Survey Finds Texas Tech Faculty Altered Hundreds of Courses After Teaching Restrictions
Why It Matters
A Faculty Senate survey at Texas Tech University in Texas has found that content restrictions tied to state law, executive orders, and system-level directives led faculty to change or be asked to change material in 277 courses — raising questions about academic freedom and the scope of administrative enforcement at a major public research institution.
What Happened
The Texas Tech University Faculty Senate surveyed its members about the impact of a series of institutional memos restricting instruction related to race, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Of the 367 faculty who responded, roughly half said they independently altered course content due to concerns about those directives. About a quarter said administrators or other university personnel asked them to make changes.
More than half of respondents also said they were exploring employment elsewhere as a result of the restrictions, which began taking effect during the fall semester.
Faculty Senate committee chair Alan Barenberg, who helped draft the survey, said the goal was documentation. “We really just want to capture for posterity what’s going on here,” Barenberg said, “because it may be that we can’t change or affect the outcome of things, but people ought to know what took place here.”
Barenberg described his own experience with the review process, saying that AI-generated feedback flagged readings in his graduate seminar on European historiography — including a week covering how historians have studied gender and sexuality. He said the feedback mischaracterized at least one assigned reading and initially appeared to contain instructions meant for a different course. After requesting clarification, he was told to remove specific readings and was informed the decision could not be appealed. He said he would not comply if he teaches the course again. “I’m ethically bound by my discipline to teach history to the best of my ability,” Barenberg said, “and that includes not censoring particular texts because of someone’s political preferences.”
By the Numbers
- 277 courses in which respondents said content was changed or a change was requested
- 367 faculty responded to the Faculty Senate survey
- More than half of respondents said they were seeking jobs at other institutions
- Fewer than 60 courses flagged in the system-wide administrative review covering more than 14,000 courses across five universities
- 18% of respondents said they altered their research because of the directives; 7% said administrators asked them to
- 2,157 faculty were employed at Texas Tech as of the most recent fall semester
System Leaders Push Back
Texas Tech System Chancellor Brandon Creighton’s office disputed the survey’s weight. Spokesperson Erin Wilson said the system relies on “sound methodology and representative data, not self-selected samples,” and that Creighton gives greater weight to the formal course review process. “The facts simply do not support the notion that academic freedom and accountability cannot coexist,” Wilson said.
Creighton, a former Republican state senator, has described the restrictions as necessary to comply with state and federal law and to ensure students earn degrees that prepare them for high-demand, well-paying careers. In a series of memos beginning last fall, he directed faculty to review and revise course materials, barred the promotion of certain concepts related to race and sex, and ordered universities to begin phasing out academic programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Barenberg acknowledged the survey was not scientifically designed. Faculty senators were denied access to the full faculty email list by university officials, so the survey was posted on the Faculty Senate website behind a Texas Tech credential login, allowing anonymous responses. Despite those limitations, the survey drew more replies than the university’s annual IT satisfaction survey, which received 237 faculty responses last year.
Zoom Out
The dispute at Texas Tech reflects a broader pattern playing out at public universities across multiple states, where legislatures and executive orders have pushed institutions to revisit curriculum content, particularly around diversity-focused programs and gender studies. Federal regulators have separately scrutinized Texas school districts over disability and student services policies, reflecting continued oversight pressure on Texas educational institutions at multiple levels.
What’s Next
Barenberg said he does not expect to teach his flagged graduate seminar in the upcoming fall semester. Faculty who oppose the directives have limited formal recourse, with at least some told that regent-level review decisions cannot be appealed. The Faculty Senate’s findings now stand as a public record of faculty-reported impacts, even as system administrators maintain that the formal review process tells a different — and narrower — story.