Texas A&M cancels women’s and gender studies : NPR

Texas A&M University on Friday announced it is ending its programs in women’s and gender studies as part of a broader effort to eliminate teaching related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

The university said it had also modified hundreds of courses and canceled six to comply with a policy adopted last November that prohibits, without approval from the campus president, teaching that “will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The latest changes are designed to “protect academic integrity and restore public trust,” Tommy Williams, the university’s interim president, said in a statement. “That has been our focus through this process and will remain our focus as we move forward.”

The university said the decision to eliminate women’s and gender studies stemmed both from the new policy and “limited student interest in the program based on enrollment over the past several years.”

Ira Dworkin, an associate professor of English at Texas A&M and vice president of the American Association of University Professors at the university’s flagship College Station campus, condemned the move as an unprecedented political interference by the university’s board of regents, all of whom were appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.

“This is absolutely devastating for the faculty and colleagues who have done so much important and groundbreaking research and teaching in this area, and it’s really devastating for the state of Texas,” Dworkin said. “To have policies like this that allow politicians to determine what wonderful, brilliant students are allowed to study, is a travesty.”

Critics who have charged that universities have become bastions of liberal thought hailed the move.

“The era of woke activism training camps funded by ordinary taxpayers is over,” said Inez Stepman, senior policy and legal analyst at Independent Women, a right-leaning think tank. “If universities want to have more useless women’s studies programs and departments, they are free to become truly private and pay their own salaries.”

Texas A&M is one of the nation’s largest public universities, with more than 81,000 students in graduate and undergraduate programs.

The elimination of women’s studies comes as other universities have curtailed or ended such programs in recent years, including the University of Iowa, Wichita State University in Kansas and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In 2025 the National Women’s Studies Association wrote a statement bemoaning the trend and stating, “We are understandably saddened, frightened, and enraged about the current state of the field.”