Is Plato’s Republic too gay?
This is one of many brave questions posed by the Texas Tech University System’s chancellor and Board of Regents as they implement an “extraordinary system of censorship in higher education,” according to a new lawsuit filed Wednesday in Texas federal court by faculty unions. The American Association of University Professors and the Texas AAUP-AFT said that Texas Tech is violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments by way of sweeping new restrictions on academic freedom.
The Texas Tech University System collectively serves about 64,000 students, and is one of only nine in the country offering programs that span undergraduate, medical, law, nursing, pharmacy, dental, and veterinary education. That’s a lot of curricula to rid of "content that promotes activism on issues related to race or sex," "endorsement of a gender spectrum," and suggestions that "meritocracy or a strong work ethic are inherently racist"! Thankfully, university system Chancellor Brandon Creighton said Texas Tech built an AI tool to scan syllabi, reading materials, and lesson plans for censor-worthy material.
This regime of censorship builds on Creighton’s work as a state senator, where he was known for frustrating efforts to remove Confederate monuments and pushing a series of bills restricting public schools from teaching what he referred to as "woke garbage." Senate Bill 17, filed by Creighton, successfully banned DEI programs in public universities. Senate Bill 37, which Creighton authored, gave governor-appointed regents more authority over curriculums. The newly-empowered Texas Tech Board of Regents thanked the senator for his leadership by appointing him chancellor last September.
He resigned from the state Senate, assumed his new role, and almost immediately mandated a “Course Content Review Process” for every single class in the Texas Tech system. Creighton said this censorship process is meant to comply with "applicable law, including S.B. 37," the bill he authored as a state senator.
What exactly constitutes woke garbage, you might ask? Plato’s Republic was banned from an intro philosophy class, yes. Faculty teaching a first-year constitutional law course were restricted from presenting "factual information about race related to Dred Scott v. Sanford," according to the lawsuit. One professor of a core curriculum class about the Holocaust was prevented from teaching that the Nazis also rounded up thousands of queer people.
Faculty at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Centers were told to remove material about caring for trans patients, and to refrain from treating a trans patient—for any medical issue—if a medical student was present. They were also told to censor information about health disparities, like the fact that Black women in Texas have a 2.5 times higher pregnancy-related mortality rate than white women. One instructor, per the lawsuit, was told by administrators not to use the word "disparity" at all when teaching about patient care.
Implementation is all over the place, according to the complaint, in part because the AI summaries of reading materials it relies on sometimes refer to concepts that don’t actually exist. One French class was hit particularly hard, with Hélène Laurain’s Partout le feu landing amongst many of its censored reading assignments because the book "utilizes a sex based ecofeminist framework." Word? OK!
The censorship is so irregular that professors said they have little idea what is and is not prohibited, which effectively widens the scope of censorship to anything someone might have a nightmare about being fired for saying. For his part, Creighton said the “Course Content Review Process” is less about limiting academic freedom on campus and more about his desire to "chart a course for what the brand reflects."
Texas Tech’s brand of censorship precedes his tenure. In March of 2024, the university tried to suspend assistant professor Jairo Fúnez-Flores because of social media posts critical of Israel, which the university labeled "antithetical" to its values. Students and professors associations demanded his reinstatement, and they were successful within a month. They won then, and they may very well win again, and get Plato’s gay ass back up on the syllabus.
