March 4, 2026 Advocacy Update
“I’m human,” says an old busybody in an ancient Roman comedy by Terence: “I think everything human is my business.” Once played for laughs, over the centuries the line has come to signify a more noble sentiment: interest in what other people do, think, and feel—and why—is an essential part of being human.
Yet today, a growing chorus from the ranks of politics, business, media, and academia itself wants us to settle for less: less funding, less research, less access, less knowledge, less freedom—which adds up to more ignorance, distrust, and divisiveness. Vilification of expertise, general learning, and free thinking has become the norm.
A recent higher education report by the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025, argues that fewer students should go to college to better meet the demands of the labor market. This assertation runs directly counter to Raj Chetty’s analysis of 30 million students for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which shows that a college degree is one of the most reliable pathways to upward socioeconomic mobility.
Elected officials, including some Indiana state legislators, are calling on higher education to tie the survival of degree programs to post-graduation salary rates. In addition to putting essential professions like teaching, social work, and ministry at risk, this approach disregards non-monetary benefits like critical thinking, community building skills, an expanded world view, and general happiness—a tragic irony at a time when more and more young people are suffering from depression and anxiety.
Last Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attacked 13 American universities, one Canadian university, and seven non-profit institutions as harboring “wicked ideologies,” and the Pentagon banned service members from pursuing study at these institutions via the long-established War Colleges Senior Service College Fellowship Program: Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, George Washington, Tufts, Saint Louis University, Carnegie Mellon, William & Mary, Middlebury, Queen’s University in Ontario, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America, the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Center for a New American Security, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Henry L. Stimson Center. Amidst global tension and war, Hegseth is narrowing opportunities for service members and limiting their access to institutions with “minimal public expressions in opposition of the Department.” Less critical thinking means a less safe world.
The administration’s ongoing assault on knowledge presents a clear call to defend scholarship and teaching about all aspects of American culture. Recent complaints that philanthropic foundations have poured too much money into research on minority communities and experiences embody the zero-sum thinking that becomes a bad habit in times of austerity.
But to borrow the argument Heather McGee makes about American politics, learning is not a zero-sum game. Learning about ideas and communities in which academia has only recently begun to invest attention is a key element of collective self-knowledge, which in turn is an essential part of a healthy democracy. What we need is greater investment in more areas of inquiry, and public calls for investment that lift up our common enterprise and shared values.
All these exhortations to do less are especially corrosive at a time when our federal and state governments are intervening aggressively in censoring speech.
For the remainder of my message, I want to share the experience of state censorship from two scholars at Texas Tech University, a public R-1 enrolling over 40,000 students. This is a departure from my usual practice, but detailed coverage of the process is rare, and it is important for our community to hear directly from faculty on the ground whose work is at risk. Sincere thanks to Sara Spurgeon, Professor of American Literature, and Deena Varner, Assistant Professor of Practice, both in the Department of English at Texas Tech University, who have approved the appearance of an excerpt of their comments here.
On December 1, 2025, the Texas Tech University System Chancellor, Brandon Creighton, issued a memorandum demanding all TTU faculty comply with a censorship review process by signing in to a censorship portal to affirm whether or not any of their course material “advocates race- or sex-based prejudice” or included “course content that promotes activism on issues related to race or sex, rather than academic instruction.” The memo declares that “Faculty are required to submit course content related to sexual orientation,” and claims, “State law and federal policy dictate only two sexes, male and female, are recognized. Faculty are expected to comply with these standards when instructing students in their professional capacity, which includes submitting course content related to gender identity through the course content review process overseen by the Board of Regents.”
The memo insists all faculty must comply and warns both that “Noncompliance may result in disciplinary action” and that “This directive is the first step [emphasis in original] of the Board of Regents’ ongoing implementation of its statutory responsibility to review and oversee curriculum under Senate Bill 37 and related provisions of the Education Code.” While Senate Bill 37 does give Boards of Regents some authority to review core curricula at Texas universities, it does not provide for broad oversight of all courses, nor does it provide that any specific topics should be censored.
Faculty in Texas Tech’s Department of English responded by asking for written clarification, to no avail… Shortly after the Chancellor’s December 1 memo, Texas Tech University introduced a censorship review portal (officially named “Course Content Oversight and Review”) to which all faculty were required to report any and all course materials referencing more than two human sexes, content related to “gender identity,” and content related to “human sexual identity.” If faculty indicate any of the forbidden topics may be present in any of their lesson plans or assigned texts, an escalating censorship review process is triggered, requiring faculty to justify their inclusion of each example of forbidden content, with all content to be reviewed by several administrative layers and, ultimately, the Board of Regents for the Texas Tech University System. An affirmative answer also triggers the directive to remove or omit such materials until completion of the review.
Texas is blazing a path for other states to follow, meaning that these tactics could be coming soon for many more public higher education institutions, as well as publicly funded museums and libraries. This invasive activity undermines the values of academic freedom and seems designed to arouse fear among faculty, students, and community members. If you can, I encourage you to speak out: if you live in Texas or a state considering similar legislation, write to your representative and submit an op-ed to your local paper.
Now more than ever, it is important for us to keep advocating for the value of the humanities and social sciences and getting the message to people who may not see the magnitude of the threats we face. If you are interested in joining ACLS’s new effort to build alliances inside and outside academia, DASSH (Defending the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities), I encourage you to write to us at [email protected].
Joy