[Note: This article has been updated since publication.]
Coursework based in Women’s and Gender studies ideology will no longer count towards core curriculum requirements at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Austin American-Statesman reported, based on a leaked email, that Social and Cultural Analysis Department Chair Danielle Clealand recently informed faculty that University Provost William Inboden’s office had rejected all women’s and gender studies courses from counting toward the mandates.
The Daily Texan, UT-Austin’s student newspaper, further reports that Inboden’s office removed core designations from dozens of courses offered by the department, including Black Political Thought, Displacement and Resistance, Latina/o Spirituality, and Native American Women’s History.
While the university will no longer mandate these lines of study, students may still take these classes as electives.
The provost is the chief academic officer at UT-Austin.
The new policy will go into effect for the Spring 2027 semester.
Core curriculum, also known as general education requirements, are a set of courses all students must complete, regardless of major.
Higher education authors Jason Brennan and Phil Magness have criticized these dictates as a subsidy for economically unsustainable programs that frequently protect woke curricula from accountability.
University President Jim Davis introduced the new core at August’s meeting of the UT System Board of Regents.
“The existing core curriculum needs a wholesale change and we intend to do it,” Davis told regents at the time.
The university consolidated several pseudoacademic grievance studies programs into the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis over the summer.
Inboden’s office also recently rejected several majors from this consolidated department and has moved to dismantle grievance-studies-themed content such as African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Race, Indigeneity and Migration.
UT-Austin is a component of the University of Texas System. The UT System is overseen by a Board of Regents appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. Kevin Eltife of Tyler is the current board chair.
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