Texas faculty testify against bills to screen universities’ curriculum for “ideological” bias

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Dozens of professors testified Thursday against a proposal that would prevent college courses from endorsing “specific public policies, ideologies or legislation,” saying it threatens not only their freedom to teach, but students’ freedom to learn.

The Texas Senate’s K-16 Education Committee heard testimony Thursday on Senate Bill 37, by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, a sweeping piece of legislation that would task universities’ governing boards with screening curricula for ideological bias, among other things.

Seth Chandler, a professor of law at the University of Houston, said the bill could be interpreted as prohibiting a broad range of subjects — from the teaching of free market economics to the original interpretation of the Constitution, or even the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

Others said the legislation would instill fear to introduce and discuss material some might find controversial.

“Mostly, I'm concerned with how SB 37 infantilizes college students. These are adults who take my classes, who are bright, thoughtful and more than capable of confronting new and challenging ideas,” said Caitlin Smith, an assistant professor of Instruction in the Department of Educational Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin.

Sen. Royce West, a Democrat from Dallas, leveled with them. He said it was likely this bill would pass because Republicans have the majority, but he repeatedly asked witnesses to provide suggested language that would make the bill “more palatable.”

Creighton said he’d review their suggestions.

“It’s not our intention to promote fear,” he said. “There’s 10,000 bills in the Capitol that may cause someone anywhere from indigestion to incredible fear, but that’s because it’s the unknown, it’s change.”

SB 37 would reduce faculty’s role in curriculum and hiring decisions and transfer much of it to the governing boards that oversee Texas’ public universities. They are composed of regents appointed by the governor and make policy, budget and administrative decisions for their systems.

Sherry Sylvester, a distinguished senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and one of Creighton’s invited witnesses, said SB 37 is a critical next step to build on the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education. She said it would address an imbalance in the number of classes with gender, race and identity in their title versus those that cite the Federalist Papers or the Declaration of Independence.

Sylvester added that she was concerned about those classes being used to fulfill core curriculum requirements and that they don’t help meet the state’s workforce needs. SB 37 would require boards to create committees, made up of local industry partners and tenured faculty at the institution, to ensure courses prepare students for the workforce.

The bill “will ensure that the general education courses that students are required to take are focused on both their professional and civic skills, what they will need to prosper in the work world and in their lives after graduation,” she said.

SB 37 would also give college and university governing boards the final say on a wider range of leadership hires. Right now, governing boards are mostly tasked with hiring university system chancellors or individual universities’ presidents. SB 37 would let them vet and veto other administrators like deans and provosts.

West pointed out Texas public universities employ more than a thousand administrators to underscore how much additional work vetting the new hires would mean for regents. He said the regents already have power over curriculum and hiring because they can convey their wishes to their university systems’ chancellors and presidents.

“So what’s the current problem?” West asked.

Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, said he did not think confirming or vetoing the hiring of department chairs would be too much additional work for regents as there are only 82 at the University of Texas at Austin and they are unlikely to turn over at the same time. Creighton added that SB 37 will better orient future regents to their new responsibilities.

In addition, SB 37 would codify how faculty senates are established and who can serve in them. Faculty senates are bodies of professors that advise university leaders. They currently take the lead in developing curricula and in hiring and evaluating their fellow academics.

Creighton said he was spurred to limit faculty’s influence after some pushed against their universities’ leaders.

Creighton said Stephen F. Austin University joined the University of Texas System in part because the faculty held a vote of no confidence in University President Scott Gordon in 2021. Professors were upset Gordon had accepted an $85,000 pay raise amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The university’s board of regents backed Gordon despite the vote, but he ultimately stepped down months later.

One of Creighton’s invited witnesses, Carrie Butler, an SFA professor on sabbatical, offered a different account of the vote.

“It’s my opinion that the faculty senate did not accurately or appropriately make the decision based on credible information. It seemed to me, if I might use the term, more of a witch hunt,” Butler said.

Faculty at West Texas A&M University also took a vote of no confidence on President Walter Wendler after he banned a drag show on campus in 2023. Wendler remains president.

Creighton said there was a “lack of transparency for all to understand these actions … that have significant consequences on the future of the flagship or other systems.”

Some of the professors who testified Thursday wanted to make it clear to Creighton that the American Association of University Professors, not a faculty senate, was responsible for circulating a petition of no confidence for Jay Hartzell, who served as president of the University of Texas at Austin when police arrested dozens of students for protesting the Israel-Hamas war last spring. Creighton is a UT-Austin graduate.

“That petition was organized by a group that is entirely autonomous from the university. Not only did the faculty senate have nothing to do with it, they disavowed it and there was never a vote,” said Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at UT-Austin.

Creighton said SB 37 will still allow faculty senates to take votes of no confidence, but they’d have to be recorded and the members of the faculty senate would be limited to one-year terms.

SB 37 would also establish an office within the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to receive and investigate complaints that universities are not complying with state law. The office would employ nine people and cost more than $2 million to operate in its first year, according to the bill’s fiscal note.

The State Auditor’s Office is already checking college and universities’ compliance with the DEI ban. It released its first report on the issue last month, finding two minor violations so far.

Neal Hutchens, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education, said state legislatures and governing boards need to be careful not to use a wrecking ball to accomplish their goal for more transparency and accountability.

Hutchens said governing boards should ensure their institutions meet their state’s demand for certain professionals, such as engineers and doctors. But SB 37 opens the door for board members to prevent professors from teaching about certain topics that they might disagree with, Hutchens said.

“These are public institutions, so they should be responsive and representative to the public,” he said. “But if we become fixated on the idea that every course and every professor is trying to indoctrinate students, you really run the risk of harming institutions states have spent decades, centuries, building up.”

For decades, professors, administrators and governing boards have agreed to divvy up their responsibilities and lend their expertise to certain tasks in the best interests of their universities, said Mark Criley with the American Association of University Professors.

Criley said SB 37 conflicts with this agreement by stating that each college within the university may only have two faculty members on the faculty senate and one of the two must be appointed by the university president.

He said that under SB 37, faculty also would be excluded from disciplinary processes. At most top-tier universities, administrators who believe a faculty member’s conduct warrants discipline or dismissal make that case before a committee of faculty members. If that committee doesn’t agree, the administrator then takes it up with the board of regents.

“Excellence at an institution requires that the faculty be given a voice and often a decisive voice,” Criley said.

On Thursday, several professors who came to testify pointed out that SB 37 allows only tenured professors to serve on faculty senates and make recommendations on curriculum. They said this would disenfranchise non-tenured faculty members who also contribute to the success of their institutions and have valuable expertise to offer.

Another bill discussed Thursday, authored by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, would require regents to attend 75% of their meetings annually in person. Those who fail to do so would have to pay a $1,000 fine to the general scholarship fund of the institution. A second violation would make that regent ineligible to be reappointed.

In her bill’s statement of intent, the Brenham Republican wrote that some university system regents have missed more meetings since the COVID-19 pandemic began. She did not say which regents she was referring to.

The committee on Thursday also discussed prohibiting colleges and universities from accepting gifts, grants, donations or investments from certain foreign entities and measures to prevent those foreign entities from stealing universities’ intellectual property.

This year, Texas became the state with the most top-tier research universities.

Professors on Thursday reminded lawmakers that they’re the ones who made that happen, winning billions of dollars in competitive research grants. They cautioned that the restrictions legislators are considering might lead faculty to flee for job opportunities elsewhere.

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

Disclosure: Texas A&M University, Texas Public Policy Foundation, University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas System, University of Houston and West Texas A&M University 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.

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