Texas Tech leaders have somehow convinced themselves that race and gender are not legitimate topics to discuss in a psychology class. That\u2019s absurd on its face: You can\u2019t teach human behavior while treating basic dimensions of human identity as off-limits.<\/p>\n
Will Crescioni, a lecturer in Texas Tech\u2019s Department of Psychological Sciences, submitted his course materials for his honors-level psychology course the same day the Texas Tech system\u00a0issued<\/a> a memo ordering universities to review courses and ensure faculty do not \u201cpromote or otherwise inculcate\u201d certain ideas related to race and gender.<\/p>\n Just over a month later \u2014 and only two days before the semester began \u2014 his course was scrapped. His offense? Refusing to alter his course content.\u00a0<\/p>\n In\u00a0emails with his department<\/a>, Crescioni defended his approach. Instead of picking and choosing which of his course materials may violate the system memo, Crescioni submitted all of his course materials for review.\u00a0He also explained a basic fact about teaching: In psychology, as in many disciplines, topics like race and gender are not confined to a single lecture slot. They surface throughout the semester because they are integral to the subject. Anyone who has taken a serious college course understands this. Classes are often wide-ranging and exploratory. They don\u2019t always fit neatly into bureaucratic boxes. Forcing a professor to tiptoe around a ban on promoting such topics will inevitably warp a course, severely compromising a professor\u2019s teaching.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stripping out discussion of race and gender that\u00a0\u201cenhances the quality of a course,\u201d Crescioni argued, would mean abandoning his responsibility to \u201cdesign the best courses\u201d he can. He refused to teach a redacted version of his psychology course required by the system memo. In plain terms, he would not intellectually neuter his own class.\u00a0<\/p>\n The result: no more class.<\/p>\n This outcome serves no one, and is precisely why efforts to ban particular ideas from the classroom are so dangerous. As FIRE has\u00a0long argued<\/a>, targeting specific viewpoints for suppression infringes on faculty members\u2019 constitutional rights and their authority to shape their own pedagogy. In some areas, it can make it impossible to teach a course with any academic credibility.<\/p>\n Crescioni\u2019s case is only the latest in a disturbing pattern. And more cancellations are no doubt on the horizon. The Texas Tech Board of Regents is\u00a0meeting<\/a> at the end of February, when additional courses could face the chopping block. The nebulous process and lack of clear standards only deepen the chill already settling over campus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And the chill came on fast. According to the\u00a0Texas Tribune, Texas Tech\u00a0cancelled<\/a>\u00a0two upper-level psychological sciences courses \u2014 Ethnic Minority Psychology and Close Relationships \u2014 within days of the Dec. 1 memo.\u00a0<\/p>\n