TCU will close its women and gender studies department and comparative race and ethnic studies department after this school year, with plans to fold instruction of the subjects into the English department.
The move was announced Friday in a meeting and email to Texas Christian University faculty, citing low enrollment as among the reasons. Faculty members said the merger follows a lack of support for the departments amid political challenges.
A university spokesperson said external pressure does not impact university decision-making and that changes to departments are based on academic demand.
University officials must secure fiscal sustainability and “ensure a more efficient and effective use of faculty and administrative resources,” Provost Floyd Wormley Jr. wrote in the email to English faculty.
No academic programming will end as a result, according to Wormley’s email.
Although Friday’s announcement was unexpected, talk of restructuring or renaming the departments was not new, said English professor Layne Craig, who also holds an administrative fellow position to assist the two departments’ single chair.
Beginning in February, discussions in the two departments addressed how to respond to external pressure against anything seen to be related to diversity, equity and inclusion, Craig said. Colleges have faced increased scrutiny since President Donald Trump’s administration has worked to eliminate DEI efforts.
Across the country, courses on gender and race are being targeted by Republicans who see them as promoting “wokeness.” Locally, some GOP leaders have been critical of the school for courses in the programs they said depart from its Christian origins.
The perception among many faculty in the two departments is that university officials do not support their departments when they come under fire, Craig said.
When TCU was seeking to promote itself as an inclusive institution and more openly working to advance DEI, Craig said the fields of study were welcome. Now, faculty members feel the programs are viewed as “more of a liability” in the current political climate, she said.
Faculty members were told last spring that the women and gender studies department and comparative race and ethnic studies department would be merging, she said. They also were told then that a name for the combined department could not advertise race and gender, she said. School officials then indicated in August that while the departments were merging, they could keep race and gender in the name, she added.
The English department will retain its name when the three departments merge next year, Craig said the dean of TCU’s AddRan College of Liberal Arts told faculty at a meeting Wednesday.
Undergraduate enrollment numbers for majors in the two departments are in the single digits this fall, TCU enrollment data shows. Two seniors are majoring in women and gender studies, while nine students are majoring in comparative race and ethnic studies — five seniors, three juniors and one sophomore.
The departments’ upper-level courses see “less than robust” enrollment, while lower-level courses see higher enrollment because they satisfy core curriculum requirements, said Rebecca Sharpless, faculty senate chair and professor.
“So the statement by the administration that this is about enrollments is, in fact, legitimate,” she said. “The timing and appearance could not be worse, when state schools are being forced to shutter their programs for political reasons. But the numbers do verify what they’re saying.”
In a statement to the Fort Worth Report, a university spokesperson said it is common practice to evaluate departmental structures to ensure resources are used effectively. With the university growing, TCU needs “more faculty and staff in areas of strong academic demand, not less,” the statement read.
Academic fields focused on gender and race were borne out of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Such departments explore related topics through various perspectives, such as literature, politics and history.
At TCU, professors Jean Giles-Sims and Priscilla Tate began advocating for a women’s studies program in 1979. The university eventually launched such a program in 1994.
TCU started its comparative race and ethnic studies program in 2017, a time when students of color were sounding the alarm about a campus climate they described as alienating and uninclusive. The program’s then-director told The Texas Tribune in 2018 that the program would help spur both a change in culture and a more diverse student body.
A liberal arts degree in a relatively new field can be a hard ask, especially with TCU’s price tag, Craig said. She believes the departments still have value despite a low enrollment of majors, especially considering the larger number of nonmajor students who take the related courses.
Budgets for programming, faculty research and student employees this school year are $25,000 for women and gender studies and $34,000 for comparative race and ethnic studies, she said, pointing out that the amount that could be saved is small.
TCU’s operating budget for the 2025-26 academic year is $780 million, according to a university document.
Brandon Manning, associate professor of English, said TCU “has never given these departments an opportunity to thrive.” Students and faculty are often discouraged from pursuing the fields and departments, he said.
“With little to no communication or shared governance, this hasty move looks like an attempt to placate recent conservative criticism of the university,” Manning said. “These two departments offered intellectual community, history, and rigorous explorations of academic fields. Soon the university will have to decide if it wants to be more than a beautiful campus with a business school.”
Long term, Craig believes the change will delegitimize the academic fields at TCU and could lead faculty members to depart for universities where the subjects have dedicated departments.
“One of our faculty members described it to me as a soft launch of the elimination of the study of race and gender, and I thought that was an apt way to put it,” she said.
McKinnon Rice is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org.
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