Students, educators and civil rights advocates are sounding the alarm over a Texas law they say is gutting academic freedom at the state’s public colleges and universities, even as Republican lawmakers overseeing its rollout say the system is working as intended.
Ahead of Tuesday’s first interim hearing of the Texas Senate Committee on Higher Education, a coalition including the Texas AAUP-AFT, Equality Texas, Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund held a news conference warning that Senate Bill 37 has led to widespread self-censorship on campus, canceled courses and departed faculty.
Valentina Rivas Labarca, a University of Houston student and organizing associate with SEAT, said restrictions on what can be taught are reshaping what students believe is even worth studying. “Censorship doesn’t always begin by banning ideas,” she said. “Sometimes it begins by making those ideas impossible to study.”
Other speakers echoed those concerns. Edwin Jahir Escamilla Flores, a Texas State University student and advocate with Young Invincibles, said the law was undercutting the critical thinking and collaboration skills he expected to gain in college. Lisa B. Limeri, an at-large officer of the Texas AAUP-AFT chapter at Texas Tech University, argued the law’s vague restrictions were narrowing which ideas students are exposed to in the classroom. Naveen Farrani of Equality Texas pointed to the departments most affected by course reviews and cancellations, including Women and Gender Studies, Queer Theory, Black Studies and Global Climate Change, calling the pattern “blatant censorship disguised as operational efficiency.” Antonio L. Ingram II, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, said the law’s effects fall especially hard on Black faculty and students.
The coalition’s warnings were amplified by testimony given hours later at the Capitol, where faculty members told senators they had quietly removed material from their courses rather than risk triggering a review process that could ultimately reach the chancellor who approves tenure decisions.
But the senators who heard from university administrators later Tuesday came away with a different impression. Committee Chair Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, dismissed warnings that the law was harming higher education, pointing to record enrollment statewide. University system officials testified that of more than 14,000 courses reviewed statewide, only a small fraction required changes — fewer than 1% of the total, by one system’s count. Administrators described the law’s mandated academic reviews as an overdue and healthy exercise, noting that some systems plan to cut or consolidate dozens of low-enrollment majors, minors and certificate programs as a result.
Senators also pressed university leadership on specific instances where course content had been altered or removed, with administrators generally maintaining that such changes were not directed by regents and pledging to follow up with the relevant academic departments.
The law also created a new higher education ombudsman position, tasked with investigating complaints of noncompliance. The office has fielded dozens of complaints since its creation and opened a small number of formal investigations, most tied to alleged violations of the state’s separate ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Advocates say the disconnect between the two hearings reflects a broader pattern: the committee took invited testimony only from university administrators, leaving students, faculty and outside groups to make their case in a parallel venue instead.
