LUBBOCK — Texas Tech University faculty reported altering content in 277 courses in response to administrative restrictions on instruction related to race, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, according to a Faculty Senate survey conducted in May 2026. The survey, which drew 367 anonymous responses, found that about half of respondents changed course materials on their own due to concerns about directives from Texas Tech system leaders.
Roughly a quarter of survey respondents said university administrators or staff asked them to modify course content. More than half of the respondents indicated they are considering employment at other universities because of the restrictions. Although the policies do not apply to existing faculty research, 18% of respondents said they changed their research anyway, and 7% reported being asked by administrators to do so.
The Faculty Senate survey was not scientific; university officials denied a request to distribute it via email to all faculty. Instead, it was posted behind a password-protected login on the Faculty Senate website. Texas Tech had 2,157 faculty members as of fall 2025, and the 367 responses exceeded the 237 faculty replies received in the prior year’s annual IT satisfaction survey.
In open-ended comments, 85% expressed negative views, citing damage to academic freedom, reputational harm, and adverse effects on student and faculty recruitment and retention. Seven percent of comments supported Chancellor Brandon Creighton’s memos implementing the restrictions and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Administrators reported far fewer changes resulting from a separate systemwide course review. A spokesperson for Creighton stated the chancellor “places greater weight on the findings of the course content review process, which recommended changes to fewer than 60 of more than 14,000 courses across the system’s five universities.” The spokesperson added that the Texas Tech system relies on “sound methodology and representative data, not self-selected samples.”
Creighton, who became chancellor in November 2025, issued an April 2026 memo ordering universities in the system to phase out academic programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity, ban such content from core and lower-level undergraduate courses, and restrict it in upper-level and graduate courses. He said the restrictions comply with state and federal law and ensure students receive “degrees of value” that prepare them for high-demand, well-paying jobs.
Alan Barenberg, chair of the Faculty Senate committee, said an AI tool flagged readings in his graduate seminar on European historiography, including a week on gender and sexuality studies. “We really just want to capture for posterity what’s going on here, because it may be that we can’t change or affect the outcome of things, but people ought to know what took place here,” Barenberg said.