Let’s start with a question I keep hearing from students, faculty, staff and, honestly, anyone up to date on what the UT System Board of Regents just did: “What the fuck are they doing down in Austin?”
Because the answer, as far as I can tell, is that they’re trying to make it impossible to teach. Not in such clear language, of course. They’d never be that honest. Instead, the Board of Regents has wrapped its latest power grab in the language of “solemn covenants,” “academic integrity” and “protecting student rights.“ They unanimously adopted a policy so vague and ill-defined that it can mean anything an administrator wants it to mean on any given day.
And at UTD, we know exactly what that looks like.
The policy, officially titled “Expectations of Academic Integrity and Standards for Teaching Controversial Topics,” was approved Feb. 19 by the board. It requires instructors to “fairly present differing views and scholarly evidence on reasonably disputed matters.” It commands them to “eschew topics and controversies that are not germane to the course.” It demands they “avoid introducing undisclosed material that is not clearly relevant.”
But the policy never defines what makes a matter “reasonably disputed,” never explains who decides when controversy is “germane” and never tells us what “balance” actually means in practice.
On paper, this sounds almost reasonable. No one objects to fairness, or wants irrelevant material in their classes. But the policy never defines what makes a matter “reasonably disputed,” never explains who decides when controversy is “germane” and never tells us what “balance” actually means in practice. Ultimately, the policy creates plausible deniability.
And we’ve seen how this works at UTD. When students painted “Zionism = Nazism” on the Spirit Rocks, administrators didn’t debate the merits of leaving such speech up or whether it complied with free speech policy. They just removed the rocks entirely, citing “extended political discourse.” When students sought to use chalk at the Plinth last spring, administrators rushed to the Plinth to tell them, “The policy supersedes your First Amendment.” SB 17’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion continues to ring through the countless now-empty offices that once supported students and did not strictly have to shut down under state law. And yet they did.
UTD has consistently over complied to vague laws and policy, but now the UT System has granted them carte blanche to silence anything in the classroom at a moment’s notice.
The A&M precedent
If you think I am being dramatic, look at College Station. The Texas A&M System already implemented a similar policy this spring. Because of it, Plato has been removed from philosophy courses. A graduate-level ethics course on race and ethnicity was canceled three weeks into the semester. An introductory sociology course is gone. Professors are using AI to scrub their syllabi of words like “value diversity” and “embrace activism” so they can keep teaching.
This is what “broad and balanced” looks like when people who believe their job is to protect students from ideas get to decide what “balance” means.
The UT System wants us to believe they’ll implement their version of A&M’s policy more thoughtfully and more fairly. But they’ve given us no reason for that trust. The same board of regents that approved this policy sat silently as UT Austin collapsed its ethnic and gender studies departments days before the vote, impacting more than 800 students. They didn’t ask for “balance” then. They asked for consolidation.
What teaching actually looks like
The policy requires instructors to “adhere faithfully to the contents of the syllabus” and “avoid introducing undisclosed material.” It assumes a syllabus is a contract, immutable and complete.
But anyone who’s ever been in a classroom knows that’s not how teaching works. Courses evolve. Current events intrude. Student questions lead discussions into unexpected territory. A student asks about something happening today — a court ruling, a natural disaster, an act of violence — that wasn’t on the syllabus. Under this policy, the safe answer is silence.
And silence, as we’ve learned, is exactly what administrations want.
The very point of a university should be to challenge its students to learn and grow, to prepare them for life after graduation. We are here to develop skills we did not otherwise have and come away with new understandings of ourselves and the world at large. Demanding that professors deliberately avoid controversy is the antithesis of this. It ensures students are bound to whatever narrow scope a professor envisioned when they were drafting up their syllabus over summer break. When students want to discuss job prospects after graduation, career readiness and real-world issues that intersect with their course, the school will now expect professors to stay quiet lest they be punished.
That’s the thing about this policy. It doesn’t ban specific ideas. It doesn’t have to. It just creates an environment where no one wants to find out what’s banned. Professors will start asking not “Is this accurate?” but “Will this get me in trouble?” Students will graduate having been processed, not educated. They’ll have never been challenged, never discomforted, never forced to defend a belief against a well-reasoned counterargument.
The covenant was never solemn
The policy opens with a flourish: “Teaching is a solemn covenant between faculty and students.” Beautiful language. Almost poetic.
But a covenant requires mutual consent. It requires transparency. It requires that both parties understand the terms. This policy was written behind closed doors, added to an agenda at the last minute and approved without meaningful student or faculty input.
This isn’t a covenant. It is a decree.
The real covenant — the one that matters in any way — is between students and the pursuit of knowledge. It’s the agreement that we will show up ready to be challenged, and that our teachers will show up ready to challenge us. It’s the understanding that a university is not a place of safety from ideas but a place of engagement with them.
This policy breaks that covenant. It replaces trust with surveillance, education with compliance and the messy work of learning with a sterile, pre-approved curriculum that keeps administrators in Austin offices politically happy.
It doesn’t ban specific ideas. It creates an environment where self-censorship is seen as the only option.
The policy claims to protect students. To create “classroom cultures of trust” where everyone feels safe to voice their beliefs. But trust isn’t built by restricting what can be discussed. Trust is built by demonstrating that difficult conversations can happen without retaliation. The policy assumes students need protection from ideas, that encountering a viewpoint you disagree with is a harm that must be prevented at all costs.
On the same day this policy was approved, UTD’s MENARAH lab hosted a talk covering immigration, Islam, racism, police brutality and Zohran Mamdani. It’s a set of topics that would almost certainly give Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton an aneurysm.
Under this new rule, would that talk be allowed? It presented a viewpoint that challenges dominant narratives. It discussed topics that some would certainly call “controversial.” Would an administrator deem it “germane” to an art history course? Or would they see it as “unnecessary controversy”?
The fact that we have to ask — that no one can give a clear answer — is the point. The policy’s vagueness is its function. It doesn’t ban specific ideas. It creates an environment where self-censorship is seen as the only option.
What comes next
This policy is approved. It will be implemented. It is up to UTD to decide how, though, and thus far it has been a black box for any information about this.
Implementation, however, is not automatic. It requires interpretation and decisions, and those decisions will be made by people who can be watched, questioned and held accountable.
Faculty must demand clarity. Ask your deans what “balance” means in your discipline. Ask who decides what’s “germane.” Ask what recourse you have if a student reports you. Don’t accept vague answers, because that language is a trap that could get you fired like so many other Texas professors this academic year. Get everything in writing.
Students must pay attention. When a professor seems nervous, ask why. When a discussion gets shut down, document it. When an administrator makes a decision, demand the reasoning. Don’t let silence become the new normal. We must remember that UTD is not just its facilities and its rules. It’s the people who show up every day to learn and teach. This policy only has power if we let it silence us.
The regents have approved their policy. They’ve given administrators a new tool, a new rulebook, a new way to silence what they don’t want taught.
Now we’ll see if they can enforce it.