Texas Flunks Free Speech — Then Erases the Syllabus

Texas colleges just got handed two report cards, and they failed both of them. One says not a single Texas university has a passing grade for campus free speech. The other says the state is erasing whole subjects from the course catalog. Two stories, one throughline: somebody else is deciding what Texas students are allowed to say — and what they’re allowed to learn.

These aren’t two separate messes. They’re one squeeze.

The free speech report card: Texas flunks

The 2027 College Free Speech Rankings are out from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, built on a survey of nearly 63,000 undergraduates across 261 schools. The national average score hit 61.36 — the best it’s been in seven years — and it still grades out as a D-minus. One hundred twenty-one schools got an F. Only 24 got a C or better.

Not one of those 24 is in Texas. Per USA Today’s Texas breakdown, here’s how the state’s 12 ranked schools landed nationally:

• UT El Paso — No. 48 (best in Texas, and still not a passing grade)
• Southern Methodist — No. 52
• UT Arlington — No. 53
• UT San Antonio — No. 67
• UT Austin — No. 124
• University of Houston — No. 183
• Texas A&M — No. 192
• Texas Tech — No. 193
• North Texas — No. 248
• Rice — No. 250
• UT Dallas — No. 251
• Texas State — No. 259, third-worst in the entire country

Only New York University and the University of Washington sit below Texas State. And Texas State earned it the hard way: FIRE cited the university for firing two professors — tenured history professor Thomas Alter and philosophy professor Idris Robinson — for off-campus protected expression. Firing faculty over what they say away from campus is how you land at the bottom of a free-speech ranking, sis. That’s not a climate thing. That’s a policy choice.

FIRE president Greg Lukianoff called the state of campus speech “grim,” and the numbers back him up: only 40 percent of surveyed students said it was “extremely” or “very” clear their administration protects free speech. The hardest topics to talk about on campus? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and abortion.

Meanwhile, the state is deleting what students can learn

While FIRE was grading the speech climate, Texas university systems were busy erasing the curriculum — all under Senate Bill 37, the 2025 law that handed governing boards the final say over general education and stripped faculty senates down to advisory status, with the first full review due by January 1, 2027.

Texas A&M: On September 3, the system Board of Regents voted to yank 350 course entries out of core-curriculum eligibility across 11 campuses — not electives, but the core classes every undergraduate has to take. Per Higher Ed Dive, the cuts hit women’s literature, ethnic studies, and gender studies. College Station lost the most with 103; A&M–San Antonio dropped 76; Tarleton State dropped 48. To be fair and factual: the classes weren’t canceled — they can still be offered as electives. But a class that doesn’t count toward the degree is a class that stops filling seats, and that’s where the squeeze becomes a kill.

University of Houston: Regents voted unanimously in August to slash the flagship’s core menu from 241 courses to 144 — a roughly 40 percent cut. Gone from core eligibility: Black Liberation Theology, Intro to Global Climate Change, Intro to Ethnic Studies, Intro to LGBT Studies, Intro to Women’s Studies, and the Bible and Modern Pop Culture. (Intro to African American Studies, Mexican American Studies, and Latina/o Jewish History survived. The pattern is still hard to miss.)

UT Austin: The provost’s office is eyeing 100-plus cuts from core eligibility for spring 2027, with proposed removals including classes on slavery, gender, race, and environmental history, per internal emails reported by the Austin American-Statesman. Separately, a 22-member faculty task force proposed replacing the entire choose-from-a-menu core with a structured 12-subject-area curriculum — cutting total gen-ed credits from 42 to 36 and adding a Western civilization requirement in place of one of two required U.S. history courses. Both are still proposals, not final.

And the backdrop keeps getting colder: A&M’s regents adopted a policy last fall barring any academic course from advocating “race or gender ideology” or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. The AAUP and four A&M professors sued on August 3, arguing it violates their First Amendment rights. No ruling yet.

See what connects them?

This is the part the two stories don’t want you to connect, so let’s connect it plainly. You cannot claim to care about free speech on campus while the state picks which fields of study count as real education. A campus where a professor can be fired for off-campus speech is a campus where the syllabus is being written by politics, not scholarship.

When whole subject areas — race, gender, sexuality, climate — quietly lose their place in the core, the message to students is: these don’t count as a real education. And the intro course is often where a first-gen student, or a Black student, or a queer student, first sees themselves reflected in a classroom. You lose that first exposure, and you don’t lose an elective. You lose a doorway.

The rankings say Texas students don’t feel free to speak. The purges say Texas has decided what they’re allowed to learn. That’s not two stories. That’s one playbook.

I’ll keep watching both — especially whether UT’s proposal survives the approval gauntlet and whether Texas State’s firing controversy keeps dragging its ranking down. Stay sharp, sis. The syllabus is political now, and so is the microphone.