Brandon Creighton tried to ban LGBTQ+ and Black history from Texas universities when he was a state senator. The legislature stopped him. So he became chancellor of the Texas Tech University System instead, and did it anyway.

Creighton and the Texas Tech Board of Regents issued memoranda requiring every professor at the system's five universities to submit their course materials for a "stringent" audit. The rules forbid any reference to more than two sexes, any mention of gender identity or sexual orientation, and any teaching on race or sex-based discrimination. Philosophy professors cannot teach the themes of homosexuality in Plato's Symposium. Law professors cannot teach the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision in a first-year constitutional law course. Medical professors cannot treat transgender patients in front of students.

Not one word restricts lessons about white or non-LGBTQ+ communities. This is not neutral policy. It is viewpoint discrimination, codified in official university rules.

A coalition including Lambda Legal, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the American Association of University Professors has filed a federal lawsuit calling this what it is: a prohibition on teaching "unimpeachable and undisputed facts."

We call on the Texas Tech Board of Regents to rescind Creighton's memoranda immediately, and on Governor Greg Abbott to remove Creighton from his position. Academic freedom is not negotiable.