Hot off the press. Adam Serwer’s disturbing new article in The Atlantic, “All the Things You’re Not Allowed to Say in Texas,” exposes the escalating assault on academic freedom across Texas universities—from AI-driven censorship at Texas Tech to faculty dismissals at Texas A&M and the dismantling of academic programs at UT Austin. Note: Add "AI Censor" to your vocabularies.
I'm actually very interested in what I now know to be a research finding—as also mentioned by Serwer—that decades of research shows that college does not alter students’ political beliefs as much as people assume. Though not centered in this article, this is the very premise that guides the Christian nationalist right agenda that is guiding this return to the great thinkers and books of Western Civilization.
Serwer interviewed me briefly for the article, incorporating my concerns about the narrowing of UT Austin’s curriculum. As I emphasized, the issue is not whether Western civilization should be taught, but whether it should be taught to the exclusion of other histories, cultures, and intellectual traditions.
Serwer interviewed me briefly for the article, incorporating my concerns about the narrowing of UT Austin’s curriculum. As I emphasized, the issue is not whether Western civilization should be taught, but whether it should be taught to the exclusion of other histories, cultures, and intellectual traditions.
At stake is nothing less than students’ right to a broad education, academic freedom, and the democratic mission of our public universities. This is a deeply troubling account that deserves national attention. Abundant thanks to both journalist Adam Serwer and The Atlantic for drawing attention to our plight.
-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
All the Things You’re Not Allowed to Say In Texas
The state now controls what professors can teach.
By Adam Serwer
-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
All the Things You’re Not Allowed to Say In Texas
The state now controls what professors can teach.
By Adam Serwer
October 11, 2026, 7:50 AM ET
Sara Spurgeon, an English professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, has been teaching literature for 20 years. But May 2025 was the first time she was forced to submit her course materials through a portal to be evaluated by an artificial-intelligence program. It flags anything that might violate new rules laid out by the university chancellor, including a prohibition on the “advocacy/promotion of race or sex-based prejudice,” and a requirement—now Texas state law—that “only two sexes, male and female, are recognized.”
At Texas Tech, medical students no longer learn about racial disparities in medical care. Faculty at the university’s medical center in Lubbock were advised to “refrain from treating transgender patients, for any medical condition, if a medical student was present,” according to a lawsuit filed by the American Association of University Professors. (When asked for comment, a spokesperson said that the university’s “written guidance is publicly available and expressly protects instruction necessary for licensure and patient care.”) According to the same lawsuit, the censorship bot—officially known as the Course Content Review Process—ordered a Tech philosophy professor to remove Plato’s Republic from a syllabus because “it references Plato’s beliefs concerning gender roles and homosexuality.”
Professors in the Texas A&M system have had to strip their syllabi too. According to an ACLU lawsuit, last January, Aaron George, a professor at Tarleton State University, was told by administrators to remove A Gay Manifesto, a Stonewall-era LGBTQ-rights pamphlet, and White Flight, a history of urban segregation, from his American-political-history course. After a student complained that a different class the professor taught violated university policy, George was informed by administrators that it would be canceled if he did not make “necessary” (but unspecified) changes. He cut a reference in the course description to the significance of the Fourteenth Amendment for LGBTQ rights, and the class was allowed to proceed.
The University of Texas at Austin, the flagship school of the UT system, announced last month that it was eliminating majors in Africana studies, Mexican American and Latino studies, women’s and gender studies, and race and migration studies. More than 100 courses have been flagged for removal from the core curriculum, primarily ones relating to slavery, race, gender, sexuality, and the environment. Consolidating majors isn’t necessarily nefarious, nor is rethinking a core curriculum (a central group of courses from which students must take a certain number to graduate). But these changes are happening, Lauren Gutterman, an American studies professor at UT, told me, “entirely because of the political context.”
Adam Kirsch: Texas sends Plato back to his cave
Sara Spurgeon, an English professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, has been teaching literature for 20 years. But May 2025 was the first time she was forced to submit her course materials through a portal to be evaluated by an artificial-intelligence program. It flags anything that might violate new rules laid out by the university chancellor, including a prohibition on the “advocacy/promotion of race or sex-based prejudice,” and a requirement—now Texas state law—that “only two sexes, male and female, are recognized.”
At Texas Tech, medical students no longer learn about racial disparities in medical care. Faculty at the university’s medical center in Lubbock were advised to “refrain from treating transgender patients, for any medical condition, if a medical student was present,” according to a lawsuit filed by the American Association of University Professors. (When asked for comment, a spokesperson said that the university’s “written guidance is publicly available and expressly protects instruction necessary for licensure and patient care.”) According to the same lawsuit, the censorship bot—officially known as the Course Content Review Process—ordered a Tech philosophy professor to remove Plato’s Republic from a syllabus because “it references Plato’s beliefs concerning gender roles and homosexuality.”
Professors in the Texas A&M system have had to strip their syllabi too. According to an ACLU lawsuit, last January, Aaron George, a professor at Tarleton State University, was told by administrators to remove A Gay Manifesto, a Stonewall-era LGBTQ-rights pamphlet, and White Flight, a history of urban segregation, from his American-political-history course. After a student complained that a different class the professor taught violated university policy, George was informed by administrators that it would be canceled if he did not make “necessary” (but unspecified) changes. He cut a reference in the course description to the significance of the Fourteenth Amendment for LGBTQ rights, and the class was allowed to proceed.
The University of Texas at Austin, the flagship school of the UT system, announced last month that it was eliminating majors in Africana studies, Mexican American and Latino studies, women’s and gender studies, and race and migration studies. More than 100 courses have been flagged for removal from the core curriculum, primarily ones relating to slavery, race, gender, sexuality, and the environment. Consolidating majors isn’t necessarily nefarious, nor is rethinking a core curriculum (a central group of courses from which students must take a certain number to graduate). But these changes are happening, Lauren Gutterman, an American studies professor at UT, told me, “entirely because of the political context.”
Adam Kirsch: Texas sends Plato back to his cave
