For some reason, Renu Khator, the longtime president of the University of Houston and chancellor of the University of Houston System, has felt the need to remind her faculty that “our responsibility is to give [students] the ability to form their own opinions, not force a particular one on them. Our guiding principle is to teach them, not indoctrinate them.”
In the wake of this reminder, Houston’s Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Daniel P. O’Connor, has asked all faculty in the college to complete a form declaring that they’re not indoctrinating their students.
The reminder and the requirement to complete such a form seem to endorse the idea that universities are overrun with professors who are busy “indoctrinating” students and using their classrooms for “advocacy” rather than teaching. They’re not. Rather, this complaint, though disguised as a concern for good pedagogy, is just one form of political and cultural attack by rightwing politicians on the institutional autonomy of universities and the academic freedom of professors.
Here’s the form faculty are required to complete:
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Why is the dean doing this? Why is the university president endorsing the indoctrination narrative? Is it political pressure? Others have not succumbed so easily. For example, “when trustees demanded that President Patricia Okker of the New College of Florida declare that her faculty were indoctrinating students, she put her job on the line instead.”
In a message to the faculty, Khator talks about “the process we are embarking on as we comply with the requirements of SB37 as they pertain to the core curriculum.” But the form is not required by Bill 37, which says nothing about indoctrination. Rather, it is about requiring a periodic review of the general education curricula and certain programs at institutions of higher education in Texas. It also lays out the responsibilities of institutions of higher education in the state:
(1) transmit culture through general education;
(2) extend knowledge;
(3) teach and train students for professions;
(4) provide for scientific, engineering, medical, and other academic research;
(5) protect intellectual exploration and academic freedom;
(6) strive for intellectual excellence;
(7) provide educational opportunity for all who can benefit from postsecondary education and training; and
(8) provide continuing education opportunities.
Here’s one of Khator’s emails to the faculty about this:
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At least one professor at the University of Houston plans to not go along with these measure. Christy Mag Uidhir, a full professor in the Department of Philosophy, writes, “I have already informed the Dean and my Department Chair that I would not be completing the Mandatory Compliance Acknowledgement.”
No word yet on what other pledges University of Houston administrators will be requiring faculty to sign.
UPDATE 1 (2/4/26): Professor Mag Uidhir conveys the following: “The Dean has informed me that the consequence of my refusal is that he and his team would themselves be conducting the review of my courses.”
UPDATE 2 (2/5/26): The Houston Chronicle has an article up about this now, and reports that, according to a professor at the university, “every dean has been instructed to get this done”.
UPDATE 3 (2/5/26): A faculty member has shared materials that other deans at the University of Houston are sending to their faculty about the course review.
Here’s the letter sent by Andrew Davis, Dean of the University of Houston’s McGovern College of the Arts:
And here’s the letter sent by Heidi M. Appel, Dean of the Honors College at the University of Houston:
Here is a screenshot of the form at the link in the Honors College email:
Correction: the original version of this post mistakenly identified President Khator as the person who sent the form to faculty; rather it was Dean O’Connor, who sent it to faculty in his college.
