New committees would be tasked with ensuring courses don’t ‘promote the idea that any race, sex, or ethnicity or any religious belief is inherently superior to any other’
A Texas bill that seeks to rein in political and ideological curriculum at public universities is nearing final passage after the state House approved the measure on Sunday.
Senate Bill 37 would implement a number of structural changes in the state’s public higher education institutions.
Among other things, it would create new committees to review courses in the curriculum to ensure they do not “advocate or promote the idea that any race, sex, or ethnicity or any religious belief is inherently superior to any other.”
“Our goal in advocating SB37 is not to take universities that have a liberal to progressive activist perspective to change them to a conservative activist perspective. Our goal is to return our universities to places of inquiry so that every idea can be explored and every question can be asked,” Sherry Sylvester with the Texas Public Policy Foundation told The College Fix on Wednesday.
The proposal has strong support from Republican lawmakers who say public universities have embraced an ideological agenda at odds with intellectual diversity.
SB 37 passed the state House on Sunday by a vote of 85-56 after previously passing the Senate on April 16. The two chambers now are debating final changes to the bill.
The bill clarifies that the task of hiring administrators and giving final approval to the curriculum is the Board of Regents’. Regents are appointed by the governor.
The bill also would require that general education courses provide students with civic knowledge and prepare them for the workforce. It also calls for periodic reviews of degree programs for low enrollment and workforce demand to determine whether they should be eliminated.
Additionally, the bill would create a state ombudsman’s office under the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to monitor compliance. And it would restructure faculty governance, giving university presidents the power to appoint half of the members to faculty senates.
Proponents say the legislation would diminish a dominant left-leaning culture in higher education and increase institutional accountability.
Although Texas already has anti-DEI laws on the books, Sylvester said progressive viewpoints still dominate many campuses.
She pointed to research by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that found many students are afraid to share their opinions if they do not align with the “monolithic” progressive culture.
As more evidence, Sylvester told The Fix a recent evaluation of University of Texas courses found approximately 400 had the word “gender” in the description, and about 200 included the word “race.” Meanwhile, she said fewer than 10 mentioned the Federalist Papers or the Declaration of Independence.
Sen. Brandon Creighton, the author of the bill, believes the reforms will “improve transparency, oversight, and alignment between public universities and the interests of students, taxpayers, and state workforce needs,” according to a House analysis of the bill.
The Fix reached out to Creighton’s office twice via email over the past week to ask for his response to opponents’ concerns about academic freedom and government overreach. His office did not respond.
Critics have expressed concern that the bill could significantly weaken academic freedom.
Joe Cohn, policy director at Heterodox Academy, recently wrote that the bill would “undermin[e] institutional independence” and faculty governance. Heterodox Academy is a centrist academic organization that advocates for viewpoint diversity in higher education.
Writing at Free the Inquiry, Cohn described SB 37 as “serious governmental overreach,” saying it would insert excessive political control over curricula and hiring decisions.
While Heterodox Academy acknowledged the goal of improving viewpoint diversity, Cohn said that many parts of the bill actually “threaten open inquiry.”
The Fix contacted Cohn twice via email over past week to request additional comment on the potential implications of SB 37, but he did not respond.
Other opponents of the legislation include the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas American Federation of Teachers. Neither responded to The Fix’s request for comment this week on the legislation.
On X, the ACLU of Texas wrote the bill would allow “politically appointed bureaucrats to police curricula and override faculty expertise,” which it described as a “direct threat to academic freedom.”
However, Sylvester told The Fix the bill takes Texas “back to the original governing model for the universities” where business leaders and job creators – “people working in the world who know what kinds of education, what skills the workforce needs” – are the ones overseeing higher education.
She also pointed out that Texas spends billions of dollars funding the state’s 37 public four-year universities, and officials who are elected by the public to represent them should have a say in how that money is being spent.
Editor’s note: Assistant editor Micaiah Bilger contributed to this report.
MORE: More Texas colleges appear to dodge new law banning DEI offices
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A banner displays the name of the University of Texas at Dallas; University of Texas at Dallas/Facebook
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