How This Red State University System Is Purging Radical Disciplines

Are “the Studies” worth studying? The answer from Texas universities seems to be “no.”

Recently, the University of Texas at Austin eliminated degree majors in several ethnic and gender studies disciplines. This change followed an earlier decision to consolidate these same departments.

UT Austin is not alone. UT San Antonio has consolidated its Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies department. Texas A&M has closed its Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program. Both Texas A&M and Texas Tech University have announced system-level restrictions on “race or gender ideology.”

Last week, UT Austin struck again, this time removing Women and Gender Studies courses from the campus’ core curriculum.

Are these changes justified? What makes these academic disciplines worthy of exclusion from public universities?

African American Studies, Latin(o/a/x) Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and so on — collectively, “the Studies” — are deeply ideological, activist-oriented disciplines. They are often held in low regard, even by ideologically sympathetic peers, due to the tension their activist commitments create with traditional norms of scholarship.

Consider how several Studies disciplines describe themselves.

The National Women’s Studies Association proclaims its commitment to “feminist education and change,” including “a world free from sexism and racism” as well as “national chauvinism, class and ethnic bias, anti-Semitism, as directed against both Arabs and Jews; ageism; [and] heterosexual bias.”

The mission statement of the Association for Asian American Studies nods towards scholarly work (conferences, publications, etc.) but notes as “equally important” “advocating and representing the interests and welfare of Asian American Studies and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”

You won’t find comparable statements from the American Political Science Association or the American Psychological Association. This is not because these disciplines are balanced — far from it. Rather, it is because, for all their faults, they remain largely oriented towards the pursuit of knowledge. To be sure, the near-total absence of conservative perspectives compromises this pursuit, and longstanding disciplines like anthropology now seem hopelessly politicized, but most academic disciplines still aim at truth (as best as they can).

The Studies aim at power. Several Studies departments were themselves born of raw power, forced on administrators by student mobs. The Studies’ activism and extremism are both rooted in neo-Marxist perspectives on power and domination.

Of course, power and truth are distinct goals, and rigor matters less to the activists. As I detail in my 2025 report, grading rigor was comically lax in UT Austin’s Studies departments. For example, 90% of students in Critical Disability Studies and Asian American Studies courses between 2020 and 2024 received “A” grades.

Texas is not alone in reining in these rogue disciplines. In fact, Florida got there first: its 2023 governance law enabled the state to eliminate New College’s Gender Studies program in 2024. Elsewhere, schools in Maryland and Georgia have dissolved similar departments, albeit citing declining enrollment rather than political pressure.

What distinguishes Texas is that it applied this insight systemically. Texas’ SB-37, passed in 2025, reduced faculty senates to advisory roles and shifted authority over curriculum and hiring to governor-appointed boards of regents. This transformation empowered UT regents, one year later, to revise and restructure their academic programs. Similar actions were taken by Texas Tech University System’s chancellor (who previously authored SB-37), and by Texas A&M’s Board of Regents.

Public university course offerings should support the public interest, as determined by citizens through their elected officials — not activist employees with personal agendas (including those with tenure). State university governance reforms, like those in Texas, allow institutions to prioritize these public interests while preserving academic and institutional integrity.

These same reforms are available for other states to emulate or expand upon. The Manhattan Institute has a model bill that goes further than SB-37 in some ways. My own proposal goes further still by addressing bias in classroom instruction.

The question is, which states will lead the next phase of higher education reform?

***

Christopher Schorr, Ph.D., directs the Higher Education Reform Initiative at the America First Policy Institute. 

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