Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton ordered AI-screened review of course content on race, sex and gender identity

On December 1, 2025, Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton issued a memorandum to university presidents across the system ordering faculty to disclose whether their course materials — syllabi, reading lists, lesson plans — touched on race, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, and requiring any flagged content to go before the Board of Regents' Academic, Clinical, and Student Affairs Committee for approval before it could be taught again. Faculty who did not comply faced discipline. Some professors reported that the system used an artificial-intelligence tool to scan syllabi and reading lists for flagged language and screen it out before any human reviewed the material.

Creighton spent nearly two decades as a Republican state senator, where he chaired the Senate Higher Education Committee, authored Senate Bill 37 — a 2025 law giving governor-appointed regents new authority over university curriculum — and repeatedly pushed similar restrictions on race and gender instruction that failed to pass into law, before becoming Texas Tech System chancellor in November 2025 and imposing those restrictions on the system directly through the December memorandum.

Updates

2026-04-10 — Creighton ordered phase-out of programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity [6]

A second memorandum from Creighton directed Texas Tech's five universities to phase out academic programs "centered on" sexual orientation or gender identity, freeze admissions to those programs, limit related graduate theses to currently enrolled students, and align future faculty hiring with the policy; it also required faculty to teach that there are only "two human sexes."

2026-05 — Course review screened roughly 8,500 courses, altered dozens [4]

By early May 2026, Texas Tech administrators had reviewed roughly 8,500 courses at Texas Tech University alone under the memoranda, referred about 500 to the Board of Regents' review committee, and modified or removed material from dozens of courses — including some that department chairs, deans, and provosts had already approved.

2026-05-29 — Faculty Senate survey found broader course changes than administrators reported [8]

A Texas Tech Faculty Senate survey of 367 respondents found the restrictions prompted changes to, or requests for changes to, 277 courses. About half of respondents said they altered course content on their own out of concern about the memoranda, and more than half said they were looking for jobs elsewhere because of the restrictions.

2026-07-08 — AAUP and Texas AAUP-AFT sued Creighton and the Board of Regents [2, 3, 5]

The national American Association of University Professors and its Texas affiliate, Texas AAUP-AFT, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Lambda Legal, and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, sued Creighton and Board of Regents members in federal court. The suit alleges the memoranda amount to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment, are unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, and discriminate against Black and LGBTQ+ faculty and students.

2026-07-17 — Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction [9]

The plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction asking the court to immediately halt enforcement of the memoranda, arguing the policies continue to cause irreparable harm to faculty across the system while the case proceeds.