As the public’s once-high view of college education burns down before our eyes, the universities’ favorite water-carrier, the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), continues to fiddle.
CHE’s recent article on Texas Tech University (TTU) rebottles an old whine, warning that Texas’ 2025 law, Senate Bill 37, has brought a wave of faculty self-censorship, administrative pressure, and threatened departures following TTU Chancellor Brandon Creighton’s policy guidance to the school on fulfilling the law. Specifically, a TTU Faculty Senate survey of 367 professors claims roughly half altered course content unprompted on race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, while more than half considered seeking employment elsewhere.
To be expected, the CHE portrays these developments as a “chilling effect” on academic freedom.
This narrative misses the larger picture. Texas Senate Bill 37 (2025), authored by then-Senator Brandon Creighton, represents a principled effort to restore universities to their essential purposes: transmitting knowledge, cultivating intellectual independence, preparing students for civic and professional life, and spending taxpayer dollars responsibly. Far from censorship, SB 37 provides measured guardrails against compelled ideology while preserving genuine inquiry.
To see this, we must first distinguish between “academic freedom” and general-education “curriculum control.” Academic freedom is not a blank check for individual professors to redesign public university curricula at will. Academic freedom protects a professor’s right to pursue research, publish scholarship, and speak as a citizen without institutional retaliation. It also safeguards the university’s institutional autonomy to determine its educational mission. But it does not grant individual faculty a constitutional right to override the state’s authority over the general education curriculum in taxpayer-funded classrooms.
As the Third Circuit held in Edwards v. California University of Pennsylvania (1998): “a public university professor does not have a First Amendment right to decide what will be taught in the classroom.” The court emphasized that when a public university (as an arm of the state) sets curriculum policy, it is the institution speaking — not the individual professor. This distinction aligns with Supreme Court precedent recognizing that education remains primarily a state function under the Tenth Amendment. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court observed that “today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.” States therefore retain both the right and the duty to ensure that general education at public institutions serves the public interest.
Bearing this crucial distinction in mind, SB 37, at its core, requires governing boards—accountable to the public—to conduct periodic reviews of general education curricula. These reviews ensure core courses remain foundational, aligned with workforce needs and civic preparation. The legislation does not ban the teaching of history, slavery, civil rights, or cultural debates. It simply restores classical liberal principles, according to which higher education must prioritize intellectual clarity and student outcomes over conformity.
Although critics decry threats to academic freedom and faculty governance, in reality, SB 37 strengthens true freedom by limiting compelled speech and restoring balance. Faculty senates remain advisory, with reforms promoting transparency. Governing boards, not insulated faculty bodies, hold ultimate responsibility for curriculum and fiscal decisions. This structure protects specialized scholarship while ensuring general education serves the common good. Professors retain wide latitude in their research and advanced courses, but they lose veto power over taxpayer priorities.
Concerns about faculty retention are mere hype. Texas excels in high-ROI fields—engineering, agriculture, energy, and medicine—precisely because these disciplines emphasize discovery over grievance. Talent committed to rigorous inquiry will continue to find opportunity in the Lone Star State. Real brain drain stems more from declining rigor and value than from modest content standards.
Any genuine university in America must pursue both liberty and efficiency: protecting intellectual freedom while demanding results for students and taxpayers. SB 37 advances this by promoting data-driven program reviews, eliminating low-enrollment offerings where appropriate, and refocusing resources on foundational general education.
The Chronicle seems blithely ignorant of the massive fact that American higher education faces a credibility crisis—rising costs, uneven learning outcomes, and civic illiteracy. SB 37 charts a path forward rooted in accountability to the public it serves. It rejects the false choice between freedom and standards. Genuine academic freedom thrives when institutions prioritize truth-seeking over activism. By aligning curriculum with foundational knowledge and workforce competitiveness, SB 37 better equips graduates for success.
Policymakers, regents, and citizens committed to renewing higher education can look to SB 37 as evidence that reform strengthens, rather than undermines, our universities. The goal remains timeless: institutions that liberate minds through knowledge, not constrain them through ideology. Texas is advancing that vision—one review, one course, and one student at a time.
I have little doubt that other states will follow the Texas model.
