The Texas Tech University System, based in Lubbock, this month is joining the list of schools, organizations and agencies that are caving into the GOP’s crusade against DEI, with Tech officials announcing that the TTU system is implementing sweeping restrictions on LGBTQ+ academic programs, research and classroom discussions.
Chancellor Brandon Creighton has ordered the purge of academic programs centered around sexual orientation and gender orientation be completed by June 15.
The Texas Tech system includes the flagship school in Lubbock, the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Angelo State University, Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso and Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls.
Creighton bragged that the Texas Tech system is “not waiting to be told what compliance looks like — we are defining it for the rest of the state and the nation.”
Critics of the move are saying this ban is blatantly unconstitutional. Andrew Martin, a professor of studio art and president of the Texas Tech chapter of the American Association of University Professors said that although faculty members had been expecting a move to the right, Creighton’s new policy is “far more invasive … than we had imagined or, at least, most of imagined could be possible. What’s unexpected is the presence in writing of what we consider to be blatantly unconstitutional policy.”
And to quote my best friend — who has been a proud Texas Tech Red Raider since his first year there in 1978-79 and who has his bachelor’s degree from the school — “Texas Tech can kiss my ass.”
— Tammye Nash