by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
Feb. 22, 2026
Austin American-Statesman reporter Lily Kepner’s article on the University of Texas’s decision to consolidate its ethnic and gender studies departments repeatedly invokes “pressure,” “politically unpopular programs,” and unnamed “conservative politicians.” Yet it never identifies who is applying this pressure, what specific actions they have taken, or how these programs have been deemed unpopular. That omission is not incidental—it is the central issue.
The story claims UT’s decision follows “months of pressure from conservative politicians to eliminate ‘liberal’ education and ‘gender ideology.’” Which politicians? What letters, hearings, budget threats, regent directives, or formal communications substantiate this assertion? If such evidence exists, it should be documented. This is not a reference to Senate Bill 37 or its author, former Senator Brandon Creighton, now president of Texas Tech University. He is one actor. The question concerns the broader agenda the article implies but does not name.
The characterization of these departments as “politically unpopular programs” is equally unsupported. By what measure? The article reports 307 undergraduate majors across the affected departments, notes national rankings placing UT at the top in Latin American History, and references decades of student demand dating to the 1970s. Faculty describe strong interdisciplinary enrollment from engineering, pre-med, and other colleges. These are indicators of institutional vitality, not marginality.
Meanwhile, departments unrelated to race, ethnicity, or gender remain structurally intact. If this were a neutral effort to address administrative “fragmentation,” consolidation would be evenly distributed. It is not. The selective restructuring of African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, and Women and Gender Studies warrants scrutiny the article gestures toward but does not pursue.
The piece references Governor Greg Abbott’s intervention at Texas A&M, system-level restrictions on race or "gender ideology,” course audits on gender identity, and SB 37’s restructuring of faculty governance. Yet it stops short of connecting these developments to UT’s decision in a sustained way. The result is a narrative of diffuse cultural tension rather than a clear account of political and structural mechanisms.
Those mechanisms are concrete: SB 17’s dismantling of DEI infrastructure, SB 37’s weakening of faculty governance, and sustained public criticism of race and gender scholarship by state leadership. And now there is an additional layer.
Last week, the UT System Board of Regents adopted new guidance regarding the teaching of so-called “controversial topics,” directing institutions to ensure such material is “germane” to course objectives and framed in ways that avoid perceived ideological advocacy. While presented as a reaffirmation of academic neutrality, the policy introduces new ambiguity: Who determines what is “germane”? How is ideological advocacy defined? And what mechanisms will be used to monitor compliance?
For faculty in fields already publicly targeted, this creates policy-induced precarity. When governance structures have been weakened, DEI offices dismantled, and course content subjected to heightened scrutiny, consolidation cannot be viewed in isolation. The cumulative effect is an environment in which academic decisions are made under the shadow of legislative intervention and board-level oversight.
University administrators invoke “balance,” “efficiency,” and “fractured fields”—whatever the heck this means. If anything, the administration is actively doing the fracturing in which case this must reflect a level of psychological projection at work. Go figure.
If consolidation is driven by enrollment metrics or financial concerns, comparable data across all departments should be released. Transparency would clarify whether this is pedagogical recalibration or politically shaped reorganization.
Instead, “pressure” functions as an unnamed force—shaping outcomes without accountability. Universities evolve. Units merge. Priorities shift. But when programs centered on race, ethnicity, and gender are restructured amid weakened faculty governance, legislative hostility, and new board directives on “controversial topics,” skepticism is analytical, not ideological.
The public deserves clarity. If elected officials, regents, or donors are influencing curricular structures, that influence should be reported. If this is an internal decision grounded in measurable criteria, the data should be made public.
When actors remain unnamed and evidence unstated, “pressure” becomes a placeholder for power no one is required to own. In moments like this, clarity is not optional. It is the responsibility of both institutions—and those who report on them.
After anti-liberal pressure, University of Texas to consolidate gender and ethnic studies
Affected departments include those that focus on African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American Studies, Women and Gender Studies and American Studies.
By Lily Kepner, Staff WriterFeb 12, 2026 | Austin American-Statesman
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| A demonstrator holds up a sign at the base of the UT Tower during a protest at the University of Texas at Austin on Monday, October. 13, 2025. About 150 people gathered to protest Trump's compact and potential cuts to ethnic and gender studies programs in UT's College of Liberal Arts. Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman |
The University of Texas’s College of Liberal Arts will consolidate its long-standing ethnic and gender studies programs into one new department.
The university will immediately begin the process of creating the new Department for Social and Cultural Analysis Studies after months of pressure from conservative politicians to eliminate “liberal” education and “gender ideology” from the state’s flagship. There is no target date for the change to go fully into effect.
UT’s decision follows Texas A&M University move to close its Women and Gender Studies Department earlier this year. In a 9 a.m. meeting with department chairs Thursday, Interim Dean David Sosa said curriculum and degree programs in the departments are being reviewed.
The future of the centers and programs within the existing departments is not yet clear, two faculty in the meeting confirmed. It is also unclear if layoffs will eventually accompany the consolidations, but Sosa did not announce any immediate firings, two faculty said.
The college launched a committee last fall to explore the consolidation of overly “fractured” departments, prompting student protests to protect the programs.
Affected departments include those that focus on African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, Women and Gender Studies and American Studies, which have a combined 307 undergraduate majors, according to UT data.
The Asian Studies department, which was not included in Thursday’s meeting, has 185 majors. Middle Eastern Studies, also not included in the call, has 80. Department chairs from Germanic Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, French and Italian will be combined into a new department of European and Eurasian Studies. The departments teach foreign languages — a course requirement for COLA graduates.
Having an official designation as a UT department matters — it allows programs to receive funding for events, faculty and a greater voice in tenure and promotion decisions. Consolidating the programs effectively eliminates any institutional support for the politically unpopular programs, and further curtails faculty input in university decisions.
“There can be no reason for this decision other than an authoritarian takeover of Texas’ flagship university,” Lauren Gutterman, associate professor of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, said. “If this was about too much fragmentation or small majors, then why are departments like Religious Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Classics unaffected?”
UT Spokesperson Mike Rosen declined to comment by press time. Two hours after the meeting, UT President Jim Davis announced the changes in an email to campus. He confirmed that as the university reviews what majors, minors and certificates the new departments will offer, all students currently in the programs will be allowed to continue.
Davis said he asked the College of Liberal Arts to analyze what fields make sense to stand alone or come together based on student-to-faculty ratio, program size, student demand and resources. The consolidation doesn’t mean the subjects aren’t “worthy” of research and teaching, but allows them to be “researched and taught in the broader context of other fields, classes, disciplines, and departments,” he wrote.
“These two new departments reflect our ongoing commitment to academic excellence and our responsibility to ensure that every student at UT Austin has access to a balanced and challenging educational experience,” Davis said.
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| Sydney Jael Wilson, a women and gender studies graduate student, speaks at a protest at the University of Texas at Austin on Monday, October. 13, 2025. About 150 people gathered to protest Trump's compact and potential cuts to ethnic and gender studies programs in UT's College of Liberal Arts. Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman |
Women and Gender Studies officially became a department at UT in 2023, but gender and ethnic studies classes have been taught at the university for decades. The centers that house the faculty and classes started in the 1970s and 1980s after students pushed for courses that better reflected their personal backgrounds.
Faculty say the decision is misguided and will gut departments that have brought UT prestige for decades. U.S. News and World Reports listed UT as the top program in the country for graduate studies in Latin American History. College Factual, an online data-driven college ranking site, listed UT as the top school in Texas to get an undergraduate degree in ethnic studies.
“We no longer seem to be a place where we value knowledge for the sake of knowledge,” Alison Kafer, director of LGBTQ studies in the women’s and gender studies department, said in an interview earlier this month. “If we close this department, we are closing it for political reasons, because our numbers are great.”
What does consolidation mean?
The university will begin preparing for the new departments immediately, though they will not officially consolidate until September, faculty said. Curriculum and degree programs are still being reviewed.
A new UT policy revised this September requires the school’s president to direct an “efficient in-depth and judicious review process” before deciding to abandon or reduce academic programs and positions. The president is not bound by the recommendation of the provost or a committee, according to the policy. The policy strongly recommends the preservation of existing degree programs until all current students can complete them.
A previous policy required UT’s president to consult with Faculty Council leadership before eliminating any academic program or position. UT System ended faculty senates and councils to comply with Senate Bill 37 this September.
Why is this happening?
While no law restricts what can be taught at public universities, conservative politicians have put pressure on universities to eliminate programs deemed too liberal.
Political pressure intensified last fall when Gov. Greg Abbott demanded that Texas A&M University fire a children’s literature professor who taught about gender identity in one of her courses. Since then, university systems across the state have scrutinized programs deemed overly political.
In January, Texas A&M University closed its Women and Gender Studies department. Regents also approved a new policy that bans courses that “advocate” for race or gender ideology without prior approval. Texas Tech University System also banned such courses and issued a directive to only teach that there are two genders.
Both policies have been criticized by civil rights groups who equate the measures to censorship, stifling academic freedom. Others insist academic freedom has limits, and the fields have gone too far.
The UT System confirmed last fall that it would audit classes for mentions of gender identity. Officials have since remained quiet on how the system will handle increasing pressure to police instruction related to gender and sexuality. UT Regents will meet next week at a planned quarterly meeting.
At the flagship, Provost William Inboden has openly critiqued education related to race and gender as fields of study “often accompanied by partisan activism.” He has said the fields “must be studied,” but suggested the studying leaves students with an “imbalanced view of the United States.”
UT President Jim Davis, who is not an academic, said in a university address last year that UT would look to broaden overly “fractured” fields and bring “balance” to curriculum.
But all the cut programs are known for being interdisciplinary and skills-based, attracting students across the university from engineering to pre-medicine, faculty said. Faculty in the departments each have different specialties, allowing for innovative and collaborative research.
UT’s African and African Diaspora Studies became a department in 2010. It offers a major, minor, certificate, graduate and PhD programs. American Studies, which became a department in 1998, focuses on cultural, intellectual and social life in the United States. Mexican American and Latina/o Studies became a department in 2014.
“Gender and ethnic studies have transformed the study of the humanities and social sciences, and now they are what they are,” said Lisa Moore, UT’s Chair of Women and Gender Studies, in an interview before the consolidation announcement. “We can’t unknow what we know… It’s just not the case that we can believe that only a small slice of human beings are responsible for everything that’s good about the world.”
The cuts come as UT expands its academic offerings in other humanities fields.
UT offers more than 170 fields of undergraduate study and 230 graduate programs. The university has added about a dozen more in the past five years. The School of Civic Leadership just announced a new donor-funded program in Western Civilization and Jewish Studies. The school plans to open two more majors focused on increasing civic education.
Meanwhile, UT is also exploring consolidation in the School of Information and College of Natural Sciences. UT System regents will vote next week on UT's plans to establish a new School of Computing within the College of Natural Sciences. The organizational change would turn the School of Information into a Department of Information. The new school would also hold the Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistics and Data Sciences, and offer the same degrees, according to the agenda released Thursday afternoon.
Faculty insist the consolidated fields at UT are being targeted and defunded for political reasons, not because of waning student interest, funding restrictions or the value of the scholarship. They fear it will hurt the future reputation of the university and students' freedom to learn.
“The changes that are happening are going to, and already have created damage that will last for, I don’t know, decades,” Moore said. “I’ve never seen the forces that want to break down higher education (be) so successful as now.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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