Texas Tech Using AI To Eliminate Diverse Courses [Op-Ed]

The Texas Tech University system is facing scrutiny after Chancellor Brandon Creighton used AI to eliminate anything in the school’s curriculum that could be considered left-leaning. 

I just lost to Texas Tech in the College Football dynasty I’m running with the boys, and now I gotta find out they’re using AI to be racist? Talk about being down bad.

The New York Times reports that the issues began in the spring when professors and faculty members were given a report, crafted with the assistance of AI, outlining subjects that they were now restricted from teaching. 

Lucy Schiller, a creative-writing professor at Texas Tech, told the Times that these new restrictions have led professors to self-censor. “They’re making us do the work of reading between the very obvious lines,” she said, “and overcomplying out of fear that we might be reported or separated from our work or disciplined.”

Sonja Stojanovic, a French studies professor, is worried about one of her core courses, the Holocaust in Literature. Since the class addresses the fact that gay and bisexual men were also targets of the Nazis, leaders at Texas Tech proposed that it should become an upper-level course.

“Now the Holocaust becomes an elective,” Stojanovic told the Times.

Creighton’s proposals have already received legal pushback, as the American Association of University Professors has filed a lawsuit against Texas Tech. The association argues that Creighton’s changes amount to viewpoint discrimination and violate the First Amendment. 

In an interview with the Times, Creighton pushed back against that notion. Creighton was a former state legislator and authored the bill that banned DEI initiatives at Texas schools. 

Creighton told the Times that there was “quite a bit of garbage in curriculum” and that his AI-fueled course review efforts “will produce the best curriculum in America. I also believe it will be a national model when we’re finished.”

Or, conversely, it will make Texas Tech a school exclusively for conservatives, with students who want a more well-rounded, less ideologically driven education looking elsewhere. 

There’s this idea that education has moved more to the left, when the reality is that people and politicians have moved more to the right. Race, gender, and sexuality aren’t abstract concepts; they’re things that exist in the real world and play a role in how society operates, whether we like it or not. A school simply acknowledging facts such as “trans people exist” and “the federal government has marginalized non-white groups throughout American history” is not a sign of wokeness gone awry. It’s simply acknowledging reality. 

Giving the Texas Tech curriculum such a steep ideological bent only makes students less competitive when they enter the real world. Creighton argued that universities have long been unfair to conservative ideas, which could be true, but swinging so strongly in the opposite direction really isn’t much better for students. 

If Creighton really thinks that conservatives have a stronger set of ideas, then he shouldn’t be afraid of those ideas being challenged. Eliminating any opposing viewpoint simply because it makes you uncomfortable is straight snowflake behavior. 

SEE ALSO:

Texas Tech Sued Over Rule Limiting Teaching Of Race And Gender

Black Texas Tech Student Expelled, Arrested For Mocking Charlie Kirk’s Death

Texas Tech Using AI To Eliminate Courses Conservatives Disagree With [Op-Ed] was originally published on newsone.com