Texas Senate approves bill that could reshape how history and race are taught in state universities

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Texas senators gave initial approval on Tuesday to a bill that would drastically limit how the state's public universities teach their students about history, race and inequality.

Senate Bill 37 passed 20-11 despite Democrats raising concerns it could lead to a faculty brain drain, self-censorship or lawsuits against the state.

“I’ve got constituents reaching out to me saying this is the death of higher ed,” said Sen. Molly Cook, a Democrat from Houston.

Democrats also criticized the bill’s author, Republican Sen. Brandon Creighton, for not giving them enough time to review a 13-page amendment he filed shortly before the vote was taken. Creighton ultimately agreed to give them 10 minutes to read it. The amendment added that universities would be required to either end or revise degree programs if the state determines the programs do not offer a return on investment for students.

In the days leading up to the vote, some professors told The Texas Tribune that they thought the bill’s true intent was to intimidate them from sharing perspectives some lawmakers’ disagree with.

“If this is enforced, students will learn less about the world,” said David Albert, a vice president for the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. “They will learn a more rose-colored glasses view of the way society operates.”

Albert, who teaches government for Austin Community College, said many of his students are people of color who have experienced racism so they will lose confidence in the credibility of what they are learning.

SB37 would also create a way to file complaints about universities that could threaten their funding.

“I really hope people are paying attention because there’s some pretty high-stakes gambles we’re taking,” said Neal Hutchens, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education, about the proposed legislation.

Hutchens reviewed SB 37 when it was first filed in March and after Creighton filed an extensive rewrite of the legislation earlier this month. The public was not invited to comment on the revamped legislation, which was quickly voted out of the Texas Senate’s K-16 Education Committee April 8.

Here are some of the most notable changes to the bill and what they might look like in practice.

Control over curricula

The bill has undergone at least three rewrites regarding what curricula would be allowed.

The first version of the bill would have required each system’s board of regents to create committees to review curricula every year and ensure courses did “not endorse specific public policies, ideologies or legislation.” Texas professors criticized that provision as being too vague.

“Could teaching about the existence of LGBTQ people in the American past be considered promoting an ‘ideology’ of gender and sexual non-discrimination? There is no end to the topics that could be censored because political leaders consider them to be ideological in nature,” said Lauren Gutterman, who teaches history at the University of Texas at Austin, in written testimony the American Association of University Professors submitted to the committee last month. Gutterman said she was writing in her capacity as a private citizen.

The second version of SB 37 would have required the boards to instead screen courses every five years to ensure they “do not distort significant historical events”; they do not teach that one race is superior or bears personal or collective responsibility for the actions committed by other individuals of the same race; and they are not based “on a theory that racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege is inherent in the institutions of the United States or this state or was created to maintain social, political or economic inequalities.”

Creigton’s amendment Tuesday replaced that provision with one that says courses cannot “require or attempt to require a student to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political or religious belief is inherently superior to any other.”

Hutchens said some of the language in the bill could have been inspired by Florida’s Stop the Woke Act or model legislation provided by conservative nonprofit policy groups that focus on higher education, like the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal in North Carolina.

“I certainly didn’t see this as necessarily addressing the concerns that faculty had raised regarding the original bill,” Hutchens said.

The Stop the Woke Act prohibits instruction that makes anyone feel “guilt, anguish, or other psychological distress” related to race, color, national origin or sex because of actions “committed in the past.” The Florida Legislature passed it in 2022, but it has not been enforced after a series of groups, including students and professors, filed lawsuits, alleging it infringed on their First Amendment right to free speech. PEN America, a nonprofit organization advocating for free speech, is tracking at least 16 lawsuits challenging state laws that restrict the teaching of topics like race, gender and sexual orientation.

SB 37 would also create a statewide committee that would evaluate which core curricula at public universities are “foundational” and which could be cut. The committee would be formed by three appointees from the governor, two from the lieutenant governor and two from the speaker of the House of Representatives. The bill doesn’t require that any members be students, faculty or university administrators. The commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board would serve as an ex-officio member.

This committee would share its findings with the universities’ boards of regents by Dec. 1, 2026, and the boards would have to adopt and implement rules based on those findings by 2027.

Tools to report

The original bill would have created a nine-person office to investigate claims that universities have broken state law.

The new version gives that responsibility to an ombudsman within the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. They would investigate compliance with SB 37 as well as laws that put restrictions on free speech activities on campuses and that prohibit university police departments from limiting the enforcement of immigration laws, among others. Notably, it adds that any person can file a report as long as they provide sufficient information to follow up on the claim.

Hutchens worried this could lead to a “tsunami of meritless complaints” or the targeting of individual faculty members.

“It could undercut academic freedom and it could be another reason that you see Texas colleges, universities, the public ones, become not as desirable for people, for that really, really top talent to pursue positions,” he said.

If the ombudsman determines a university is not complying with the law and it does not resolve the issue within 30 days, they could refer it to the Attorney General’s Office, which could sue the university to compel it to comply with the law or recommend to the Legislature that the institution’s state funds be withheld.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board does not currently have an ombudsman position. Right now, the agency is responsible for reviewing complaints from students related to tuition and fees.

Faculty, hiring limitations

Creighton and other Republicans have previously criticized what they see as faculty’s excessive influence in university decisions that they say should rest with the board of regents.

“For too long, unelected faculty senates have operated behind closed doors, steering curriculum decisions, influencing institutional policy, issuing political statements to divest from Israel, and even organizing votes of ‘no confidence’ that undermine public trust,” he said in a statement after the vote on Tuesday.

Regents are also unelected. They are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate.

SB 37 initially proposed only allowing tenured professors to join the faculty bodies that advise university administrators on some curricular and academic issues — known as faculty councils and senates. Creighton struck out that requirement, but added that members who use their position for “personal political advocacy” could be immediately removed.

This comes after Angie Hill Price, the speaker of the faculty senate at Texas A&M University, testified in opposition to SB 37 last month.

“I am very concerned how this bill will impact us because we’re not broken,” she said during her testimony last month.

She added that there is a lot of evidence to show that the faculty senate at the flagship university has contributed to its successes, including being one of the first institutions to top more than $1 billion in research expenditures.

“All this has happened with the faculty senate directly involved with enhancing the curriculum and working with our students to improve their experience both inside and outside the classroom,” Hill Price said.

SB 37 also initially proposed the board of regents should be responsible for hiring anyone in a leadership position. The new version of the bill would allow presidents to hire these individuals, but they must not delegate the responsibility to anyone else and the board can overrule their decisions.

Typically, leadership positions like deans are hired by their universities’ presidents after a search committee composed of faculty, staff and students vets the candidates.

Emphasis on job readiness

SB 37 also borrows ideas from other pending legislation that aims to phase out degree programs that don’t clearly provide a return on investment for students, who sometimes take on large amounts of debt to complete them.

The bill’s latest version would give the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board the power to review and rate programs every five years, require universities to publish prominently on their websites what ratings their degree programs received and require universities to eliminate or revise degree programs that receive an unfavorable rating.

An earlier version of the bill would have only required universities to stop using state money in programs that receive unfavorable ratings or enroll students in degree programs that received an unfavorable rating.

Cook asked if Creighton would agree that striking degree programs felt like censorship. Creighton said “no."

“I think universities make decisions on courses to include and exclude all the time,” he said, adding in a written statement later his goal is to eliminate outdated and low enrollment academic minors and low-value certificate programs.

His amendment ultimately passed.

Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, said he, too, was concerned about student debt, so he proposed an amendment that would have provided students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class free tuition to colleges and universities that comply with this bill. He estimated this would cost the state $1 billion every two years.

“The bill is a stick. Let’s have a carrot,” Gutierrez said.

But his amendment failed.

The value of a degree has been under renewed scrutiny in recent years as loan debts increase and enrollment decreases at universities across the nation.

Although Texas is not experiencing the latter, lawmakers are right to criticize colleges for not doing more to connect students to careers after graduation, said Josh Wyner, vice president of the Aspen Institute.

But Wyner said Texas should be cautious when making decisions about what programs to target. Students who are pursuing philosophy undergraduate degrees don’t typically become philosophers — they become lawyers and social workers after getting advanced degrees, he said.

“We have to be careful that we don’t legislate out credentials that actually will have labor market value or value to society,” he said.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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