It is unclear how the student research content ban will be enforced and whether faculty will be required to report students for violating the rule.<\/p>\n
raclro\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Texas Tech University\u2019s plans to phase out and eventually close all programs \u201ccentered on\u201d sexual orientation and gender identity<\/a> also prohibit students from creating \u201cdegree-culminating\u201d research or theses on such topics, according to a recent memo from university leadership. <\/p>\n After current sexuality and gender studies majors and graduate students complete their teach-outs, \u201cno degree-culminating student research within the TTU System will be permitted to center on SOGI topics,\u201d the memo states. \u201cGraduate theses and dissertations may only center on SOGI topics as a strictly temporary teach-out exception, explicitly limited to currently enrolled students completing their degrees within formally identified teach-out programs.\u201d<\/p>\n One exemption remains for student work: \u201cGeneral independent student research,\u201d like standard term papers, and \u201cstudent-selected performance pieces\u201d are not subject to the content restrictions. Undergraduate theses, like those produced at the end of an independent study, fall into a gray area. Texas Tech spokespeople did not respond to Inside Higher Ed\u2019s questions by deadline.<\/p>\n The new policy is an escalation of the five-campus system\u2019s efforts over the past year to snuff out any sexual orientation and gender identity content<\/a>, and it\u2019s the first policy that doesn\u2019t fully exempt student work. It\u2019s the most extreme case of censorship of students\u2019 work that nonprofit PEN America has seen since it began tracking such policies five years ago, said Amy Reid, program director for PEN America\u2019s Freedom to Learn program. She called the policy a \u201csledgehammer.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cChancellor [Brandon] Creighton\u2019s April 9 memo makes it all too clear that providing students with fact-based instruction has never been the point,\u201d Reid wrote in an email. \u201cThe limits this will place on what faculty can teach, what students can learn, and what graduate students can research shows just how afraid the pro-censorship movement is of students exercising their right to learn and research in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.\u201d <\/p>\n Texas Tech faculty are, so far, appalled and confused by the new rules, said Andrew Martin, a studio art professor at Texas Tech and president of the American Association of University Professors chapter. It is unclear how the student research content ban will be enforced and whether faculty will be required to report students for violating the rule. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat I interpret it to mean, what I think my colleagues interpret that to mean, is that student research, scholarly work, creative work that in any way centers on those topics, is not happening here at Tech,\u201d Martin said. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult for faculty to comprehend how a major R-1 public university can think it\u2019s legal and desirable to censor their students\u2019 content of work in this manner.\u201d<\/p>\n