Last November, the Texas Tech University system got a new chancellor, Brandon Creighton, who promised dramatic changes pertaining to academic freedom and woke, Marxist course content. 

In keeping with these plans, Chancellor Creighton issued two memorandums, one in December and one this past April. The first specifically states that the Texas Tech system will not permit course content that promotes the idea that one race or sex is inherently superior to another. Included in this ban is content that presents individuals as racist, sexist, or oppressive simply by virtue of their race or sex.  

The second memorandum states that the Texas Tech system will prohibit coursework related to gender identity, including teaching untruths like ‘gender identity is a fluid spectrum’ or ‘there are more than two genders,’ or ‘gender can be different from biological sex.’

Now, a national professors’ union has sued the chancellor and Board of Regents over these memoranda, saying they violate professors’ first and 14th Amendment rights. 

Mr. Creighton laid the groundwork for these changes when he served in the Texas senate. He authored a bill, enacted in January 2024, that takes aim at D.E.I. mandates at Texas public universities. 

Mr. Creighton also authored SB 37 which went into effect last September. A Daily Signal article says the law “requires governing boards to review general curricula, restore classical liberal principles, and spend taxpayer dollars responsibly.”

The professors’ union lawsuit claims Chancellor Creighton’s memos “violate not only the U.S. Constitution, but the fundamental idea of what it means to be a public university in America.” 

Tom Lindsey, policy director of higher education at a division of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told The Daily Signal, this lawsuit is “sham.” He said, “Both of Creighton’s memos and SB 37 explicitly preserve factual teaching of history, civil rights, biology,” and other core subjects.

This lawsuit is the union’s temper tantrum that Texas taxpayers will no longer be funding their Marxist ideology.