{"id":256775,"date":"2026-04-19T11:45:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/256775\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T11:45:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:45:01","slug":"tyranny-at-texas-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/256775\/","title":{"rendered":"Tyranny at Texas Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The memo<\/a> seeks to ban all discussion about \u201cSexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI),\u201d pronouncing a \u201cstrict prohibition on SOGI content in all core and lower-level undergraduate courses,\u201d a ban starting this summer on all programs focused on these issues, and severe limits on all classes: \u201cNo system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo bans all mention of any topic related to gender identity even if it is only \u201csecondary background context, demographic data points, or minor components of a broader academic subject.\u201d The memo also bans all books, videos, essays or any other instructional material of this kind, where \u201cgender identity\u201d is even a \u201cminor component.\u201d According to the memo, \u201calternate materials must be utilized\u201d and \u201cthere are no exceptions to the Alternate Materials Rule for core, undergraduate courses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo bans viewpoints that the chancellor dislikes: \u201cFaculty may not\u00a0\u2026 advocate for or validate sociological frameworks of fluid gender identities.\u201d This \u201ctrans ban\u201d 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 \u201cfluid gender identities.\u201d<\/p>\n

While reluctantly allowing academic freedom for current faculty research, the memo also makes an explicit announcement of viewpoint discrimination in future faculty hiring: \u201cAlthough 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another component of Texas Tech\u2019s repression is the syllabi police: \u201cFaculty are explicitly required to clearly disclose all covered topics in their syllabi and faithfully adhere only to those stated contents.\u201d <\/p>\n

This threat to academic freedom goes far beyond gender. It\u2019s crazy to imagine that any professor could ever \u201cclearly disclose all covered topics\u201d in their syllabi and then \u201cfaithfully adhere\u201d 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

I posed some questions about the Texas Tech rules to one of the most prominent advocates of the \u201cthere are only two sexes\u201d position being enforced in Texas: Carole Hooven<\/a>, who is an associate in Steven Pinker\u2019s 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Hooven wrote, \u201cI don\u2019t like the \u2018woke\u2019 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\u2019s just another kind of ideological capture.\u201d <\/p>\n

She indicated that the class she had taught at Harvard would almost certainly be banned at Texas Tech, since it dealt with \u201csexual orientation, differences of sexual development (\u2018intersex\u2019 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).\u201d<\/p>\n

None of the repression in this memo is justified by any state law or executive order. Last year\u2019s HB 229<\/a>, for example, compels a state definition of two sexes, but it never uses the word \u201cgender\u201d and certainly never justifies censorship of those at public universities who disagree with the government.<\/p>\n

One problem is that Chancellor Creighton\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Back in September 2025, Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, noted<\/a> about earlier repressive demands at Texas Tech, \u201cThis is really just a voluntary effort to go out and censor, and it\u2019s not supported by the executive order, and it\u2019s certainly contradictory to the First Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As Hooven put it, \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

John K. Wilson was a 2019\u201320 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at collegefreedom@yahoo.com<\/a>, or letters to the editor can be sent to letters@insidehighered.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An April 9, 2026, memo from Texas Tech University system chancellor Brandon Creighton imposed extraordinary censorship about gender-related…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[4144,163,64,8894,2184,168,170,169,223],"class_list":{"0":"post-256775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lubbock","8":"tag-career","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-events","11":"tag-higher","12":"tag-jobs","13":"tag-lubbock","14":"tag-lubbock-headlines","15":"tag-lubbock-news","16":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}