American Association of University Professors and Texas AAUP-AFT fight back against academic censorship

The American Association of University Professors and Texas AAUP-AFT are fighting back against academic censorship at the Texas Tech University System.

The two unions filed a federal lawsuit on July 8, claiming that a policy issued by the university system is restricting the type of material professors can teach in class. It is a move that stifles debate, undermines students' education and sidelines the expertise of faculty members, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit focuses on two memos sent by Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton to university presidents across the system in the past eight months. The unions argue that the memos created a mandatory review process, one that forces professors to disclose whether their course material mentions "prohibited subject material" about race, gender, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity. If a professor's course gets flagged, they are forced to stop teaching the material until the system's board of regents rules on it.

By May, Texas Tech administrators had reviewed about 8,500 courses at Texas Tech University alone; about 500 courses went to the board of regents' Academic, Clinical and Student Affairs Committee for review. Out of those courses, dozens were changed or had material removed, sometimes after department chairs, deans and provosts had already recommended that the material remain the same.

As a result of the memos, books such as Plato's Republic were banned in a philosophy course; first-year law students were prevented from receiving information about race related to Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled that enslaved African Americans were not citizens and couldn't sue in federal courts; and students at Texas Tech's health science center campuses were barred from getting medical information about treating underrepresented racial groups and LGBTQIA+ people. Some professors say that an artificial intelligence tool was used to scan syllabuses and reading lists for flagged content prior to human reviews.

Texas AAUP-AFT and the AAUP filed a motion for a preliminary injunction on July 18, asking the court to immediately stop the Texas Tech University System from enforcing this policy.

The complaint also points to Creighton's time as a state senator, when he wrote Senate Bill 37. The bill, which became law in 2025, gave political appointees oversight over Texas' state universities. An earlier version of the legislation would have required that universities stop teaching about identity politics and systematic oppression. But those provisions were stripped out of the bill before its passage. The unions argue that Creighton as chancellor is trying to pass those previously removed provisions onto the university system.

Teresa Klein, president of Texas AAUP-AFT, said that higher education institutions in Texas have gone above and beyond what the state and the federal law requires in these "restrictive curriculum crackdowns."

"In doing so, they satisfy politicians while failing their students and violating the rights of faculty," she said. "This lawsuit is our commitment to Texas AAUP-AFT members that we will do everything in our power to defend them from these dangerous policies."

The AAUP and Texas AAUP-AFT claim that the restrictions in the memos amount to viewpoint discrimination and violate professors' First Amendment rights: Professors aren't allowed to teach about certain ideas pertaining to race and gender but are allowed to teach about other ideas on those topics that align with the memo's preferences.

The unions also say that the policies in the memos are so vague it makes it difficult for faculty to know what is permissible to teach and what is not, violating their 14th Amendment rights. The lawsuit also argues that the memo was created, in part, to target Black faculty members, harming their students and suppressing Black people's history and the fight for racial equality.

"This isn't academic oversight; it's a chilling, top-down attack on the freedom to teach designed to intimidate faculty into silence," AAUP President Todd Wolfson said.

"By imposing vague, arbitrary and AI-driven censorship, the administration is replacing academic judgment with bureaucratic surveillance, undermining constitutionally protected speech and reducing higher education to a compliance exercise. That's not education-it's ideological control," he added.

The lawsuit also says that Texas Tech's academic censorship reaches beyond just one classroom and doesn't follow a consistent pattern. Similar material approved in one department has been rejected in another without proper explanation as to what distinguished the two outcomes.

Faculty have been asked to cut out specific words and phrases from their syllabuses without knowing if the underlying ideas are still allowed. Even university administrators who are charged with enforcing the policy sometimes can't explain what it requires. This uncertainty has led professors to cut more material than necessary just to be safe.

"When we step into the classroom, professors make a commitment to our students. Students and their families trust us to deliver a truthful and complete education that prepares them for whatever path they take after graduation. If allowed to stand, the Creighton Memoranda marks the end of free, thoughtful college curriculum developed by experts in the field," said T J Geiger, vice president of the Texas AAUP-AFT chapter at Texas Tech University. "The world around us exists as it is, whether Chancellor Creighton likes it or not. Bending to politicians' preferred viewpoints over what the experts know to be true and right sets a dangerous precedent for higher education nationwide."

To learn more about this case and related attacks on higher education in Florida, see this story on the Texas AFT website.

[Alvin Buyinza, photo credit Ahna Merryman-Stewart, CCR Studios]