(LifeSiteNews) — The Texas Tech University System (TTU) has announced it is shutting down all of its academic programs centered on “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI) and will now affirm a biology-based understanding of sex to comply with state law and federal rules.
In an April 9 memo to the presidents of all schools within the system, which boasts more than 64,000 students, TTU leadership announced it was “initiating the closure and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) teachout process for all academic programs ‘centered on’ […] Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI), including undergraduate majors, minors, certificates, and graduate degrees,” allowing all those currently enrolled to complete their degrees in such fields but removing the degrees as options for future applicants.
“To govern this comprehensive phase-out and ensure statutory compliance for all remaining academic offerings, this document establishes strict course content guidelines,” the memo continues. “To uphold institutional objectivity, this framework requires the legal recognition of only two human sexes and strictly prohibits the endorsement of a gender spectrum or fluid gender identities as empirical biological science.”
The document goes on to pledge a “strict prohibition on SOGI content in all core and lower-level undergraduate courses” and “ban on instruction that advocates for concepts of inherent racial or sexual superiority, inherent bias, or collective guilt.”
“Instructors may not teach that gender identity is a fluid spectrum, endorse the existence of more than two genders, or decouple gender from biological sex as a factual or scientific baseline,” the memo declares. Further, the “legal recognition of two human sexes does not prohibit the objective scientific instruction of anatomy, genetics, or endocrinology. Instruction on chromosomal variations, Differences of Sex Development (DSDs), and intersex biological conditions is expressly permitted. However, faculty may not use these biological conditions to advocate for or validate sociological frameworks of fluid gender identities.”
The move follows a review initiated in December, when TTU declared that its schools “must ensure that classroom instruction fully complies with state and federal law, Board of Regents policy, and Chancellor directives,” starting with a prohibition on teaching the propositions that “One race or sex is inherently superior to another”; “An individual, by virtue of race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, consciously or unconsciously”; “Any person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of race or sex”; “Moral character or worth is determined by race or sex”; “Individuals bear responsibility or guilt for actions of others of the same race or sex”; or “Meritocracy or a strong work ethic are racist, sexist, or constructs of oppression.”
Texas Tech’s reforms are the latest fruit of action taken at the state and federal levels to crack down on “woke” indoctrination in higher education.
Last September, a Texas law went into effect that gave university system governing boards greater authority over individual schools within their systems, which has been used to impose greater deference to state and federal education preferences, such as the Trump administration’s efforts to depoliticize public education by ordering the elimination of federal funds to schools that continue diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and reversing the Biden administration’s infusion of gender ideology into Title IX rules.
American colleges and universities have long been breeding grounds for radicalization of young adults into far-left ideologies, and their resistance to being stopped means it remains to be seen how many schools within the Texas Tech system will comply. The University of Michigan, for example, claimed to have shuttered its DEI office last year but still spent $15.3 million in the current school year to pay 162 employees focused on diversity-related tasks, a review found earlier this month.