The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) strongly condemns the Texas A&M University system’s newly adopted policy that requires approval from the university president for courses on race, gender, and gender identity in a stark departure from normal practices for all other courses. LDF calls for the immediate reversal of the policy, urging Texas A&M leadership to uphold its responsibility to protect the civil rights and academic freedom of its faculty and students.
The sweeping censorship policy, enacted yesterday by the Texas A&M Board of Regents, is a direct threat to the academic freedom of Texas faculty and students. It impedes important scholarship about the history and ongoing realities of race and gender inequalities in our country. The policy will also disproportionately harm Black faculty and students, as well as other communities of color, who risk having their histories and lived experiences erased from coursework and curriculum.
“The Texas A&M Board of Regents’ decision to adopt this dangerous policy is an alarming escalation of efforts to suppress honest and critical scholarship and discourse about race and gender within Texas higher education,” said Antonio L. Ingram II, Senior Counsel at LDF. “This policy runs afoul of Texans’ constitutional rights and will especially harm Black faculty and students and other communities of color. Texas A&M University System’s leadership must reverse the policy without delay, engage in meaningful consultation with its faculty and students, and ensure that academic freedom and civil rights remain protected across its campuses.”
“Texas A&M University System’s leadership has invited discriminatory political interference into the classroom by restricting instruction of topics that help students critically engage with past and ongoing inequalities across academic disciplines. This type of academic scholarship is essential to prepare students for tackling our nation’s most pressing challenges,” said Allen Liu, Policy Counsel at LDF. “We urge the University to reverse course and reaffirm its commitment to ensuring all faculty and students can thrive on campus and providing the best education for all its students.”
Texas A&M’s adoption of the policy is part of a broader, coordinated effort to chill honest and accurate discourse and scholarship about race, racism, gender, and systemic inequality in higher education. In Texas, LDF previously advocated against Senate Bill 37 (SB37), a law enacted in June that constrains academic freedom in Texas’ public colleges and universities.
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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation’s first civil rights law organization. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.
