"Texas Tech chancellor limits academic mentions of transgender and nonbinary identities at five universities" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tech University System Chancellor Tedd Mitchell restricted the discussion of transgender and nonbinary identities during classroom instruction across the system’s five universities, according to a letter he issued late Thursday.
The letter makes Tech the state’s first university system to issue such limits.
Mitchell didn’t explicitly detail what can and cannot be acknowledged in academic discussions or curriculum. He instructed university presidents to ensure faculty follow President Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing only male and female genders as assigned at birth, Gov. Greg Abbott’s letter directing state agencies to “reject woke gender ideologies” and House Bill 229, a state law that requires a strict binary definition of gender for the collection of vital statistics.
“While recognizing the First Amendment rights of employees in their personal capacity, faculty must comply with these laws in the instruction of students, within the course and scope of their employment,” Mitchell wrote in a memo that landed in faculty’s email inboxes on Friday.
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Read Texas Tech University Chancellor Tedd Mitchell's letter(196.9 KB)
Mitchell’s guidance comes after Angelo State University, one of the system’s campuses, instructed faculty not to discuss transgender identities in the classroom, making the school the first known public Texas university to largely restrict classroom acknowledgement of such gender identities.
The new Tech rules also come in the heels of a recent controversy at Texas A&M, where professor Melissa McCoul was fired amid conservative backlash — including from top Texas Republicans — over a viral video depicting a student’s objection to a gender identity discussion in a children’s literature class. A&M’s president resigned over a week later after he was criticized for his initial handling of the incident.
Groups like ACLU Texas and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression say none of the measures Mitchell cited in his letter — the federal executive order, Abbott’s letter and HB 229 — prohibit teaching about transgender identity and have warned that ASU’s restrictions undermine academic freedom and erase trans campus members.
Texas Tech students were rattled by the new system-wide policy.
“It’s like cruelty is the point,” said a graduate student at Texas Tech who advocates for the transgender community. “It’s such an injustice to the students who came here to learn.”
The student, who is queer and asked for anonymity for fear of termination at her university job, said the policy undercut Texas Tech’s efforts to recruit diverse faculty and students and tarnishes its reputation as a welcoming, top-tier institution.
“If I had known a policy like this was a possibility, I wouldn’t have chosen Texas Tech,” she said.
The student also worried the change will worsen LGBTQ+ students’ mental health amid an ongoing cultural shift in Lubbock, where the Texas Tech system’s flagship is based. Last year, the city voted to strip funding from a popular monthly art trail after one city council member suggested the trail promoted family-friendly drag shows.
A 2024 Trevor Project survey found 90% of LGBTQ+ people between the ages of 13 and 24 said their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics.
Mitchell’s letter asked presidents to review course materials, syllabi and curricula and make “timely adjustments where needed.” He called the issue “a developing area of law,” noting that accrediting bodies, such as the American Psychological Association, are beginning to work with universities on how to balance educational commitments with legal requirements.
Mitchell said faculty with questions should direct them to their deans or provosts. He is expected to step down later this month after regents confirm the appointment of his successor, state Sen. Brandon Creighton.
Even before Mitchell’s memo was released, faculty at Texas Tech were bracing for new restrictions. One department chair who attended a meeting with their dean and other department heads on Thursday evening said they went in expecting guidance from the system on classroom speech about transgender issues. The chair asked not to be named because faculty were instructed not to talk to the media and could lose their jobs.
Instead, administrators reminded faculty of longstanding university policy and more recent state law that syllabi be updated and posted publicly online by the 10th class day, and include specific elements, such as learning outcomes, assessment methods, grading criteria and required policy statements.
The focus on syllabi appeared to be in response to the A&M controversy. In the university’s termination notice for McCoul, A&M alleged she was fired after she was "instructed on multiple occasions to change the course content to align with the course description ... and chose not to follow the directive."
Texas Tech Provost Ron Hendrick emphasized the need for up-to-date syllabi in an email sent to faculty early Friday.
“Planned course content must be reflected in the syllabus through, at minimum, the course outline and the expected learning outcomes from the course,” he wrote. “The syllabus functions as a commitment between the university, the academic unit, the faculty and the student…Failure to follow these requirements places the university out of compliance with state law and may result in corrective measures at the unit or college level.”
Disclosure: ACLU Texas and Texas Tech University System 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.
