<\/p>\n
The Ezekiel W. Cullen Building on the campus of University of Houston on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Conley\/Staff photographer<\/p>\n
University of Houston<\/a> administrators could slash almost 40% of the courses offered in the school\u2019s core curriculum to comply with a new state law<\/a> \u2014 including \u201cIntro to Global Climate Change,\u201d \u201cBlack Liberation Theology,\u201d \u201cIntroduction to Women\u2019s Studies\u201d and \u201cIntroduction to LGBT Studies,\u201d according to a list obtained by the Houston Chronicle.<\/p>\n If implemented, the changes would drastically reduce the general education options that undergraduates<\/a> choose from as they work toward their degrees. The cuts would affect liberal arts departments the most, including professors who teach topics that high-ranking conservative lawmakers view as biased or \u201cwoke.\u201d<\/p>\n Any courses that are removed from the core can still be taught, but they\u2019re likely to be taken by a smaller number of students \u2014 meanwhile, some faculty fear that the remaining classes won\u2019t have enough seats. Professors have criticized the process and say they were not meaningfully involved in these decisions until now as administrators seek their feedback for a final proposal that will go to the UH System Board of Regents in August.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThis is basically\u00a0DOGE-ing the core curriculum over the summer while nobody’s looking,\u201d said Richard Armstrong, an associate professor of classical studies. \u201cWhen you think about something that’s been that carefully managed and\u00a0curated, you wonder, why are we being reckless in cutting the offerings?\u201d<\/p>\n READ MORE: A battle over workforce, ‘indoctrination’ is reshaping core curricula at Texas colleges<\/a><\/p>\n UH is among the dozens of institutions across the state assessing their core classes against the backdrop of a broader GOP push for more oversight on Texas\u2019 public college campuses.<\/p>\n While every institution\u2019s \u201ccore\u201d looks different, they each include subject requirements and learning objectives set by the state, making up 42 credit hours, or 14 classes. The core has become hotly contested in recent years, as it indicates what every college graduate should know.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Lawmakers wrote Senate Bill 37 in 2025 to unravel what they view as left-leaning indoctrination in college classrooms. The new law didn\u2019t explicitly ban topics but instead enacted four broad guidelines for core classes \u2014 such as being \u201cfoundational\u201d for a sound education and \u201cnecessary\u201d to prepare students for the workforce and civic life.<\/p>\n “The legislation demands real accountability from our institutions,” the bill\u2019s author, former state Sen.\u00a0Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said in a statement as lawmakers sent it to Gov. Greg Abbott to sign. “Texas isn’t just leading the conversation \u2014 we’re setting the national standard for restoring academic integrity and accountability on college campuses.”<\/p>\n So far, the responses of universities and colleges to the law have been varied. While UH has not issued any policies restricting topics \u2014 as the Texas A&M<\/a> and Texas Tech<\/a> university systems have done \u2014 some UH faculty have been wary.<\/p>\n ACROSS TEXAS: A&M alumni warn politics is changing campus leadership<\/a><\/p>\n In a move that some UH professors viewed as a threat to academic freedom and a precursor to further changes, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Dean Dan O\u2019Connor asked faculty early this spring to sign a memo<\/a> affirming that they don\u2019t \u201cindoctrinate\u201d while teaching.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The official SB37 review began later, when a working group of nine professors across UH\u2019s academic colleges drafted the recommendations over five \u201cextended\u201d meetings, according to university documents. This month, \u00a0Provost Diane\u00a0Z. Chase\u00a0shared the findings with faculty and opened a feedback form, which closes Tuesday.<\/p>\n Otherwise, the university has disclosed little about the group\u2019s process, beyond sharing the results and giving faculty copies of the guiding questions used to\u00a0judge courses against the state\u2019s criteria.<\/p>\n UH\u2019s chapter of the American Association of University Professors<\/a>, a group that advocates for academic freedom, said that the committee was sworn to secrecy, and that UH general counsel Dona Cornell attended all of the meetings.<\/p>\n When reached by the Houston Chronicle for comment, UH officials said the SB37 review is ongoing and declined to answer a series of questions about the process. \u00a0<\/p>\n “As part of this process, the UH Core Curriculum Working Group evaluated all core courses using a consistent evaluation framework,\u201d said a statement released by the university. \u201cBased on that framework, the working group prepared draft recommendations, which have been provided to faculty for feedback. These recommendations are just one step in a broader review process and do not represent final decisions. The university leadership will evaluate the recommendations, which must ultimately be approved by UH System Board of Regents.”<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n What could go<\/p>\n The working group suggested taking about 100 courses out of the core and keeping almost 160 others, according to a document summarizing the proposed changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n While some courses involving politically divisive issues were on the list \u00a0\u2014 like LGBT Studies and climate change \u2014 the cuts don\u2019t appear to target race studies as a whole, as \u201cAfrican American Studies\u201d and \u201cIntroduction to Latino Cultural Studies\u201d would remain in the core while \u201cBlack Liberation Studies\u201d and \u201cMexican American Urban Communities\u201d were recommended to be removed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some courses on the chopping block involve topics exploring political differences, like \u201cLeft, Right and Center.\u201d Others concern movements and social change, like \u201cLatino Leadership Activism and Organizing,\u201d \u201cSexuality and Society,\u201d \u201cSocial Class and Mobility in America\u201d and \u201cVoices from Exile and Diaspora.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But no history or government classes were flagged, sparing courses that focus on histories for specific demographics, including Chicanos, women, Latinos and African Americans.<\/p>\n UH\u2019s members of the AAUP, the faculty union, said the university violated \u201cbasic principles of transparency, faculty participation, and fairness\u201d in the review, according to a letter sent to UH President Renu Khator and other administrators on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n They have urged the university to halt the review process.<\/p>\n \u201cThis lack of transparency and the exclusion of the vast majority of faculty from the process, should these cuts to the curriculum be upheld, undermines the education UH students will receive,\u201d according to the group\u2019s letter. \u201cA wider range of foundational courses opens up more opportunities for our students to pursue a meaningful and effective college education, setting them up for greater success in graduate work, professional schools, and the workforce.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n They also say that UH overcomplied in following SB37. The group interprets the law as requiring the university\u2019s core in its entirety to meet the state\u2019s four criteria, while UH tasked the working group with ensuring that each individual course meets all four criteria.<\/p>\n The courses on the list also include several that don’t touch on political, cultural or social topics.<\/p>\n Rebecca Forrest, an instructional professor in the department of physics, said she was shocked to open the recommendations and see her \u201cAdvanced Laboratory 1\u201d course on the list. She has offered it since she created the class 20 years ago, helping physics students learn to convey complicated material and satisfy a core requirement called \u201cWriting in the Disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n She deems the course essential for the workforce, and believes it meets the criteria of\u00a0SB 37. To reach more physics students in the future, her department will need to alter its degree plan to require it outside of the core, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is doing a disservice to students,\u201d Forrest said. \u201cThey won’t be well prepared to enter the workplace or graduate school.\u201d<\/p>\n Largely, faculty members critical of the process argue that they have the pedagogical expertise and knowledge of learning objectives to back up their curricular decisions, and they say they\u2019ve previously gone through rigorous processes to ensure that their core courses met state standards. Those processes were upended after SB37 disbanded faculty senates<\/a> \u2013 which led prior curricular reviews \u2013 and allowed colleges to replace them with smaller advisory councils that are more limited in function.<\/p>\n INSTRUCTION: AI use at colleges has become a \u2018minefield\u2019 of rules, confusion<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe are the closest to the students,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cWe are interacting with them all the time, far more than the administration, and we have to create material that really works, that does achieve the goals that we’re setting out \u2013 pedagogically but also connects to their interests, energizes them.\u201d<\/p>\n Effects on students<\/p>\n People walk across the University of Houston campus near the UH Student Center in Houston, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025.<\/p>\n Brett Coomer\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n By forcing students at a growing university to compete for a more limited number of courses, Forrest, Armstrong and others worry that students will experience a bottleneck at registration and face delayed graduation times.<\/p>\n Other ripple effects are possible. The core is known to draw students to departments \u2013 even helping them minor in areas that are known to have\u00a0smaller numbers of majors<\/a>.<\/p>\n If their courses are available to fewer students, some professors fear class enrollments will drop further.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n