Download available at the end of the statement.
In 1633, the Roman Inquisition forced Galileo Galilei to “abjure, curse, and detest” the doctrine of heliocentrism. Galileo knew that the earth revolved around the sun, but he said otherwise to save his life. Yet the astronomer had the last laugh. “Eppur si muove,” he reportedly said after his abjuration. The earth continued to revolve around the sun in spite of the Inquisition’s reactionary efforts. Today, heliocentrism is universally accepted, but a similar effort to impose conclusions upon scholars and teachers by fiat is underway in Texas higher education.
The Texas State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-TXST) calls upon the Board of Regents of the Texas State University System to suspend the hasty course review, restore regular order to the process of curriculum review, and thereby return the “primary responsibility” of course review to faculty. Such “primary responsibilities” are not satisfied by assigning faculty to carry out hasty reviews or rewrites of course descriptions under pressure of timelines, criteria, and course lists that faculty have not themselves developed.
In the appeal that follows, AAUP-TXST presents highlights of a hasty course review now underway on our campus and then argues that trustees have a special responsibility to protect faculty processes from such distortions.
Regular Course Reviews Were Underway
On Oct. 1, 2025, in keeping with the practice of regular review of courses taught at Texas State University, the Vice Provost for Academic Innovation sent an email to 2400 faculty and 1100 staff inviting open review of course changes through Oct. 27:
At this time, all faculty and Academic Affairs staff are invited to review the proposed course additions, changes, and deletions that are located in the CIM [Course Inventory Management] system. For the current cycle, there are 146 additions, 291 changes, and 60 deletions. Faculty and staff who are interested in more details about the course proposals can visit the CIM system.
A similar email from the Senior Vice Provost was sent on March 28, 2025, inviting open review until Apr. 21 of “103 additions, 158 changes, and 8 deletions.”
Per Academic Affairs PPS 02.01.01, “faculty who have comments or concerns regarding any course addition, change, or deletion should submit those comments or concerns in writing to their department chair or school director who will be responsible to confer with the originating department chair or school director.”
And on Jan. 8, 2025, the Senior Vice Provost invited open review through Jan. 20, stating that:
For the current cycle, there are 265 additions, 405 changes, and 114 deletions. Faculty and staff who are interested in more details about the course proposals can visit the CIM system.
To cite just one more example of periodic and open course review in recent memory, the Senior Vice Provost on Sept. 12, 2024, invited open review of “47 additions, 84 changes, and 14 deletions,” noting that the “faculty review period for this cycle ends on September 20, 2024.”
The above examples show that courses are regularly added, changed, and deleted about three or four times per year in a process that includes a period of open review that lasts between a week and a month.
Hasty Course Reviews are Irregular Impositions on Faculty’s “Primary Responsibility” for Curriculum
As noted above, the regular course review process was in a period of open review on Oct. 10, 2025, when the Provost of Texas State University in San Marcos announced that an additional hasty review of University courses had been ordered by the Texas State University System in Austin—a review that would temporarily displace the usual process of creating, revising, and deleting courses—and a review that would require a summary report back to System offices by Jan. 20, 2026, mandating a review period of about 60 working days.
Shortly following the Oct. 10 announcement of a hasty course review, AAUP-TXST released a public statement calling upon the System administration to revoke the course review mandate, state in writing the educational concerns that motivated the review, and delegate “primary responsibility” to University faculty for the development of any guidelines or tools that would guide course review. The call by AAUP-TXST to “stop the charge” for a hasty course review was informed by a 1966 “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities” that was jointly formulated in 1966 by AAUP, along with the American Council of Education (ACE), and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB):
The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process. On these matters the power of review or final decision lodged in the governing board or delegated by it to the president should be exercised adversely only in exceptional circumstances and for reasons communicated to the faculty. It is desirable that the faculty should, following such communication, have opportunity for further consideration and further transmittal of its views to the president or board (AAUP Policy Documents 12th 122).
On Oct. 24, the Provost sent a follow-up email to 2,400 faculty and 2,700 staff setting forth a two-phase process of curriculum review responsive to the System mandate:
This fall, we will review Special Topics courses for policy compliance, General Education courses, and courses selected for additional value-neutrality review. In spring, we will review the remainder of the curriculum.
Under the plan of Oct. 24, departmental review of the phase one courses would be completed at the Departmental level by Dec. 10, a timeline of 30 working days.
At about the same time as the email to faculty and staff on Oct. 24, the Provost’s office released three kinds of documentation to Deans and Department Chairs:
- A list of courses for each department arranged in a table of five columns that flagged (1) regular university courses scheduled for the Spring semester that would have to be reviewed for their “value neutrality,” (2) all other regular university courses in the department (a column left blank for the time being), (3) general education courses taught by the department, (4) frequently taught Special Topics courses that would need to be converted to regular courses, and (5) Special Topics course that would need to be deleted because they had not been frequently taught.
- A document under the letterhead of the TXST office of Academic Innovation setting forth the “Texas State University Institutional Curricular Review Process” (6 pages).
- Another document under the letterhead of the TXST office of Academic Innovation titled “Value Neutral Instruction and the Curriculum: General Guide for Applying Neutral Tone to Curriculum Components” (16 pages, but the last page is letterhead only).
These documents deserve full and careful assessment; however, mindful that the Board is already planning its meeting of Nov. 20-21, 2025, AAUP-TXST would like to present timely comments on selected features of each document.
Beginning with the 6-page “Review Process” document, we have selected the opening passages:
A rapid response team was assembled by the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs (PEVPAA) in response to President Damphousse’s request and Texas State University System letter regarding conducting an institutional curricular review. The team was made up of the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Planning, Policy, and Budgets (SVP), Vice Provost for Academic Innovation (VPAI), and Chief of Staff (CoS).
• A course audit per College using content analysis was conducted by the Office of Curriculum and Academic Programs (OCAP), part of the Office of Academic Innovation (OAI), with emphasis on courses in the Spring 2026 academic schedule and identifying potential courses with non-value-neutral instruction approach in course titles and course descriptions, identifying special topic courses that are policy and not policy compliant, and the general education course inventory.
o A total of 107 courses has been recommended for phase one of the curricular review.
o In addition, 63 active courses not being offered in Spring 2026 have been identified as part of the active inventory and in the catalog have been recommended.
o Also, the General Education/Core course inventory composed of 110 courses has been added to phase one.
Regarding the 16-page “Value Neutral” document, we turn to the proposed reply to the final objection presented on page fifteen:
Objection 5: “This limits academic freedom.”
Response: Value-neutral instruction protects academic freedom by:
- Defending faculty from political pressure to reach predetermined conclusions
- Ensuring students’ freedom to form their own views
- Maintaining institutional autonomy from external ideological control
- Preserving the university’s core mission of inquiry over advocacy
Academic freedom includes the right to controversial scholarly conclusions—but not to leverage classroom authority to compel student agreement.
In our response to the proposed reply to the fifth objection as stated above, AAUP-TXST answers that the allegations inferred by the “value neutral” mandate have been carefully considered in a 2007 statement on “Freedom in the Classroom” that was approved by AAUP Committee A. We look forward to closer readings of the “value neutral” documentation in light of the 2007 statement.
Secondly, if we consider the plain evidence of the opening passage in the “Review Process” document, there can be no question of academic freedom as understood according to AAUP principles. Academic freedom does not arise from System-imposed curriculum mandates passed down to faculty through administrative offices, no matter how carefully articulated. Academic freedom begins with faculty exercising their “primary responsibility” for curriculum. Academic freedom does not result from a process that at the last step appoints departmental faculty to carry out pre-determined mandates upon pre-selected lists of courses complete with hard deadlines that preclude deliberative shared governance.
In sum, academic freedom requires that the tables of selected courses and the documents that set forth terms and processes of course review are materials that should be submitted to faculty evaluation and deliberation prior to their implementation or timeline. As the AAUP Council argued in a 1994 statement approved by Committee A:
allocation of authority to the faculty in the areas of its responsibility is a necessary condition for the protection of academic freedom within the institution (AAUP 12th 36)
TXST-AAUP pledges to continue careful evaluation of processes and directives that have been handed down to our Deans, Department Heads, and Departmental Faculty. If one wants to argue that our brief account suffers from insufficient analysis of the 280 targeted courses or the twenty pages of directives that accompany them, we agree.
The month of November is typically an intensive month in the world of teaching and research. There should be more time and space given to faculty for full deliberation as they already shoulder the primary workload of the semester. Faculty should have primary responsibility for curriculum policy–a responsibility that is undermined by the hasty review process. As we must remind the Board, our academic freedom already has been undercut by recent Texas law through the abolition of our faculty senate, restrictions on our right to participate in faculty grievance processes, and the general debilitation of our tenure protections.
Next, we would like to turn to the special obligations of university trustees to shield our regular academic processes from the distortions and irregularities that characterize the hasty curriculum review now underway.
Trustees Have a Special Obligation to Shield Academic Processes from Irregularities that Result from Outside Political Influence
On Sept. 22, a few weeks before the announcement of the hasty course review, a public letter from an elected representative to the President of TXST declared that one course had been summarily removed from the catalogue, but that another course should follow; principles of course evaluation were set forth. By Oct. 9, Inside Higher Education was reporting that six “Texas public university systems [aside from TXST] have ordered reviews of curriculum, syllabi and course descriptions,” motivated by public political pressure from elected representatives and pressure groups. Then, on Oct. 10, TXST announced its own hasty review, motivated by principles very similar to those set forth in the open letter of Sept. 22. Evidence supports a preliminary finding that the current hasty review advances the principles of a political agenda that has not been referred to faculty for careful deliberation.
With the cautionary example of Galileo before us, AAUP-TXST urges the Board to break with the trend of other systems in Texas and rescind the hasty course review that is now underway. We base this request upon longstanding principles that require university trustees to shield our academic processes from the kinds of shortcuts and summary directives that undermine faculty from carrying out their “primary responsibilities” with respect to curriculum. We pause yet again to emphasize that it is not consistent with AAUP principles to assign faculty to carry out a hasty review of course documentation, when faculty have not enjoyed robust participation in the selection of courses, the development of criteria, or the timeline of review.
AAUP Principles of Governance
AAUP Principles were born in 1915 under the proposition that faculty and trustees are partners. Trustees rightfully enjoy a “special status” within the System as “the ultimate repositories of power” (AAUP 12th 36, 4). Likewise, faculty are entitled to offices of “both dignity and independence” (quoted at AAUP 12th 36). Our 1994 statement “On the Relationship of Faculty Governance to Academic Freedom” reinforces the principle that: “Allocation of authority to the faculty in the areas of its responsibility is a necessary condition for the faculty’s possessing that dignity and exercising that independence” (AAUP 12th 36).
Too often, academic freedom is discussed out of context, neglecting the essential role that faculty dignity and independence must contribute to the grounds of academic freedom. Thus, the special responsibility of trustees is overlooked: when trustees fail to shield the dignity and independence of faculty, academic freedom is threatened. The very processes of the hasty review that is now underway, motivated by political pressure, carried out through irregular procedures, and guided by memos created by System and campus administrators only after the review was ordered, afford the faculty neither dignity nor independence. Tasking faculty to carry out these hasty directives under intensive deadline pressure without time for deliberative consideration is to mock the very concepts of dignity and independence that our partnership with trustees entails. To quote again from the AAUP 1994 statement:
In the first place, this allocation of authority is the most efficient means to the accomplishment of the institution’s objectives. For example, as the Statement on Government maintains, “the educational effectiveness of the institution” is the greater the more firmly the institution is able to protect this allocation of authority against pressures from outside the institution. Moreover, scholars in a discipline are acquainted with the discipline from within; their views on what students should learn in it, and on which faculty members should be appointed and promoted, are therefore more likely to produce better teaching and research in the discipline than are the views of trustees or administrators. More generally, experienced faculty committees—whether constituted to address curricular, personnel, or other matters—must be free to bring to bear on the issues at hand not merely their disciplinary competencies, but also their first-hand understanding of what constitutes good teaching and research generally, and of the climate in which those endeavors can best be conducted. (AAUP 12th 36).
Trustee Responsibility for Shielding the Institution
When the AAUP affirmed its 1966 “Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities” in conjunction with the American Council on Education (ACE), and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), they placed a great responsibility on the board of trustees. “In grave crises it will be expected to serve as a champion” (AAUP 12th 122). In recognition of the storm of public pressure that a board is likely to face during such a time of crisis, the 1966 statement advises that although the board may act in behalf of faculty, “the board should make it clear that the protection it offers to an individual or group is, in fact, a fundamental defense of the vested interests of society in the educational institution” (AAUP 12th 122).
With respect to Texas State University, we encourage the Board to point out to the public that our faculty have over the period of 150 years nurtured a vibrant student body for the public good. We have educated a President of the United States, and our campus is booming with brand new student-housing complexes because students are coming our way. Voices who command public attention when they target our courses or professors for advancing the interests of certain persons or populations may be ignorant of the expertise needed to uplift each and every talent in Texas. Breaking curriculum under these conditions is tantamount to breaking hearts. We encourage you to explain to the Texas public how a campus is a complexity of hearts and minds, and no one is better qualified to know what is needed in support of that community than your faculty.
As your partners in our shared public enterprise, the faculty at Texas State University call for your support in this time of crisis. We rely on you as never before. We no longer have an independent Faculty Senate, which has been abolished by recent Texas law.
As the TSUS Board, you are–in the words of Harvard University President Charles William Elliott, who spoke about “Academic Freedom” in 1907–“the body on whose discretion, good feeling, and experience the securing of academic freedom now depends.” We therefore implore you to suspend the hasty review of curriculum now underway and restore order to regular processes of curriculum review and development that respect the “dignity and independence” of faculty in carrying out their “primary responsibilities” at Texas State University.
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The above statement along with a previous statement in defense of tenured Associate Professor Dr. Thomas Alter were delivered to Regents via a memo of Nov. 7, 2025, archived below:
Texas State University Chapter of AAUP 
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