Policing Knowledge, Misrepresenting Scholarship: A Response to Brandon Creighton’s Latest Intervention in Texas Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Policing Knowledge, Misrepresenting Scholarship: A Response to Brandon Creighton’s Latest Intervention in Texas Higher Education

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 16, 2026

Something troubling is happening in Texas higher education—not simply at the level of legislation, but at the level of logic.

According to a recent report in The Chronicle of Higher Education, policies— formerly advanced by former legislator Brandon Creighton who is now the President of Texas Tech University are getting operationalized systemwide. 

Specifically, they seek to prohibit faculty from teaching that a person can be “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive,” that individuals should feel guilt for the actions of others because of their race or sex, or from acknowledging that gender identity might exist beyond a rigid binary.

Let us pause here.

Not because the issue is complicated—but because the framing is so profoundly misleading.

The premise underlying these policies is that universities are indoctrinating students into believing that individuals are inherently racist or oppressive and that professors are somehow in the business of assigning moral guilt based on race or sex.

This is a caricature. And it's offensive.

In logic, this is termed a "straw man" that resides at the center of the policy.

It bears little, if any, resemblance to what scholars in sociology, history, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, education, political science, or law actually teach. Across these fields, faculty engage students in rigorous inquiry into systems, institutions, structures of power, and historical processes—not as ideological exercises, but as empirically grounded and theoretically informed modes of analysis. 

This begs the question: what, exactly, are policymakers reacting to—actual classroom practice, or a politically constructed narrative that bears little relation to the intellectual work taking place in universities?

These frameworks, developed over decades of interdisciplinary scholarship, equip students to examine how policies are made, how categories like race and gender are socially constructed and operationalized, how law and governance distribute resources and rights, how knowledge itself is produced and legitimized, and how inequality is reproduced, resisted, and transformed over time. 

Students learn to interpret evidence, evaluate competing claims, and situate contemporary issues within longer historical arcs. In other words, the aim is not to assign blame or fix identities, but to cultivate intellectual curiousity, develop analytical capacity, promote epistemic humility, and foster a deeper understanding of the complex social worlds they inhabit.

What we teach is that systems can generate inequality even when individuals do not consciously intend it. That insight—central to modern social science—is not a moral accusation. It is an analytical observation.

Indeed, suggesting that universities teach students that they are inherently racist or oppressive misunderstands both the scholarship and the pedagogy. 

Unlike scholars of earlier eras—who often took for granted the inheritability of IQ and other deeply flawed, biologically determinist assumptions—contemporary scholarship overwhelmingly rejects essentialist claims about race or moral character. The study of racism and sexism today proceeds from a robust interdisciplinary consensus that these are historically produced, socially organized, and institutionally mediated phenomena—not fixed traits lodged within individuals. 

Indeed, the purpose of this work is to denaturalize inequality: to show how ideas once presented as “common sense” or “scientific truth” were constructed, contested, and sustained over time. That such outdated ways of knowing continue to circulate in public discourse only underscores the importance of this scholarship, not its excess.

Ironically, the policy bans the teaching of an idea that universities themselves overwhelmingly reject.

The Texas Tech memo to faculty reportedly encourages them to consult a flow chart to determine whether course content is “relevant” and “necessary.”

This is surreal.

In a research university—whose mission is the open pursuit of knowledge—faculty are now being invited to filter intellectual inquiry through an administrative decision tree designed to anticipate political scrutiny.

This is not how universities function.

Universities exist precisely because knowledge is complex, contested, evolving, and often uncomfortable. The study of race, gender, colonialism, power, and inequality has always generated debate. But debate is not a reason to suppress inquiry. It is the reason universities exist.

Reducing scholarship to bureaucratic compliance mechanisms does not protect students. It narrows the range of questions they are allowed to ask.

The broader political narrative surrounding these policies suggests that universities are “turning people gay” or confusing students about gender.

This claim is not only inaccurate—it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the research on human development and identity.

Universities do not manufacture sexual orientation or gender identity. Scholars study them. Students learn about them. Social science, psychology, history, anthropology, and public health research have long examined the complexity of human identity, culture, and embodiment.

Teaching about something is not the same as producing it.

If that logic were sound, teaching about capitalism would make students capitalists, teaching about war would turn them into soldiers, and teaching about religion would convert them into believers. At most, education shapes how students understand the world—it does not deterministically produce who they are. 

Human development is far more complex, shaped by family, community, peer networks, media environments, and, in the case of sexuality, a growing body of research indicating that orientation is not something one is taught into being. To suggest otherwise is to confuse exposure with causation, and learning with indoctrination.

The argument collapses under the weight of its own absurdity and, in doing so, exposes the deeper agenda at work: not the protection of students, but the regulation of thought itself and with it—a coordinated legislative effort to restructure higher education governance, limit diversity and equity programs, and increased political oversight of curriculum and institutional decision-making. 

The pattern is clear.

Programs that study race, gender, colonialism, inequality, or social justice are framed as ideological threats. Meanwhile, the policies themselves are explicitly ideological interventions into what faculty are allowed to teach and research.

The irony would be amusing if the consequences were not so serious.

So here is the question that Senator Creighton and others advancing these policies should answer plainly:

What exactly do you believe universities are teaching?

Because the picture presented in these policy justifications—a professor standing at the front of a classroom declaring that students are inherently racist or oppressive—is a fabrication. There may be outliers, for sure, but these are far and few between.

What actually happens in classrooms is something far more ordinary and far more valuable: students encounter history, data, frameworks, arguments, and evidence. They wrestle with competing interpretations. They learn to analyze institutions and power. In short, they develop the intellectual tools necessary for democratic citizenship.

One more thing. Senator Creighton has suggested that universities should focus primarily on careers and salaries rather than “contested ideas.”

But higher education has never been only about job training.

Universities prepare engineers and nurses, yes. But they also educate historians, journalists, teachers, lawyers, communications specialists, and public servants. They cultivate critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and democratic literacy.

A society that insists universities avoid contested ideas is not strengthening higher education.

It is hollowing it out.

The stakes here are not abstract debates about curriculum.

They concern whether public universities in Texas will remain places where scholars can pursue knowledge without political interference—and where students can engage complex social questions without state officials deciding in advance which conclusions are permissible.

If we care about intellectual integrity, democratic inquiry, and the future of higher education in Texas, we should be able to say clearly:

Misrepresenting scholarship is not a foundation for sound policy.

And governing universities through ideological caricatures will not strengthen them.

It will only diminish them.

The Man Behind Texas Tech's Controversial

Brandon Creighton believes colleges should focus on careers and salaries—not contested ideas about race, gender and sexuality.

By Jasper Smith, December 16, 2025

In a sweeping memo sent earlier this month, the Texas Tech University system sharply limited how faculty members can teach about race and sex. The policy bans faculty from teaching that a person can be inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive; a person should “bear responsibility or guilt for actions of others of the same race or sex”; or that there are more than two sexes when discussing gender identity.

The university system encouraged faculty to consult a flow chart to help determine if their course content is both “relevant” and “necessary” to classroom instruction. Many faculty members have criticized the policy and its guidelines as vague and a violation of academic freedom.

Continue reading here.

Stamped “DO NOT READ”: When a University like Texas Tech Tells Its Students What Not to Learn, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Stamped “DO NOT READ”: When a University like Texas Tech Tells Its Students What Not to Learn

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

February 11, 2026

Three weeks into the spring semester at Texas Tech University, students are opening syllabi stamped “DO NOT READ.” Assigned textbooks are withdrawn days after being listed. Required courses are canceled. Some readings are labeled “censored.” According to reporting by Jessica Priest with theTexas Tribune, this disruption follows a December 1, 2025 memo from new system chancellor Brandon Creighton restricting how race, gender, and sexuality may be discussed in classrooms. 

Faculty were instructed not to “advocate or promote” certain ideas, to recognize only two sexes, and to submit course materials for administrative review, with final authority resting in a governor-appointed board of regents. Failure to comply could result in disciplinary action.

The most consequential feature of this directive is less the fact of a single canceled class, but the vagueness of the policy. Faculty sought clarification and were told they would have to rely on their “professional judgment,” even as the threat of discipline loomed. When rules are unclear but penalties are real, institutions shift toward self-censorship. 

Administrators do not need to issue outright bans; a quiet warning—“If I were you, I wouldn’t teach this”—is enough. Within days, upper-level psychology courses were canceled, an honors class was withdrawn because topics of race and gender were woven throughout, and professors began stripping syllabi of readings they assumed regents might reject. Students nearing graduation were rerouted into less relevant coursework.

Let’s be clear about what this is. This is censorship, plain and simple. It does not matter whether it arrives through a formal prohibition or through administrative ambiguity that chills speech in advance. When readings must be routed through political appointees for approval, when faculty are warned away from certain topics, when students find whole areas of inquiry quietly disappearing, the effect is the same. Knowledge is being narrowed by executive directive rather than shaped through scholarly debate.

These developments do not exist in isolation. They follow the passage of Senate Bill 37, authored by Brandon Creighton during the 89th Texas Legislative Session before he became chancellor. That law expanded regental authority over curriculum and required academic programs to justify their workforce value. Now, as chancellor, Creighton is in a position to interpret and operationalize the very statute he authored. 

The December memo goes beyond the statutory language itself, reflecting his policy preferences and consolidating executive influence over curriculum. When the author of a law later assumes executive authority to interpret and implement it in ways that exceed its text, the line between legislation and administrative expansion blurs. That is not neutral compliance with state law; it is the extension of personal policy vision through institutional power.

Chancellor Creighton has framed these changes as ensuring “clarity, accountability and alignment” and emphasized the importance of delivering “degrees of value” tied to workforce demand. But reducing higher education to labor-market utility narrows its public mission. 

Texas Tech has housed a women and gender studies program since 1981. History, gender studies, immigration studies, and related fields are not ideological luxuries; they cultivate historical understanding, analytical reasoning, and democratic literacy. When a student asks the chancellor whether he should transfer because his field of study is implicitly devalued, that is not partisan drama. It is institutional destabilization.

Public universities were not designed to shield students from complexity. They exist to deepen inquiry, expand knowledge, and prepare graduates for democratic participation. When syllabi must flag knowledge as forbidden and professors must second-guess whether discussion is permissible, the university shifts from a space of intellectual exploration to one of administrative compliance. 

The real question facing Texas Tech is not whether it will produce degrees of value, but whether it will preserve the conditions that make higher education valuable in the first place.

Texas Tech struggles with new rules that changed what students learn about race, gender, sexuality
The system’s chancellor said he meant to instill clarity and accountability, but three weeks into the spring semester, some instructors say the standards are vague and have led to censorship.

Jessica Priest | Feb. 4, 2026, 5:00 a.m. Central | Texas tribune

When Henry Carter opened the syllabus for a spring class at Texas Tech University, he found “DO NOT READ” stamped next to page numbers in the middle of a required text. Another professor assigned a new textbook, then days later told students not to buy it. The syllabus for a third class labeled some readings as “censored.”

This is Carter’s fourth semester at Texas Tech but the first under restrictions set by the system’s new chancellor, Brandon Creighton, limiting how race, gender and sexuality can be discussed in classrooms.

Twelve days after starting as chancellor, Creighton issued a Dec. 1 memo directing faculty across the system’s five universities to refrain from advocating or promoting a belief that individuals are inherently racist or sexist by virtue of their identity, or that meritocracy or a strong work ethic are constructs of oppression. The memo also instructed faculty to recognize only two sexes, male and female, and to disclose course content related to race, gender identity or sexual orientation for review.

Creighton warned that failure to comply could result in “disciplinary action.”

When faculty sought clarification, administrators said they could offer little guidance, according to two internal emails reviewed by The Texas Tribune. One recounted unsuccessful attempts to get more information from the system. “Unfortunately, we only have the information provided in the memo,” said an email from an associate dean who suggested faculty will have to rely on their “professional judgment” in interpreting the restrictions.

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The second email said the university system had not provided information on what constitutes prohibited topics such as gender identity and sexual orientation. If a student asks about such “implicated content,” faculty were told they could provide answers one-on-one, “just not in class.”

The uncertainty had immediate consequences.

Two upper-level psychological sciences courses, Ethnic Minority Psychology and Close Relationships, with a combined enrollment of 139 students, were canceled within days of the memo’s release, according to another internal email reviewed by the Tribune.

“When they say faculty aren’t allowed to advocate for something, what we read that as is, they aren’t allowed to mention it,” said one academic adviser, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliatory discipline.

The adviser said some of the students affected by the cancellations were set to graduate in May.

“We were able to find solutions to get them enrolled in something else, but the classes they got into are not as relevant to what they’re hoping to do post-graduation,” the adviser said.

Texas Tech officials declined to discuss how many courses have been changed or canceled under the memo’s restrictions, saying the review process is still underway.

In a statement to the Tribune, Creighton said his memo was designed to ensure “clarity, accountability and alignment” across the system and that he has “full confidence in our campus leaders — presidents, provosts and deans — to carry out this directive appropriately and consistently,” with oversight from the board of regents.


Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton speaks at a Turning Point USA event in Lubbock on Oct. 7, 2025. Trace Thomas for The Texas Tribune


For the spring semester that began Jan. 14, faculty were directed to submit potentially affected course content for review by department and campus administrators. If administrators recommend that flagged material remain in the course, those recommendations are forwarded to the system’s nine regents, appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, who have final authority.

Unfortunately for instructors as well as students like Carter, the regents are not scheduled to meet until late February.
Consequences in the classroom

Carter is a history major with a minor in women’s and gender studies. He said he chose his courseload because the classes were required for his degree, leaving him frustrated over the series of late changes.

Removing a planned textbook left his feminist theory course relying on PDFs and more fiction-based works. The class also doesn’t have in-depth discussions of sexuality or transgender topics like he thought it would.

Carter said he feels parts of his education are missing.

“A lot of students sign up for these classes because this is what they want to learn and what they want to know, and now they’re unable to do that,” he said.

In the memo, Creighton defined advocacy or promotion as presenting certain beliefs as required or correct and pressuring students to affirm them, rather than analyzing or critiquing them as one viewpoint among others. But the memo did not specify how faculty or administrators should distinguish between the two concepts.

The Tribune spoke with more than a dozen faculty members over the past eight weeks who said they were uncertain where the lines were and worried about crossing them.

“I can find very few examples of any faculty member — and I’m in touch with many of them — who have, like, in writing an administrator saying, ‘You cannot teach this,’” a humanities professor said. “But I’ve encountered many examples of administrators saying, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t teach this, because that might cause a problem.’”

The professor, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, responded by removing a book about historical trans experiences from a required reading list, assuming regents would not approve the book.

In a process created after the memo’s release, faculty on Dec. 19 received a link to an online submission form — derided by some professors as a “censorship portal” — to disclose instructional materials for review. That was after fall grades were due and instructors had gone off duty. Several said they felt pressured to work over the holiday to comply.

Will Crescioni’s honors-level psychology course was canceled two days before the semester began. Crescioni, a lecturer, selected a submission form option to have the entire course reviewed because topics of race, sex and gender were woven throughout the class. Under the process outlined in Creighton’s memo, only material required for professional licensure and patient care could remain without review, and the lecturer said the course did not meet that standard.

In late December, the department chair responded by requesting specific content to review, according to emails reviewed by the Tribune. In a follow-up exchange in January, the chair asked Crescioni whether he was willing to postpone “implicated content” while awaiting approval. Crescioni replied that doing so would not be “feasible or ethical,” so the chair canceled the course without forwarding the matter to the dean, provost or board of regents.

“I think our most important job as college educators is to teach people to be comfortable with uncertainty and to confront ideas that are challenging or uncomfortable,” Crescioni said. “If we’re not allowed to do that, if we’re muzzled in that way, then we can’t actually give our students a full education.”

The course, required for psychology majors, also fulfills a core curriculum requirement and was fully enrolled with 25 students.
Listing course work as “censored”

Matthew Pehl, a history professor, also filled out the submission form. His class was allowed to proceed after he signed a statement agreeing not to teach certain content unless approved by the board of regents.

Pehl disclosed two readings for review. One, assigned in a graduate history course, examines wage labor in 19th-century Baltimore. Pehl said he uses the book to teach historical methodology rather than ideology, showing students how scholars can work with limited primary evidence. He said the reading could violate restrictions because it compares enslaved and free workers, as well as men and women.

The second reading, assigned in an upper-level undergraduate immigration history course, focuses on immigrant women working in California canneries in the early 20th century.

Rather than quietly removing the material while awaiting the board of regents, Pehl labeled the readings as “censored” in the syllabi and emailed students explaining why the books could not be taught.

“I wanted the paper showing that I’ve been censored,” he said. “And I wanted students to understand this is happening.”

Carter is a student in Pehl’s immigration history class.

Zoe Wittekiend, a sophomore history and political science major and student senator, said professors are increasingly using disclaimer-style language when discussing topics that could be seen as controversial. In a class discussion about the relationship between health insurance and health outcomes, she said, a professor paused to stress that the idea being presented was “one viewpoint” and repeatedly urged students to consider alternate viewpoints.

Wittekiend said she is working on a student government resolution to raise awareness of the restrictions and formally oppose them. She said she has collected 35 responses so far to a short survey asking whether students were aware of the review process and whether they believed it would have a positive or negative impact. Most respondents, she said, viewed the changes negatively.

She said she was especially alarmed by the memo’s description of the policy as a “first step.”

“If this is the first step,” Wittekiend said, “how much further are you going to go in step two?”
From the Capitol to campus

Texas Tech University System’s restrictions took shape amid intensifying political scrutiny over classroom instruction across Texas.

During the spring and summer, professors traveled to Austin to oppose Senate Bill 37, one of Creighton’s final pieces of legislation after nearly two decades as a Republican in the Texas Senate and House.

The law expands regents’ authority over curriculum and requires academic programs to justify their value in preparing students to join the workforce.

The instructors argued the measure would weaken academic freedom and faculty governance. Republicans countered that universities had drifted from their core mission and should prioritize workforce preparation over ideological instruction.

SB 37 passed along party lines. Earlier versions of Creighton’s bill included language barring general education courses from “advocating or promoting the idea that any race, sex, ethnicity or religion is inherently superior to another,” but the language was removed during last-minute negotiations.

Within days of the law taking effect in September, a student’s recording of her professor teaching about gender identity at Texas A&M University went viral on social media, turning an abstract debate into a public test case.

The professor was fired, the university’s president resigned, and campuses across Texas began reviewing their course offerings.

That same month, Angelo State University, part of the Texas Tech University System, was the first to impose classroom restrictions. Before any systemwide directive was issued, faculty were told not to discuss transgender or nonbinary identities in the classroom, a move administrators said was meant to prevent a controversy like the one at Texas A&M.

Days later, then-Chancellor Tedd Mitchell issued a memo telling Texas Tech System faculty to comply with presidential and gubernatorial executive orders and a state law recognizing only male and female sexes. Faculty said the guidance was confusing because the orders and the law did not directly apply to classroom instruction.

Creighton, who left the Texas Senate to replace Mitchell in mid-November, said the restrictions listed in his Dec. 1 memo were to take effect immediately, with no formal faculty input, public vote or appeals process laid out.

That approach differed from the Texas A&M University System, where leaders initially focused on making sure instruction outlined in professors’ syllabi matched course descriptions. After a public meeting with comments from faculty and community members, the board of regents approved a policy prohibiting professors from advocating for race and gender ideologies or discussing topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. The policy included a limited appeals process for non-core and graduate courses deemed to have a necessary educational purpose.

In previous statements, Creighton said public universities have an obligation to comply with state law and should focus on providing what he has described as “degrees of value,” rather than ideological or political debates.

Creighton reiterated that message in a January interview with NBC 5 / Lone Star Politics. Asked whether it was fair to say Texas Tech was “probably not the place to go” for students interested in gender studies, Creighton said undergraduate students would not find that kind of instruction in Texas Tech’s curriculum. He said Texas Tech instead focuses on providing a “degree of value,” one that allows students to fill high-demand jobs with strong pay. When asked whether he considered gender studies a degree of value, Creighton said he had not seen data supporting that conclusion.

Texas Tech has had a women’s and gender studies program since 1981. The interdisciplinary program offers an undergraduate minor and a graduate certificate.

In later interviews, Creighton has said he was referring specifically to stand-alone undergraduate majors in women’s and gender studies.
“Should I drop out?”

For some students, Creighton’s comments felt like a dismissal of the degrees they had already invested time and money to pursue.

“I’m dedicating my life to learning this material and teaching it,” said a graduate student whose literature course was converted to independent study shortly before the semester began.

An email reviewed by the Tribune shows administrators approved the change, allowing the course to proceed largely as planned outside of the formal course content review process.

But the student, who is in the English department and requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the workaround felt temporary and worried similar options would not exist when teaching undergraduate courses next semester.

As a part-time instructor, the student said the policy has raised questions about whether to limit student research topics in advance; how to handle classroom discussions involving race, gender or sexuality; and how much feedback instructors can safely provide on that work.

The student described the degree as professional training and an opportunity to perform socially and intellectually valuable work.

“I think he’s talking about business degrees, STEM degrees, money-making degrees — degrees that are of value to the university,” the student said. “Just because Chancellor Creighton doesn’t care about my degree does not make it any more or less valuable than anybody else’s.”

Carter, who is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, said he chose Texas Tech because his parents met there.

“I like to say I was indoctrinated from a very young age to attend Texas Tech,” he said.

Carter, who is cisgender and white, said he is minoring in women’s and gender studies because he believes it will be relevant to his planned career in public labor policy.

He said if granted the chance to speak directly with the chancellor, he knew what he’d ask Creighton.

“I would like to look him in the eye and be like, ‘Should I drop out and change universities? Is that your opinion?’”

Student Henry Carter walks down the steps outside the library on the Texas Tech campus

in Lubbock on Jan. 29, 2025. Jacob Lujan for The Texas Tribune


The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University System, Texas Tech University and Texas Tech University System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.