Major University Finally Scraps Woke Gender And Ethnic Studies Majors

The University of Texas at Austin is eliminating several race- and gender-focused majors, marking the latest and most significant step in the university’s ongoing overhaul of its liberal arts curriculum.

UT-Austin will no longer offer majors in African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, or Women’s, Sexualities and Gender Studies. The university is also eliminating the Race, Indigeneity and Migration major, according to faculty emails obtained by the Daily Texan.

Students already enrolled in the affected majors will be allowed to finish their degrees, according to UT-Austin spokesman Mike Rosen. The university is instead asking faculty in the newly created Department of Social and Cultural Analysis to develop a new major that would consolidate some of the department’s academic interests.

The decision is a significant reversal. Earlier this year, UT-Austin consolidated several departments focusing on race, ethnicity, and gender into larger academic units. Students already enrolled would be able to continue their degree programs. President Jim Davis said at the time that the university was reviewing which majors, minors, and courses would ultimately remain. Now, those majors are gone for incoming students.

Danielle Clealand, interim chair of the Social and Cultural Analysis Department, told faculty this week that the provost’s office had rejected the department’s proposal to retain the existing majors. “The provost’s office rejected our proposal to keep our majors,” Clealand wrote.

Faculty members have characterized the move as politically motivated and accused the university of suppressing particular areas of study. Julie Minich, a professor of Mexican American and Latino Studies, called the elimination “censorship” and “viewpoint discrimination.” American Studies professor Lauren Gutterman said the changes amounted to an administrative attack on the programs. 

UT-Austin, meanwhile, has framed the broader restructuring as an effort to create more coherent academic programs and reconsider how its curriculum is organized. Daniel Brinks, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts, previously said the college had become “overly fragmented” and that restructuring would improve “intellectual coherence.”

The university’s restructuring is taking place against a broader overhaul of its undergraduate curriculum. UT is moving toward a new 36-hour core curriculum and is reviewing more than 100 courses for continued core designation. Courses that lose their core designation can still remain available as electives or as part of individual majors.

The changes also follow a May policy overhaul within the University of Texas System that gave university presidents greater authority to close academic programs under circumstances including low enrollment, insufficient demand, redundancy, cost, or a determination that a program does not align with an institution’s mission. Faculty cannot appeal those decisions under the new process, according to the Texas Tribune.

That broader shift has produced particularly sharp changes in programs centered on race, ethnicity and gender. UT-Austin consolidated several such departments into the Social and Cultural Analysis Department earlier this year. Texas A&M eliminated its women’s and gender studies degree program in January, while the Texas Tech University System has imposed additional restrictions on teaching and research involving race, gender and sexuality.