The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents on Thursday unanimously ordered its flagship university to disband an LGBTQ+ studies minor, months after conservative lawmakers and websites accused the program of promoting “liberal indoctrination” on campus.
The LGBTQ Studies minor is one of 14 minors and 38 certificate programs that administrators said were “low productive,” according to a new process they developed to identify and eliminate programs with low enrollment. But the faculty claims the process used inaccurate information and faulty data. It also prevented faculty from providing input on curriculum decisions, they said.
“This has never happened before,” said Angie Hill Price, professor and chair of the A&M Faculty Senate. “We have no precedent for a board to decide [to end academic programs] about the wishes of the faculty and the president, whom they viewed as poor performers.
Dozens of teachers attended Thursday's board meeting to oppose the regents' decision.
The administration's decision to eliminate these programs comes as the Texas Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education meets Monday to discuss the role of faculty senates at Texas' public universities. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick ordered the Senate to investigate these groups. These are elected governing bodies made up of professors from colleges across the university who represent their colleagues and collaborate with university leadership in academic matters. Patrick also asked lawmakers ahead of next year's legislative session to make recommendations to establish guidelines for the role of faculty senates on campuses.
According to the regents' decision to end the programs, their decision ignored a request from Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh III to halt the review process and gather more input from other faculty senates in the A&M system. The Board of Regents felt there was sufficient faculty review and ordered the school to move forward.
Welsh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Board members and university administrators believe that these minors and certificates should be eliminated because they do not meet the new enrollment thresholds recently established by the university.
During Thursday's meeting, board member Robert Albritton denied allegations that the decision to eliminate the LGBTQ Studies minor was politically motivated. He said the board has a fiduciary responsibility to eliminate programs with low enrollment.
But faculty say the reasoning lacks insight into how these departments manage enrollment in these minor and certificate programs.
“They either had no information and made a decision based on incomplete information, or they had a different agenda and the information didn't matter,” Price said.
Praise and criticism
Texas A&M's Women and Gender Studies department introduced the LGBTQ Studies minor in fall 2022. The university celebrated the new program in a June 2023 press release.
Professor Theresa Morris, who helped develop the minor, said it would teach students cultural competencies that would help them in the workplace and help LGBTQ+ Aggies better understand their own identities.
“The symbolism of having this minor means something – especially to the students who have this identity,” Morris said in the news release. “It's like a formal recognition by the university that this is important, and that can mean a lot to the people who feel like their experience is being perfected by society.”
Two weeks later, the conservative website Texas Scorecard published a piece about several public universities in Texas offering a minor in LGBTQ+ studies, including Texas A&M.
Texas Scorecard has written often about the A&M System's flagship university. Last year, the university downplayed a job offer to a black journalist, Kathleen McElroy, after Texas Scorecard called her an “advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion.” Negotiations to hire her ultimately failed and the university paid her a $1 million settlement.
According to a Texas A&M spokesperson, the university received questions from inside and outside the university about the LGBTQ Studies minor just a semester after its launch, prompting the school to take a closer look at its programs. Administrators identified seventy certificates and minors with zero or few graduates or enrollees.
In August 2023, Provost Alan Sams began working with the university's deans to create a way to evaluate a program's performance. It was modeled after the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board standards for majors, an A&M spokesperson said. The state classifies a bachelor's degree as “low-productivity” if it awards fewer than five degrees in a year and fewer than 25 degrees in five years. The government agency that oversees public higher education does not have a process for reviewing minors.
Using this system, A&M identified 52 minors and certificates that needed to be eliminated.
In January, state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, began tweeting about the LGBTQ Studies minor offered by his alma mater. “Texas A&M offers a MINOR in this? What. The. Damn,” he wrote. He vowed to find out whether the university used state resources to finance the program.
In February, he told conservative news site The Daily Caller that he had a “lengthy conversation” with Sams in which he asked him to stop the minor.
The university confirmed that the provost had spoken with Harrison about the LGBTQ Studies minor as they were setting up processes to determine which programs should be eliminated.
Harrison posted on social media in September that A&M System Chancellor John Sharp warned him that the school was terminating the minor.
“Proud to have helped deliver this victory for Texas taxpayers who should never be forced to fund,” Harrison wrote on the social media site X.
The Board of Regents also voted Thursday to direct other college presidents in the A&M System to review their minors and certificates to identify low-productive programs that could be eliminated. They also ordered Sharp to revise system policies regarding low-productivity training to include minors and certificate programs. Once added, the board would need to approve the amended policy at its February 2025 meeting.
Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, chairman of the Texas Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education, praised the board's vote on social media Thursday.
“Proud to see that the reforms we passed in the Texas Senate are having a real impact on Texas A&M,” he wrote. The 89th session will see even more bold reforms for higher education.”
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