Remember the chatter that Texas might go blue? Have a look at what’s happening in the Lone Star State.

Inside Higher Ed reported Tuesday that Texas A&M “is eliminating dozens of programs, including an LGBTQ+ studies minor, that a conservative lawmaker has criticized.” On social media, Texas State Representative Brian Harrison (R, District 10) “demanded answers from @tamu on why they think my constituents should be forced to subsidize" an LGBTQ studies minor. In response to his outrage, A&M’s leaders started axing programs, with Harrison declaring victory.

“I want to end all taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda in every single one of our public institutions of higher learning,” Harrison told Inside Higher Ed. “And if it takes extreme budget cuts to get their attention, so be it.”

On Thursday, PEN America — one of the leading voices against censorship — decried what is happening in the University of North Texas (UNT) system, where Chief Compliance Office Clay Simmons has warned faculty that state law trumps academic freedom, and that they’d better get in line in terms of their teaching and research.

Said Simmons, “I don’t think that this really impinges on academic freedom, because it’s a state law now. State law is kind of at the very top of the hierarchy when you’re determining what’s allowable within an institution and what’s not.”

At issue is Texas SB 17, a 2023 law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and initiatives. According to PEN America, UNT’s administration’s “efforts to scrutinize course instruction and research for references to DEI is an example of extreme overcompliance with the law’s mandate.”

In its statement on the matter, PEN America notes, “SB 17 explicitly exempts from the ban ‘academic course instruction’ and ‘scholarly research or a creative work’ by students, faculty, or other research personnel. Nevertheless, UNT’s compliance office has taken drastic measures that go far beyond the requirements of the law, prohibiting any mention of diversity themes in a broad swath of courses and some faculty research.”

Speaking for PEN America’s Freedom to Learn, Jeremy Young described UNT as having “gone totally rogue,” adding, “The situation at UNT is one of the most extreme cases of overcompliance with a censorship law we have ever seen….This ludicrous interpretation effectively nullifies academic freedom as a protection against government censorship, setting a perilous precedent for higher education institutions.”

HxA shares Pen America’s concerns and will have more on that next week, so stay tuned. [Update: See this.]

Meanwhile, it’s looking like our once-and-future President Donald Trump won’t be satisfied leaving matters of “wrongthink” to the states. Trump’s 2024 campaign platform Agenda47 included “Protecting Students from the Radical Left and Marxist Maniacs Infecting Educational Institutions.” He has “pledged to fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” (Capitalization choices in original.)

As an explicit prong of his work of “protecting free speech,” Trump plans to tell colleges and universities what can and can’t be taught. The idea is to deploy “our secret weapon…the college accreditation system.” He has said he plans to fire accreditors and replace them with people who think the right way.

Insider Higher Ed explains the system is a little more complicated than Trump’s campaign imagines. But in an op-ed for the American Enterprise Institute published this week, Preston Cooper sees a path forward to using accreditation systems to get where Republicans want to go with their reform of higher ed.

Cooper also sees value in Trump’s vision of an “American Academy” that would grant degrees by recognizing when a student has put together enough credits to add up to a bachelor’s. (“Stackable credentials” appears to be an idea popular across the political spectrum.) Cooper also likes the Trump campaign’s idea of taxing university endowments. (If you’re interested in that last issue, check out this analysis from the Brookings Institute.)

Meanwhile, back at the state level, Indiana’s Lieutenant Governor-elect Micah Beckwith (R) has objected to the content of the Indiana Daily Student (IDS), the student-run newspaper at Indiana University, saying that the IDS’s “elitist leftist propaganda” “needs to stop or we will be happy to stop it for them.”

Beckwith told Indiana Public Media last month that Indiana University “should be a place where all ideas can be shared and people can welcome the idea, the staff and the professors, the administration, they should welcome this beautiful mosaic of ideas and then let truth play out. And it's not happening….I hope IU will take some onus on its own, to say, yeah, maybe we have a problem. Let’s do some self-reflection here. Maybe there is an issue. So that way the state doesn't have to step in and fix it, but if they don't, then the state will.”

In Vermont, VT Digger reported this week, student journalists at Norwich University, a private military college, are fighting with administrators to allow them to produce their college newspaper without censorship. According to VT Digger, “students and faculty members said that some of the paper’s recent reporting — particularly stories about sexual assault on campus this spring — appeared to rankle the university’s administration.” This case may play out quite differently than the IDS’s because, unlike Indiana, Vermont has a state law protecting the rights of student journalists.

Given all that’s happening, any wonder that a new survey administered by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research finds that 91% faculty polled say academic freedom is under threat across higher ed?

Digging into the data, which was collected just before the election, HxA’s Director of Communications Nicole Barbaro Simovski concludes that “the dominant trend of conservative faculty being more likely to self-censor than liberal faculty may be changing, especially with new waves of legislation driven largely by conservatives.”

And while political tussles over research and teaching have tended to focus on humanities-centric disciplines, we’re seeing more and more concerns over censorship in the sciences — an issue that’s been near and dear to my heart for some time. In January, HxA will be sponsoring a conference dedicated to the issue of “Censorship in the Sciences.” The meeting will be livestreamed, so if you can’t join us in California, please consider joining us virtually.

Speaking of the sciences, let me end on one positive note — and a reason to trust academic scientists in their work: A new survey from Pew Research shows “a majority of Americans say they have confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. Confidence ratings have moved slightly higher in the last year, marking a shift away from the decline in trust seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Of about 9,600 U.S. adults polled by Pew in late October, fully 76% expressed “a great deal or fair amount of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests.” In addition, about two-thirds “view research scientists as honest,” and “Majorities view research scientists as intelligent (89%) and focused on solving real-world problems (65%).”

Concerned about censorship, accreditation, academic freedom, and who gets to control the curriculum? So are we. If you haven’t already, please consider signing up for this newsletter, subscribing to HxA’s email alerts, and — if you work in higher ed or are enrolled in graduate studies — becoming a member of HxA.

Membership is free, because our goal at HxA as a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization is not to make money; it’s to work with our allies to create a healthier higher ed, safe for open inquiry and diverse viewpoints.