The Atlantic has a long read on politically motivated curriculum interventions that affect the 700,000 students at public universities in Texas. The lede examines Texas Tech’s “onerous and clumsy” use of AI to implement its curriculum restrictions, with faculty judgment displaced in part by what the author calls a “censorship bot.”
Also discussed: low faculty morale, as expressed in an American Association of University Professors survey finding that “70 percent of [surveyed] Texas [university] faculty would not recommend taking a faculty position in the state, and about 30 percent said they had experienced censorship of courses by administrators.” (The AAUP is suing Texas Tech over the restrictions.) “Everyone sees that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but this grass is looking pretty dead,” one Texas Tech faculty member said.
A link and some excerpts, below the fold.
Adam Serwer, All the Things You’re Not Allowed to Say in Texas, The Atlantic (Oct. 11, 2026):
[P]reparing for the spring 2026 semester was the first time [a faculty member at Texas Tech University] was forced to submit her course materials through a portal to be evaluated by an artificial-intelligence program. It flags anything that might violate new rules laid out by the university chancellor . . . .
According to [a] lawsuit [filed by the AAUP], the censorship bot—officially known as the Course Content Review Process—ordered a Tech philosophy professor to remove Plato’s Republic from a syllabus because “it references Plato’s beliefs concerning gender roles and homosexuality.” . . .
The changes to Texas public-university systems are being presented as a necessary corrective to left-wing orthodoxy on campus. . . .
One might argue that progressive influence on campus had gone too far and states needed to reestablish free-speech norms eroded during the zenith of the first anti-Trump backlash. . . . But there is a distinction between left-wing censoriousness and actual state censorship.
Related TaxProf Blog coverage:
- Law School or Political Power Base? (Oct. 9, 2026)
- Texas A&M System Removes Courses on LGBTQ, Ethnic Studies and Climate Change from Core Offerings (Sept. 19, 2026)
- Scholars at Risk: Free to Think 2026 Report (Sept. 16, 2026)
- Call for Participants: Half-Day Symposium Program (Sept. 16, 2026)
- US Law Faculty Report Growing Fear of Speaking Out (June 11, 2026)
- Federal Judge Refuses to Order Law School to Retract Negative Report to Texas State Bar on Graduate’s Celebration of Charlie Kirk’s Killing (May 24, 2026)
- Faculty Under Surveillance (Feb. 6, 2026)
