The Campus Free Speech Wars Are Over. MAGA Won.

The right spent years trying to convince us that campus lefties were authoritarians in waiting. But then an actual authoritarian became president.

A new batch of documents published by The Chronicle of Higher Education reveals widespread censorship of course content at Texas A&M, one of many public universities where MAGA politicians—not faculty and department heads—now determine what can and can’t be taught. It is the latest example, among many since President Trump’s reelection, that the campus free speech wars of a decade ago are now over. The right has won.

Following the passage of a Texas law that requires governing boards to review academic programs—one of several state laws based on Trump’s January 2025 executive orders against “gender ideology” and diversity, equity, and inclusion—Texas A&M is subjecting course titles, descriptions, and syllabuses to an opaque review process to decide which courses will go forward and which will be canceled. For the coming fall semester, 45 courses were referred from an initial review committee to the university president’s office for a final decision, of which 31 were approved as “exceptions,” eight were approved under conditions of specifying or removing reading materials, and two—an English course on “LGBTQ Literatures” and a Women’s and Gender Studies introduction to “LGBTQ Studies”—were denied outright and removed from the curriculum.

A similar process is unfolding at Auburn University, where faculty received a form referencing Alabama legislation that bans public universities from teaching “divisive concepts,” again based on anti-DEI directives from the Trump White House. When a sociology course on “Crime and Justice in America” drew the ire of conservative website 1819 News and then Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville (“ZERO REASON taxpayer funds should go to teaching our students to HATE law and order. Woke indoctrination has NO PLACE in Alabama or our taxpayer-funded universities”), the sociology professor was removed from the course. Unlike Texas A&M, where the president ultimately makes the decision, Auburn puts the onus on faculty to self-police their courses to remain in........

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