UT’s leaders are putting the university’s academic strength at risk, Austin American-Statesman, October 1, 2026

Friends:

Jason Brownlee’s important commentary in the Austin American-Statesman on the restructuring underway at UT Austin calls attention to a fact that deserves much greater emphasis: 99 words in an earlier version of Senate Bill 37 did not become Texas law. The Senate committee substitute would have directed governing boards reviewing the core curriculum to exclude courses that “teach identity politics,” teach certain ideas about racial responsibility, are based on theories that “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege” are inherent in U.S. or Texas institutions or were created to maintain inequities, or require students to adopt an ideology (Texas Legislature, 2025). 

Thanks to the hard-won efforts by AAUP and other groups, that language was removed before final passage. This legislative history matters because it establishes an important boundary between what lawmakers proposed and what they ultimately enacted. What I also heard in relation to this is that higher education administrators expressed concern at the time about a possible barrage of First Amendment lawsuits since constitutionally-speaking, one can eliminate programs but not ideas.

The final version of SB 37 is hardly inconsequential for curriculum or faculty governance. It requires governing boards to conduct comprehensive reviews of general education curricula at least once every five years, expands board authority over academic programs and curricula, and significantly restructures faculty-senate governance. Brownlee’s point is therefore an important one: when universities treat these subjects as though SB 37 itself rendered them presumptively unacceptable, they risk collapsing the difference between the law that passed and language that the Legislature expressly left behind.

That distinction is particularly consequential at UT Austin, where the restructuring of Ethnic Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies, the elimination of majors, and the rejection of numerous proposed core courses have unfolded alongside a sweeping reconsideration of the undergraduate curriculum. Whatever one thinks of SB 37, fidelity to the law requires precision about what it actually says. 

The Legislature gave governing boards considerably greater curricular authority, but it stopped short of enacting the explicit content restrictions contained in that deleted 99-word passage. If universities nevertheless reproduce those restrictions through administrative practice, the question Brownlee raises becomes unavoidable: Are institutions implementing SB 37—or going beyond it by administratively accomplishing what the Legislature declined to put into law?

Like Dr. Brownlee, I, too, worry about the dystopian vision our university leadership is advancing: a deliberate whitewashing of the curriculum that narrows the boundaries of legitimate knowledge, pushes race, gender, inequality, and other inconvenient histories to the margins, and increasingly reflects the Christian nationalist strategy of remaking public institutions from within—that I and others otherwise term, "institutional capture."

By this I mean the use of governing boards, administrative authority, curricular review, hiring, restructuring, and other formal mechanisms of institutional power to redirect a public university away from its broader educational mission and toward a narrower ideological agenda.

Reference

Texas Legislature. (2025). Committee substitute for Senate Bill 37, 89th Legislature, Regular Session. Texas Legislature Online. https://capitol.texas.gov/billlookup/History.aspx?LegSess=89R&Bill=SB37

UT’s leaders are putting the university’s academic strength at risk

By Jason Brownlee, Guest Columnist, Austin American-Statesman



Oct 1, 2026 Scaffolding covers the University of Texas Tower. Faculty and students deserve a voice as UT reshapes its core curriculum and reorganizes academic departments, Jason Brownlee writes. Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman

In spring 2025, University of Texas President Jim Davis tapped William Inboden as the lone candidate for provost, circumventing rules that required faculty and student input, as well as competitive hiring. Davis claimed that leadership gaps in the Tower justified the carveout for Inboden. In retrospect, though, his end run was a portent of how the president and provost would operate.

During the past year, they have avoided dialogue with students, faculty and staff while pushing through tectonic changes in undergraduate training and academic departments. The result is a climate of angst and confusion that jeopardizes the world-class institution their predecessors built.

The backdrop of this moment is Senate Bill 37, in effect since Sept. 1, 2025. The law abolished faculty senates and mandated five-year curriculum audits. To the dismay of the bill’s original author, however, SB 37 did not wind up dictating what professors could teach. In fact, legislators expunged a 99-word passage that would have banned courses on “identity politics” and “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege” so that the bill could pass.

Rather than following the law on the books, Davis and Inboden acted as if the defeated draft had become policy. Last October the president announced UT would be carrying out the first “thorough reconsideration of [its] core requirements” in 20 years. Among the 18 faculty members Davis tapped for this undertaking, not one was a scholar of gender and ascriptive identities, or systemic oppression. In fact, three-quarters of College of Liberal Arts' (COLA) departments had no seat on the curriculum committee.

SIGN UP FOR THE AUSTIN ANGLE and get Statesman commentaries in your inbox

One professor in COLA predicted the women’s, gender and sexuality studies program was done for. Asked by the Chronicle of Higher Education whether he agreed, Inboden replied: “My plea to everyone on campus is: Wait until we actually have something announced, and then we can have that discussion.”

Those taking the provost at his word waited in vain. In April COLA turned seven departments into two, including an amalgam of American Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, Latino/a Studies, and African-American Studies. Just last month, the provost’s office nixed the component departments’ majors and rejected most of their proposed core courses. Meanwhile, 88% of the essential authors for UT’s new “Great Questions of Human Life” requirement are male — and none of them are gay or queer. (No Baldwin, Woolf or Foucault, among others.)

Without Davis and Inboden clearing the air, I have struggled to understand how their apparent priorities — clutching the detritus of SB 37, retrofitting syllabi for the pre-civil rights era — advance any policy goal, such as post-graduate job placement or legal compliance. On the contrary, the opacity and arbitrariness emanating from the Tower is anathema in higher education, especially in times of change.

The lesson of UT’s last major curriculum review is that administrators should embrace consultation, not shun it. In 2004-06, Presidents Larry Faulkner and William C. Powers Jr. led an inclusive and deliberative reassessment of undergraduate education. Their task force included students and eschewed ideological conformity. It also helped make a great university even greater. Between 2011 and 2022, the four-year graduation rate rose 21 points (to nearly 74%). UT-Austin entered the top 40 of all U.S. universities and the top 10 public ones. Dozens of its graduate programs became national leaders.

When Davis and Inboden took up their posts, the university had never been stronger. I cannot fathom why they would want to jackhammer any pillar of that success. For current Longhorns to thrive in Texas and in the world, intellectual life at UT must remain every bit as diverse and vibrant as game-day crowds at Darrell K. Royal Stadium.

I worry that the president and provost are advancing a very different vision. My plea to them is: Open the discussion you promised and listen to your campus.

Jason Brownlee is a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas and the author of “Force Without Authority: America’s Wars in the Middle East and South Asia.” He is expressing his views as a private citizen.