UT cuts all Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies courses from core curriculum By Lily Kepner, Staff Writer Sep 24, 2026

Friends:

What is happening to Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at UT Austin is no longer easy to describe as ordinary curricular housekeeping. As Lily Kepner reports below, every course in the field has been removed from the university’s core curriculum, even as related majors have already been eliminated and dozens of courses addressing race, gender, inequality, and social difference have been rejected from the core. Taken together, these decisions raise a larger question about what kinds of knowledge UT now considers central to an undergraduate education—and which forms of knowledge are being steadily pushed to the margins.

The pattern is especially troubling because exclusion from the core is not merely symbolic. Core status helps determine enrollment, visibility, faculty workload, and ultimately the institutional viability of programs. When this occurs alongside policies that make low enrollment a potential justification for eliminating programs or faculty positions, the danger is obvious: first narrow access to the curriculum, then point to declining enrollment as evidence that the field no longer warrants support. As Lisa Moore puts it in Kepner’s reporting, it can look very much like an “intentional starvation” of the work.

Dr. Maria Cotera's commentary to this piece is most cutting: “(We’re) essentially digging our own graves before we’re pushed into them,."

What concerns me most is the larger intellectual project taking shape. A public university should be expanding students’ capacity to understand the complexity of the world they are entering—not narrowing that world by deciding that the study of gender, sexuality, race, migration, inequality, and historically marginalized communities is somehow too “specialized” to belong in a common curriculum. These are views and decisions by non-specialists, by the way. 

The question before us is therefore larger than the fate of particular courses. It is about who gets to define legitimate knowledge at a public university, whose histories remain visible, and whether curricular reform is becoming a vehicle for something much closer to institutional capture—as discussed on Monday's October 5th blog.

UT cuts all Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies courses from core curriculum

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterSep 24, 2026

University of Texas students walk past the scaffolding-covered UT Tower as construction continues on the landmark, Aug. 26, 2026. Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman

Starting next semester, no Women’s, Gender and Sexuality courses will count toward core curriculum requirements at the University of Texas.

On Tuesday, department chair Danielle Clealand told faculty in the Social and Cultural Analysis Department that the provost’s office rejected all women’s and gender studies courses from counting toward UT’s core, according to an email reviewed by the Statesman. The provost’s office also eliminated dozens of courses on race from counting toward the core.

All undergraduate students must pick from a menu of courses to fulfill their core requirements before graduating. 

The provost’s decision affects courses including Mexican American Women from 1940 — present; Women and the Holocaust; Intro to African American Women’s History; LGBTQ Literature and Culture; and Native American Women’s History.

Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies was the only field within the newly consolidated Social and Cultural Analysis Department that had all of its courses cut from the core, said professor Jo Hsu, who specializes in gender studies and rhetoric. All classes in that field will now be elective for future students.

“The pattern is pretty clear,” Hsu said. “Even within the other (department) units, all courses that referenced women were rejected.”
 
Asked about the changes, UT spokesperson Mike Rosen referred to the university’s core curriculum report, which was drafted by 22 faculty members. It states a core curriculum should provide students with a broad education that can “complement and guide their more specialized studies.”

“Rather than a genuine core curriculum that provides a coherent general education, the current system  is a vast distribution requirement that includes more than 600 courses, many of which are on topics that are quite narrow,” the faculty members wrote. “Highly specialized courses have an important place in UT Austin’s curriculum, but not as parts of its core.”

In total, the social analysis department asked the provost to review 49 courses so they could count toward core curriculum requirements — of those, 16 were approved. Some courses focusing on race and urban studies including Slavery and its Legacies, Urban Unrest, Statistical Analysis of Social Disparities and Building Sustainable Societies were also rejected.

The announcement follows the provost’s decision to eliminate majors in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; African and African Diaspora Studies; and Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, against the recommendation of the College of Liberal Arts.

Lisa Moore, the former chair of the women and gender studies department, which was combined with three other departments into the new social analysis department this fall, condemned the cuts as “blatant” viewpoint discrimination and a “singling out” of her field.

The classes won’t be cut from the course catalog, but their exclusion from the core — and the elimination of related major offerings — will diminish enrollment, Moore said. That’s especially concerning after UT regents recently changed policy to allow programs and professors with low enrollment to be cut, she said. 

Director of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas, Lisa Moore in her office in Burdine Hall, Feb. 18, 2026. No classes from Moore's former department will count toward core curriculum requirements. Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman

“It just seems like a very intentional starvation of our work,” Moore said. “We’re being set up to fail.”

Other classes affected

UT is refining its academic offerings as part of a transition to a new core curriculum that will launch as soon as fall 2028, pending approval. That model will require all students to take classes in Western civilizations, humanities and artificial intelligence, and narrow which courses can qualify.

Other classes affected

UT is refining its academic offerings as part of a transition to a new core curriculum that will launch as soon as fall 2028, pending approval. That model will require all students to take classes in Western civilizations, humanities and artificial intelligence, and narrow which courses can qualify.

“(We’re) essentially digging our own graves before we’re pushed into them,” Cotera said.

UT did not respond to questions about the fast timeline, but President Jim Davis previously told regents that preparing for the new core will take two years and require a significant university-wide lift. The UT system must certify compliance with SB 37’s core curriculum review by January 2027.

In another batch of cuts to the College of Liberal Arts, the provost cut dozens of signature, or “topics,” courses from the core curriculum — courses that counted for UT’s prior core, but were subject to review for being too narrowly focused. Those cuts include Climate Change History; Ethics of Artificial Intelligence; God and AI; Race, Ethnicity and Health; and U.S. Immigration Enforcement. 

The provost approved introductory classes on Mexican American and Latina/o Studies; Black Studies and American Studies to remain in the core, as well as dozens of signature courses including Jewish Women’s Life Writings and Visionary Women.

However, the classes approved at UT were not immune to changes: Cotera said political pressure on UT prompted her to alter her Introduction to Mexican American/Latina Studies course to increase the chances of it being approved.

She excluded a week on border violence and a week on women’s and gender studies from the syllabus, fearing those aspects would cause the whole course to be cut. The course was ultimately approved.

“I understood and informed others that I was self-censoring because I wanted to be documented. I want people to know what I (felt I) had to take out,” Cotera said.

Fears surrounding the changes

Faculty fear the university’s sidelining of diverse fields will mar the university’s reputation.

“Lately, the calls that I have with prospective students begin with them asking whether they would be welcome or even safe at UT,” Hsu said. 

Cotera believes recent changes will impact how students are prepared for the workforce. Though she believes aspects of the university’s new core curriculum, such as the required study of great thinkers, will offer students valuable lessons, cutting ethnic and gender studies courses when the state’s Latino population is rapidly growing is “irrational” and “embarrassing,” Cotera said.

“It looks like an intentional form of exclusion,” Cotera said. “I’m not sure how they’re going to use their class in Western civilization in the workforce, but I can promise you, they’ll use their class on understanding Latino cultures.”

UT’s course catalog for next semester is expected to be published Oct. 1. The provost and president have not informed the wider university community about the major or core curriculum cuts.

Lily Kepner

Higher Education Reporter

Lily Kepner started at the American-Statesman in October 2023. She has appeared on BBC, NPR and Texas Standard to talk about her coverage, which has spanned the impact of state laws and politics on the University of Texas, pro-Palestinian protests, free speech, the anti-DEI ban, LGBTQ student belonging and more. Kepner graduated with honors from Boston University's College of Communication in 2023, where she received the college's highest awards for writing and journalism leadership and led the award-winning student newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. In her time with the American-Statesman, she contributed to reporting that won an Edward R Murrow Award for breaking news, won the School Bell Award for Outstanding Feature from Texas State Teachers Association, and Critics Choice for Best of Austin in the Austin Chronicle. Previously, she has been published in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and GBH. Kepner is passionate about accountability and service journalism and encourages anyone to reach out to her to tell their story or share a tip.

DOGEing the Curriculum: University of Houston may cut 40% of core requirement classes in response to GOP law

Friends:

This is staggering. University of Houston Professor Richard Armstrong is exactly right: the proposed removal of nearly 40 percent of UH’s core courses amounts to “DOGE-ing the core curriculum over the summer while nobody’s looking” (Ketterer, 2026).

Among the courses recommended for removal are Black Liberation Theology, Introduction to Women’s Studies, Introduction to LGBT Studies, Intro to Global Climate Change, Mexican American Urban Communities, Latino Leadership Activism and Organizing, Sexuality and Society, and Voices from Exile and Diaspora (Ketterer, 2026).

This is not routine curricular housekeeping. It is a politically driven narrowing of what Texas students will be encouraged—and, practically speaking, able—to learn.

The intention behind Senate Bill 37 authored by former Senator Andrew Creighton—who is now the president of Texas Tech University—could hardly be clearer. In the official statement of intent accompanying Sen. Brandon Creighton’s bill, SB 37 was described as an effort to address the “unchecked authority of faculty senates” (Texas Senate Research Center, 2025, para. 1). A subsequent House committee analysis reported that the bill’s sponsor was concerned about the “ideological direction of core curricula” and a perceived lack of accountability in faculty governance (Texas House Committee on Higher Education, 2025).

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was even more direct. He described SB 37 as unfinished business following what he called the largest “pushback against wokeness in higher education” in the nation’s history (Patrick, 2025b). This language leaves little doubt that SB 37 was not simply about efficiency, affordability, or workforce preparation. It was designed to shift control over knowledge away from faculty and toward politically appointed regents, administrators, and state officials.

This is where the relationship to Christian nationalism becomes important.

Christian nationalism is not synonymous with Christianity, Christian faith, Jesus, or religious devotion. It is a political movement that uses a particular interpretation of Christianity to claim authority over American identity, government, education, and public life. As Katherine Stewart (2020, 2025) has documented, this movement is sustained not by religious conviction alone, but by coordinated political organizations, wealthy donors, policy networks, and activists seeking the power to impose their vision on a pluralistic society.

Stewart’s (2012) earlier investigation of the Christian Right’s efforts to gain influence in public schools also reminds us that education has long been a central battleground in this movement’s struggle over whose values, histories, and forms of knowledge will receive public legitimacy.

I am not claiming that every legislator or administrator involved in SB 37 personally identifies as a Christian nationalist. I am arguing that the law’s purposes and consequences align closely with that broader political project.

The contrast is revealing. Texas political leaders have promoted the placement of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms as a “foundational moral compass” (Patrick, 2025a), while a public university considers removing Black Liberation Theology from its core curriculum. One expression of Christianity—aligned with state authority and a traditional national narrative—is elevated. Another—grounded in the experiences of oppressed communities and demanding racial justice—is marginalized.

That is not religious neutrality. It is the political selection of which religious ideas are considered legitimate.

The other vulnerable courses follow the same pattern. Women’s and LGBTQ Studies challenge prescribed gender and sexual hierarchies. Mexican American, Black, immigrant, and diaspora studies complicate the myth of an innocent and uniformly virtuous nation. Climate-change courses confront powerful economic interests and require students to reckon with collective responsibility. Courses on activism teach students that democracy involves participation, dissent, and organized struggle.

These subjects are not being questioned because they lack intellectual rigor. They are vulnerable because they challenge the racial, gendered, religious, economic, and national orthodoxies that this political movement seeks to protect.

SB 37 created the machinery for this purge by weakening faculty governance, elevating regental control, and redefining education through politically malleable concepts such as “foundational” knowledge, workforce preparation, and return on investment. UH may also be overcomplying with the law by demanding that every individual core course satisfy all of its criteria rather than evaluating the core curriculum as a whole (Ketterer, 2026).

The result will not be a stronger education. Students may face fewer choices, registration bottlenecks, delayed graduation, and diminished opportunities to encounter fields that awaken their intellectual interests and help them understand the diverse society in which they live.

What we are witnessing is most certainly a "DOGEing" of the curriculum, but the objective is not merely to reduce its size. It is to discipline knowledge—to make politically inconvenient courses less visible, less accessible, and eventually less viable.

The University of Houston—or should I say, the stakeholder community around it—should protest and halt this process, this rationing of education. Curriculum must be shaped through transparent, faculty-led deliberation grounded in disciplinary knowledge and educational evidence—not through fear of political retaliation from Austin.

This is not academic accountability.

It is political control over what students are permitted to know. 

How scandalous.

What a shame.

—Angela Valenzuela

References

Ketterer, S. (2026, July 21). University of Houston may cut 40% of core requirement classes in response to GOP law. See the list. Houston Chronicle. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/uh-core-curriculum-sb37-22352570.php

Patrick, D. (2025a, March 18). Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick statement on the passage of Senate Bill 10—Placing the Ten Commandments in schools. Office of the Lieutenant Governor. https://www.ltgov.texas.gov/2025/03/18/t-gov-dan-patrick-statement-on-the-passage-of-senate-bill-10-placing-the-ten-commandments-in-schools/

Patrick, D. (2025b, April 15). Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick statement on the passage of Senate Bill 37—Reforming faculty senates. Office of the Lieutenant Governor. https://www.ltgov.texas.gov/2025/04/15/lt-gov-dan-patrick-statement-on-the-passage-of-senate-bill-37-reforming-faculty-senates/

Stewart, K. (2012). The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s stealth assault on America’s children. PublicAffairs (Wikipedia, 2012).

Stewart, K. (2020). The power worshippers: Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. Bloomsbury Publishing (Wikipedia, 2020).

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury Publishing (Wikipedia, 2025).

Texas House Committee on Higher Education. (2025). Bill analysis: Committee substitute for Senate Bill 37, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, Texas Legislature Online. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/analysis/html/SB00037H.htm

Texas Senate Research Center. (2025, March 18). S.B. 37 bill analysis: As filed, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, Texas Legislature Online. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/analysis/html/SB00037I.htm

University of Houston may cut 40% of core requirement classes in response to GOP law. See the list.

By Samantha Ketterer,Staff WriterJuly 21, 2026

The Ezekiel W. Cullen Building on the campus of University of Houston on Thursday, Nov. 10, 

2022. Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer

University of Houston administrators could slash almost 40% of the courses offered in the school’s core curriculum to comply with a new state law — including “Intro to Global Climate Change,” “Black Liberation Theology,” “Introduction to Women’s Studies” and “Introduction to LGBT Studies,” according to a list obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

If implemented, the changes would drastically reduce the general education options that undergraduates choose from as they work toward their degrees. The cuts would affect liberal arts departments the most, including professors who teach topics that high-ranking conservative lawmakers view as biased or “woke.”

Any courses that are removed from the core can still be taught, but they’re likely to be taken by a smaller number of students — meanwhile, some faculty fear that the remaining classes won’t have enough seats. Professors have criticized the process and say they were not meaningfully involved in these decisions until now as administrators seek their feedback for a final proposal that will go to the UH System Board of Regents in August.

“This is basically DOGE-ing the core curriculum over the summer while nobody's looking,” said Richard Armstrong, an associate professor of classical studies. “When you think about something that's been that carefully managed and curated, you wonder, why are we being reckless in cutting the offerings?”

READ MORE: A battle over workforce, 'indoctrination' is reshaping core curricula at Texas colleges

UH is among the dozens of institutions across the state assessing their core classes against the backdrop of a broader GOP push for more oversight on Texas’ public college campuses.

While every institution’s “core” looks different, they each include subject requirements and learning objectives set by the state, making up 42 credit hours, or 14 classes. The core has become hotly contested in recent years, as it indicates what every college graduate should know.

Lawmakers wrote Senate Bill 37 in 2025 to unravel what they view as left-leaning indoctrination in college classrooms. The new law didn’t explicitly ban topics but instead enacted four broad guidelines for core classes — such as being “foundational” for a sound education and “necessary” to prepare students for the workforce and civic life.

"The legislation demands real accountability from our institutions," the bill’s author, former state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said in a statement as lawmakers sent it to Gov. Greg Abbott to sign. "Texas isn't just leading the conversation — we're setting the national standard for restoring academic integrity and accountability on college campuses."

So far, the responses of universities and colleges to the law have been varied. While UH has not issued any policies restricting topics — as the Texas A&M and Texas Tech university systems have done — some UH faculty have been wary.

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In a move that some UH professors viewed as a threat to academic freedom and a precursor to further changes, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Dean Dan O’Connor asked faculty early this spring to sign a memo affirming that they don’t “indoctrinate” while teaching.

The official SB37 review began later, when a working group of nine professors across UH’s academic colleges drafted the recommendations over five “extended” meetings, according to university documents. This month, Provost Diane Z. Chase shared the findings with faculty and opened a feedback form, which closes Tuesday.

Otherwise, the university has disclosed little about the group’s process, beyond sharing the results and giving faculty copies of the guiding questions used to judge courses against the state’s criteria.

UH’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a group that advocates for academic freedom, said that the committee was sworn to secrecy, and that UH general counsel Dona Cornell attended all of the meetings.

When reached by the Houston Chronicle for comment, UH officials said the SB37 review is ongoing and declined to answer a series of questions about the process.

"As part of this process, the UH Core Curriculum Working Group evaluated all core courses using a consistent evaluation framework,” said a statement released by the university. “Based on that framework, the working group prepared draft recommendations, which have been provided to faculty for feedback. These recommendations are just one step in a broader review process and do not represent final decisions. The university leadership will evaluate the recommendations, which must ultimately be approved by UH System Board of Regents."

What could go

The working group suggested taking about 100 courses out of the core and keeping almost 160 others, according to a document summarizing the proposed changes.

While some courses involving politically divisive issues were on the list — like LGBT Studies and climate change — the cuts don’t appear to target race studies as a whole, as “African American Studies” and “Introduction to Latino Cultural Studies” would remain in the core while “Black Liberation Studies” and “Mexican American Urban Communities” were recommended to be removed.

Some courses on the chopping block involve topics exploring political differences, like “Left, Right and Center.” Others concern movements and social change, like “Latino Leadership Activism and Organizing,” “Sexuality and Society,” “Social Class and Mobility in America” and “Voices from Exile and Diaspora.”

But no history or government classes were flagged, sparing courses that focus on histories for specific demographics, including Chicanos, women, Latinos and African Americans.

UH’s members of the AAUP, the faculty union, said the university violated “basic principles of transparency, faculty participation, and fairness” in the review, according to a letter sent to UH President Renu Khator and other administrators on Monday.

They have urged the university to halt the review process.

“This lack of transparency and the exclusion of the vast majority of faculty from the process, should these cuts to the curriculum be upheld, undermines the education UH students will receive,” according to the group’s letter. “A wider range of foundational courses opens up more opportunities for our students to pursue a meaningful and effective college education, setting them up for greater success in graduate work, professional schools, and the workforce.”

They also say that UH overcomplied in following SB37. The group interprets the law as requiring the university’s core in its entirety to meet the state’s four criteria, while UH tasked the working group with ensuring that each individual course meets all four criteria.

The courses on the list also include several that don't touch on political, cultural or social topics.

Rebecca Forrest, an instructional professor in the department of physics, said she was shocked to open the recommendations and see her “Advanced Laboratory 1” course on the list. She has offered it since she created the class 20 years ago, helping physics students learn to convey complicated material and satisfy a core requirement called “Writing in the Disciplines.”

She deems the course essential for the workforce, and believes it meets the criteria of SB 37. To reach more physics students in the future, her department will need to alter its degree plan to require it outside of the core, she said.

“This is doing a disservice to students,” Forrest said. “They won't be well prepared to enter the workplace or graduate school.”

Largely, faculty members critical of the process argue that they have the pedagogical expertise and knowledge of learning objectives to back up their curricular decisions, and they say they’ve previously gone through rigorous processes to ensure that their core courses met state standards. Those processes were upended after SB37 disbanded faculty senates – which led prior curricular reviews – and allowed colleges to replace them with smaller advisory councils that are more limited in function.

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“We are the closest to the students,” Armstrong said. “We are interacting with them all the time, far more than the administration, and we have to create material that really works, that does achieve the goals that we're setting out – pedagogically but also connects to their interests, energizes them.”

Effects on students

People walk across the University of Houston campus near the UH Student Center in Houston, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025.Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle

By forcing students at a growing university to compete for a more limited number of courses, Forrest, Armstrong and others worry that students will experience a bottleneck at registration and face delayed graduation times.

Other ripple effects are possible. The core is known to draw students to departments – even helping them minor in areas that are known to have smaller numbers of majors.

If their courses are available to fewer students, some professors fear class enrollments will drop further.

UH: Board drops religious studies as major due to low enrollment

Five of the six core courses offered by the classical studies department were recommended for removal, according to the working group’s list. The creative writing department’s only offering in the core was “Creation and the Performance of Literature,” which could now be cut.

“Students find core courses that interest them, that broaden their experience and their education in society,” Forrest said. “All of that makes for more well-rounded students that are better prepared for whatever profession they choose to go into.”