 1979 amid national growth of the academic discipline. According to the faculty who run the program, such courses are still relevant almost 50 years later.

“The program serves the university at a particularly critical moment in its history by bringing a long history of multidisciplinary research, curricula, pedagogy, and education infrastructure to an institution that is only recently, and under new leadership, recognizing the urgent need to work across disciplinary borders to address the problems and opportunities of twenty-first century community, culture, and society,” the program’s website states.

“Additionally, in a moment of incendiary dispute across cultural, social, and political difference, Women’s and Gender Studies remains a thoroughly informed, established, intellectual base working at the cutting edge of cultural and social research to address difference within community.”

At present, the program has 25 majors and 31 minors enrolled, according to an email Cynthia Werner, senior executive associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, sent to women’s and gender studies faculty. While a teach-out plan is in place to allow current students to complete their degrees or programs—meaning the university will still offer some courses in the discipline for up to six more semesters—“effective immediately, students will not be able to enroll in these curricular options,” Werner wrote.

The announcement comes after faculty and administrators reviewed 5,400 course syllabi “to ensure compliance with System policy,” Sams wrote. That resulted in the cancellation of six courses that were found noncompliant with the new system policy, though “in most cases, courses were confirmed or adjusted within departments without the need for further review.”

Although Sams did not specify which six courses were canceled, earlier this month the university asked faculty to remove course content related to feminism, queer cinema and even the ancient Western philosopher Plato, among other topics. At least one sociology course, Introduction to Race and Ethnicity, was canceled right before this semester started.

“From banning Plato in one class to culling materials related to race and gender from syllabi, and now ending a well-established interdisciplinary program, TAMU is staking out turf as the epicenter of higher education censorship nationwide,” Amy Reid, program director of PEN America’s Freedom to Learn initiative, said in a statement. “Forcing faculty to restrict what they teach censors the knowledge accessible to students, paving the way for the American public university system to become a mouthpiece for the government. Limiting what can be taught in a university classroom is not education, it’s ideological control.”

Texas isn’t the only state that’s reviewing curricula and closing academic programs in an effort to limit discussions of race, gender, sexuality and other controversial topics on university campuses.

In 2023, New College of Florida’s trustees—including several appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a frequent critic of higher education—voted to wind down the university’s gender studies program. And statewide, faculty at universities across Florida have also been subject to ongoing syllabus reviews to ensure compliance with laws that aim to align university teaching with conservative ideologies and viewpoints.