Tyranny at Texas Tech

An April 9, 2026, memo from Texas Tech University system chancellor Brandon Creighton imposed extraordinary censorship about gender-related issues on campus. It may be the worst restriction on academic freedom ever announced by a university leader in American history.

The memo seeks to ban all discussion about “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI),” pronouncing a “strict prohibition on SOGI content in all core and lower-level undergraduate courses,” a ban starting this summer on all programs focused on these issues, and severe limits on all classes: “No system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The memo bans all mention of any topic related to gender identity even if it is only “secondary background context, demographic data points, or minor components of a broader academic subject.” The memo also bans all books, videos, essays or any other instructional material of this kind, where “gender identity” is even a “minor component.” According to the memo, “alternate materials must be utilized” and “there are no exceptions to the Alternate Materials Rule for core, undergraduate courses.”

The memo bans viewpoints that the chancellor dislikes: “Faculty may not … advocate for or validate sociological frameworks of fluid gender identities.” This “trans ban” is so extreme that it would seem to prohibit any professor (or any assigned reading) from asserting that trans people even exist, since that would mean recognizing “fluid gender identities.”

While reluctantly allowing academic freedom for current faculty research, the memo also makes an explicit announcement of viewpoint discrimination in future faculty hiring: “Although future faculty hiring guidance will prioritize recruitment in alignment with this memorandum, currently employed faculty members may continue to research and publish topics of their choosing.”

Another component of Texas Tech’s repression is the syllabi police: “Faculty are explicitly required to clearly disclose all covered topics in their syllabi and faithfully adhere only to those stated contents.”

This threat to academic freedom goes far beyond gender. It’s crazy to imagine that any professor could ever “clearly disclose all covered topics” in their syllabi and then “faithfully adhere” to that list. By this rule, any student could get their professor fired by simply asking a question related to the course about a topic that wasn’t listed in the syllabus. No professor could be safe unless they ban all student questions and simply lecture from the endlessly long syllabus that details every word they will utter in the class.

I posed some questions about the Texas Tech rules to one of the most prominent advocates of the “there are only two sexes” position being enforced in Texas: Carole Hooven, who is an associate in Steven Pinker’s lab at Harvard, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. In 2022, Hooven retired from teaching at Harvard after a backlash over her appearance on Fox News Channel where she said that there are only two sexes, prompting criticism from students and colleagues that left her unable to recruit any graduate assistants to work on her class.

Hooven wrote, “I don’t like the ‘woke’ culture on many campuses or how it has restricted what views can be expressed and harmed student learning. But a blanket ban on certain views and research is not the answer. It’s just another kind of ideological capture.”

She indicated that the class she had taught at Harvard would almost certainly be banned at Texas Tech, since it dealt with “sexual orientation, differences of sexual development (‘intersex’ conditions), issues related to transgender identity and treatment, and how these all relate to sex. Under the Texas Tech rules, as I understand them, much of that content could not be taught in a lower-level undergraduate course (which mine was).”

None of the repression in this memo is justified by any state law or executive order. Last year’s HB 229, for example, compels a state definition of two sexes, but it never uses the word “gender” and certainly never justifies censorship of those at public universities who disagree with the government.

One problem is that Chancellor Creighton’s memo conflates sex and gender, taking a state law that defines two sexes but never mentions gender and extending this law to ban any discussion of gender identity issues.

Back in September 2025, Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, noted about earlier repressive demands at Texas Tech, “This is really just a voluntary effort to go out and censor, and it’s not supported by the executive order, and it’s certainly contradictory to the First Amendment.”

The fact that a state law defines something provides zero justification for suppressing classroom speech or research that questions or contradicts that viewpoint. The whole point of the First Amendment is to allow speech that disagrees with the government.

Consider the example of criminal behavior or illegal drugs. The state of Texas has clear legal penalties for anyone engaged in illegal acts. Unlike being trans or nonbinary or violating gender norms, which is not (yet) a crime in Texas, there are all kinds of illegal activities in Texas. But the announcement of a state standard must silence what is taught in colleges. There must be no rules banning all books and movies and lectures that mention crime or illicit drug use. There must be no prohibition on research about crime. There must be no limits on advocacy for changing the criminal code to decriminalize certain drugs or behavior. Even explicit criminal laws cannot justify limits on academic freedom in discussing crime.

So when politicians pass laws expressing their opinions about sex identity, it has no relevance to what is allowed to be discussed on a college campus. Academic freedom and the First Amendment must protect the right of anyone to disagree with the government. The anti-intellectual repression at Texas Tech is horrifying and unconstitutional and should be condemned by every advocate of academic freedom.

As Hooven put it, “This is a serious infringement on academic freedom and sets a dangerous precedent: Any administration can then direct universities to teach or not teach whatever does not align with its political, moral or religious leanings.”