UT Austin Cuts Women’s and Gender Studies Courses From Core

The University of Texas at Austin will no longer count women’s, gender and sexuality courses toward core curriculum requirements, the Austin-American Statesman reported Thursday.

Department chair Danielle Clealand told faculty in the newly consolidated Social and Cultural Analysis department, which now houses gender and ethnic studies, that the provost’s office had rejected all such courses as part of the core, along with dozens of courses on race, including Slavery and its Legacies and Urban Unrest.

The affected women’s, gender and sexuality courses include Mexican American Women from 1940–present, Women and the Holocaust, Intro to African American Women’s History, LGBTQ Literature and Culture, and Native American Women’s History, the Statesman reported. Students can now take those courses only as electives.

The move follows last week’s announcement that UT Austin was eliminating four majors: African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women’s and gender studies, and race, indigeneity and migration.

It’s all part of the university’s shift to a new core curriculum, which will require all students to take courses in Western civilizations, humanities and artificial intelligence. Faculty who teach gender and ethnic studies had to get special permission from the provost’s office to have their courses count toward the new core. The Social and Cultural Analysis department sought to gain core approval for 49 courses, but the provost only accepted 16—none of them women’s gender and sexuality courses.

Lisa Moore, former chair of the women and gender studies department, called the cuts “blatant” viewpoint discrimination, arguing that the university was “singling out” her field.

“It just seems like a very intentional starvation of our work,” Moore told the Statesman. “We’re being set up to fail.”