The University of Texas System’s Board of Regents voted unanimously Thursday to approve a new rule for campuses in the system, pushing universities to structure courses and faculty planning in ways that the board said should help students graduate without being required to study “unnecessarily controversial subjects.” Under the rule, faculty must list in syllabi the topics they plan to cover and follow those plans, and when courses include controversial issues, instructors must take what the policy calls a “broad and balanced approach” to discussion.
The policy still leaves key terms undefined. It does not set what qualifies as “controversial,” nor does it specify what the rule means by a “broad and balanced approach,” a gap critics said could lead administrators to interpret the standards case by case. Opponents warned that such uncertainty could pressure professors to avoid difficult material to minimize the risk of complaints or intervention.
Peter Onyisi, a physics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, argued during roughly 40 minutes of public testimony from 10 speakers that the board had not shown the system would be equipped to judge those judgments. Onyisi told the board: “Will they (administrators) be experts in the relevant disciplines or will they just seek to avoid unpleasant publicity?” Speaking to the board’s lack of specificity, Board Chair Kevin Eltife said the vagueness was intentional.
Eltife said the system was dealing with “difficult times,” adding: “Vagueness can be our friend.” Other speakers, however, said restricting what they described as “controversial” material would leave students less prepared for work in environments that demand navigating complex and unsettled political and social problems.
David Gray Widder, a professor in UT-Austin’s School of Information, said students would lose opportunities to engage with the kinds of issues they are likely to encounter after graduation. “The job market is really tough right now, ask any undergrad,” Widder said, adding, “We can’t do this to our students.”
A civil rights attorney, Allen Liu of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, warned that the policy could invite legal challenges and said it had the potential to operate in a way that singles out certain perspectives. Liu said the rule could lead to “viewpoint discrimination” and could disproportionately affect Black students and faculty by discouraging teaching about subjects including slavery, segregation and other parts of Black history.
The UT System has had a prior rule in place for at least a decade, according to testimony summarized in the report, stating faculty are entitled to freedom in the classroom but “are expected not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter that has no relation to his or her subject.” The new vote Thursday updated the framework, including requiring syllabi disclosure and addressing how instructors should handle controversial course issues.
The timing also intersects with a broader restructuring at UT-Austin. The report said the board’s vote came a week after UT-Austin announced it would consolidate multiple departments into a new Social and Cultural Analysis department, affecting programs including African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. At the time of the reorganization announcement, university President Jim Davis said the changes followed a review that found “some significant inconsistencies and fragmentation” across departments in the College of Liberal Arts, and the report said more than 800 students were pursuing majors, minors and graduate degrees in the affected areas.
The policy also arrives against a backdrop of mounting scrutiny of public universities, including state oversight of classroom instruction and other personnel decisions under a new Texas law. The report said the approach is shaped by Senate Bill 37, under which governor-appointed regents have more oversight, and it cited conservative backlash last fall involving a gender identity lesson at Texas A&M University as part of a wider push in higher education systems across the state.
Although the rule does not explicitly list bans on topics, the report said some students argued UT-Austin is moving in practice toward restricting certain kinds of teaching. Alfonso Ayala III, a doctoral student in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at UT-Austin, pointed to the university expanding the conservative-backed School of Civic Leadership as his department loses autonomy, saying: “It’s hard to understand this as anything other than ideological and political.”