Lambda Legal along with the American Association of University Professors and its Texas affiliate, Texas AAUP-AFT, this week filed suit against Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton and members of the Board of Regents over new policies that censor what professors can teach.Over the past eight months, Chancellor Creighton issued two memoranda requiring an audit of any course materials that touch on race, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity. If a course gets flagged, the professor must stop teaching that material until the Board of Regents rules on it, and entire academic programs can be shut down. The result is a chilling effect that stifles debate and undermines students’ education across the Texas Tech System.
The fallout has already reached classrooms across the system. Texas Tech administrators reviewed roughly 8,500 courses at Texas Tech University alone, sending about 500 to the Board of Regents for review.First-year law students were barred from receiving information about race related to Dred Scott v. Sandford, medical students could not receive critical education on treating racial and sexual minorities, and an entire Women’s and Gender Studies program was shuttered by administrative decree.
Academic freedom is under attack in Texas, and Lambda Legal is fighting back. Every professor deserves to teach without censorship, and every student deserves to learn without limits, Lambda Legal wrote in its press release on the case.
— David Taffet