Cars travel on Cooper Street through the heart of the UTA’s where enrollment is up 28 percent over 5 years ago.
FortWorth
The University of Texas System Board of Regents will meet Wednesday during its quarterly meeting to discuss a policy that will decide how universities are allowed to teach “controversial topics” like race, gender and LGBTQ areas of study.
The University of Texas System, which includes University of Texas at Arlington and UT Dallas, decided to vote on guidance on teaching such topics after the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents passed a similar ordinance late last year. Professors at A&M are now required to have their course syllabuses reviewed by department heads.
Several A&M syllabuses have been rejected for including course content related to race and gender theory, the Star-Telegram previously reported. One professor’s syllabus was rejected for including readings from Plato. Another had his class canceled just days before the spring semester for failing to submit his syllabus for review.
According to the UT Board of Regents meeting agenda, university leaders believe the guidance will “foster classroom cultures of trust in which all students feel free to voice their questions and beliefs, especially when those perspectives might conflict with those of the instructor or other students.” The guidance would also prohibit professors from including course material that is not considered “relevant” to the course.
“In the classroom, instructors must be careful stewards of their pedagogical responsibilities and classroom authorities and must endeavor to create a classroom culture of trust,” the ordinance reads. “Instructors must not attempt to coerce, indoctrinate, harass, or belittle students, especially in addressing controversial subjects and areas where people of good faith can hold differing convictions.”
If the ordinance on guidance passes Wednesday, UT System professors will be prohibited from teaching undisclosed material that is not clearly relevant and grounded in the topic of that course. If a course does include controversial and contested issues, professors must maintain a balanced approach and discussion. University leadership would be responsible for determining what is considered relevant.
Like Texas A&M, UT system schools would review syllabuses during a curriculum review period and make a determination on when controversial material is necessary. Texas A&M’s new similar policy has caused friction between the university and a number of faculty members.
Graduate professor Leonard Bright, who said his class was canceled just days before its first session at the start of the current spring semester, said the school’s claim he did not follow necessary course review requirements was false. Bright also wrote in an X post that his colleagues and students found out about the school’s decision to cancel his class before he did.
“The message was clear: Be very afraid no one can save you from being censored at Texas A&M,” Bright wrote on X.
Bright is also the president of A&M’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a group that protects faculty’s academic freedom. Bright has loudly shared his concerns about A&M’s course review process since it was passed, including a statement after another A&M professor was told to remove class readings last month.
Texas A&M announced last month it was ending its women’s and gender studies department after currently enrolled students complete their degree. The university wrote in a statement at the time that six courses were being canceled because of the “controversial topics” guidance.
On Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors wrote in a news release that it urges the UT System Board of Regents “in the strongest terms” to reject the proposed guidance.
“The policy restricts the freedom of instructors to respond to student questions on past and current events, bring new breakthroughs and innovations into the course, and challenge the students to think about what could happen in the future,” AAUP wrote in the release. “In order for students to have the freedom to learn, instructors need the freedom to teach.”
This story was originally published February 17, 2026 at 8:52 PM.
Samuel O’Neal is a local news reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram covering higher education and local news in Fort Worth. He joined the team in December 2025 after previously working as a staff writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He graduated from Temple University, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the school’s student paper, The Temple News.
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian spent a portion of his Monday press conference making a bold proclamation about the importance of his team’s victory against Alabama, with the first College Football Playoff rankings of the 2023 season dropping in less than 24 hours.
Sarkisian reminded the world that his team defeated then No. 3 Alabama at Bryany-Denny Stadium nearly two months ago. He didn’t hide his feelings about the triumph over his former employer.
“I haven’t shied away from this: I think we’ve got a pretty good football team. I’d argue we have the best win in the country right now,” Sarkisian told reporters. “The fact that we go into Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and beat a team that was 52-1 in the previous 53 games going in there.”
Sarkisian also took a jab at Southeastern Conference, where his team will play starting next season.
“I hear so much about how tough the SEC is,” Sarkisian said. “But I haven’t seen any of those teams go into Alabama and win either, so I feel pretty good about our team.”
Head coach Steve Sarkisian of the Texas Longhorns celebrates with the team after the game against the Brigham Young Cougars at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on October 28, 2023, in Austin, Texas. Tim Warner/Getty Images
Texas is 7-1 and ranked No. 7 after Saturday’s 35-6 win against BYU. The Longhorns won the game against BYU despite missing starting quarterback Quinn Ewers. Maalik Murphy got the start while Ewers was recovering from a shoulder injury. Murphy had two touchdown passes and one interception in the win.
“We’re a very versatile team,” Sarkisian told reporters. “We started our backup quarterback against a 5-2 team and won 35-6. We get another opportunity this week to play with our backup quarterback. Not every team out has had to endure what we’ve had to. If they had their backup, how would they play?”
Several teams would likely counter Sarkisian’s claim that the Longhorns win against Alabama is the best this season. No. 3 Ohio State would point to its wins against Notre Dame and Penn State. No. 5 Washington’s win against Oregon was an impactful game in the Pac-12 and beyond.
No. 10 Oklahoma, who lost shockingly last week to Kansas, had a big win against Sarkisian’s squad when Texas was ranked third. Of course, Sarkisian could use the Oklahoma loss to Kansas and the Sooners’ win against his team to demonstrate the strength of the Big 12 this season. There are five teams, including Texas, tied with 4-1 conference records.
“As the league is starting to bear itself out, we’re starting to find out that I think our league is probably a little stronger than people gave it credit for in early September,” Sarkisian said. “And there’s a lot of teams playing really good football, and maybe some of these other leagues aren’t quite as strong as people were giving them credit for at the start of the year.”
Texas faces Kansas State this week. The Wildcats (6-2, 4-1) are ranked No. 25 in the latest AP Poll after beating Houston 41-0. Sarkisian isn’t sleeping on the Wildcats, nor are the oddsmakers. Texas is a four-point favorite, according to Monday’s odds on BetMGM Sportsbook.
“Our league is tough,” Sarkisian said. “You’ve got to make sure that your team is ready to play because, as we’re finding out, there’s a lot of teams that have an opportunity to compete for a conference championship.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
While many universities are proud to talk about how they fight climate change, some also invest in and accept donations from the same oil companies that drive global warming. Experts and students are calling those schools hypocritical and are demanding change.
CBS News’ “On the Dot” environmental series investigates the scope of the problem, starting with the University of Texas System, which collected $2.2 billion in oil and gas royalties last year.
Drill ‘Em Horns
When it comes to sustainability, the UT Austin campus promotes itself as a leader among universities by reducing emissions and waste, conserving energy and water resources and building green buildings.
“I still want to give credit to the university for taking action on reducing emissions on campus. But that’s only a small part of the picture,” said Ella Hammersly, a student and climate activist at the university.
The bigger picture comes into focus hundreds of miles from the Austin campus, in the Permian Basinoil fields of West Texas, where 30% of the America’s oil is drilled. That’s where the UT System owns 3,000 square miles of property.
On the property energy companies lease land, extract oil and gas and pay royalties to the university system, which includes Austin and 12 other locations.
Oil revenue has helped make the University of Texas the richest public university system in America, with an endowment of $42.7 billion, according to a report by The National Association of College and University Business Officers. Number two is the Texas A&M System, with $18.2 billion, which also gets a cut of oil royalties from university properties in West Texas.
The scope of the emissions that come from burning the oil and gas drilled on university land has never been calculated before.
Oil wells dot the landscape on a plot of land owned by the University of Texas system in West Texas.
For this story, CBS News asked the McGuire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University to run those numbers for the first time and found those emissions are 20 times higher than they are on campus.
“UT has a sustainability symposium every year. We have a sustainability master plan. All of these things are going on while at the same time billions of dollars are being invested into oil and gas,” Hammersly said.
Under Texas law, the money generated from oil and gas royalties is primarily used for campus construction projects across the state. Less than 1% goes toward financial aid.
UT student activist Anya Gandavadi says it’s time to update the law and its emphasis on oil profits.
“I think that investing in the future of the country, in the world, involves taking into account what science says, what people say, what communities say are hurting them and rewriting those laws,” she said.
For the world to limit the worst effects of climate change, nations will have to drastically reduce their carbon emissions. The International Energy Agency, a global group with a mandate of ensuring energy security, in 2021 called for an end to investment in new oil and rapid transition to renewable energy sources.
That’s not happening on university property in the West Texas oil fields where new lands are being leased and new wells are being drilled.
Dr. Michael Mann, climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a critic of the fossil fuel industry, is calling for change, even in Texas.
“What more influential message would it send if the flagship university of one of our most fossil fuel-driven states, Texas, were to take true leadership when it comes to the clean energy transition? It would impact the entire conversation here in the United States and around the world,” Mann said.
The University of Texas system declined to be interviewed for this story and provided this statement:
“The oil and gas production in the Permian Basin is responsible in large part for the United States’ remarkable energy independence, and it is a strategic national resource that would be tapped regardless of ownership.
Through ownership of the University Lands, beginning with the Texas Constitution of 1876, royalties received by the University of Texas System and the Texas A&M System have positively impacted millions of people who have benefitted from historic investments in financial aid, faculty support, teaching, research, medical buildings and more.”
While the university does lease some land for wind and solar farms, those projects account for 0.2% of its 2022 revenue from university property. Mann believes that the state of Texas, blessed with wind, sun and wealth, can and should lead on America’s energy transition.
“So that little sliver has to become the full thing. It has to become 100% and they need to move dramatically away from using that land to worsen the climate crisis, to using that land to make a profit in helping lead us down this path of clean energy,” he said.
University research and fossil fuel donations
A university doesn’t have to own its own oil fields to benefit from the fossil fuel money. Many schools, including Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, accept donations from oil and gas companies to support climate change research.
Between 2010 and 2020, Stanford accepted $56.6 million in donations from oil and gas companies, according to research by the progressive think tank Data for Progress. That puts Stanford in the Top 10 of universities accepting fossil fuel donations.
June Choi is a PhD student who came to Stanford to study at the new, $1.7 billion Doerr School of Sustainability. She was angry to learn the school would accept funding from fossil fuel industry partners.
“A total contradiction,” she called it.
In response, Choi and other students and faculty created a group called the Coalition for a True School of Sustainability and protested last year’s ribbon-cutting celebration at Stanford’s Doerr School.
“We were kind of crashing the party, really. And there was just so much energy. So, it created a lot of excitement,” she said.
Mann, at Penn, says when universities accept fossil fuel company donations for climate change research, it can cast a positive light on the very industry that’s at the root of the problem.
“[The fossil fuel companies] are purchasing the name Stanford University, and that is worth a lot to a fossil fuel industry that’s trying to purchase credibility. ‘Hey look, we’re trying to solve the problem and we’re working with the greatest universities around to do so,’” he said.
Protesters at Stanford believe their efforts have led to a more open dialogue with the university about the funding of research through donations from fossil fuel companies.
Philippe Roberge
What the Stanford activists want is a university ban on those donations, like the policy Princeton University in New Jersey was the first and only university to implement in 2022. Princeton created a list of 90 fossil fuel companies from which it will not accept donations.
In a process called dissociation, Princeton targeted companies involved in the “most-polluting segments of the industry” and a history of spreading “corporate disinformation” about climate change.
The biggest corporation on the list is ExxonMobil, which says it had donated $12 million to Princeton. In a statement to CBS, ExxonMobil wrote: “Close collaboration between industry and academia is essential to finding practical solutions to climate change.”
Princeton’s policy allows for companies to re-associate with the university in the future if they can meet the school’s criteria.
“And that’s great because then the university is really in a position to say, look like we are really constructively engaging with these companies and contributing to shifting the needle on their actions, Choi said.
The work of student organizers at Stanford is beginning to pay off. The university, which declined to be interviewed for this story, recently formed a committee to “review fossil fuel funding of research.”
“It’s a very positive sign, because that is exactly the beginning of a transparent process that we’ve been asking for,” Choi added.
Exiting fossil fuel investments
Many large institutional investors, including universities, buy stock in fossil fuel companies. In a nationwide movement, 50 universities or university systems have exited those investments. It’s a process called divestment.
Rutgers University is the largest state university system in New Jersey. After years of pressure from students and faculty, Rutgers announced in 2021 that it would permanently sell off those investments.
“I think you’re seeing increasingly universities becoming uncomfortable trying to pursue revenue streams in these industries that they know are punishing the earth,” Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said.
Six universities have fully exited their investments: Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University, Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan.
One has partially exited: University of Pennsylvania.
Three maintain their fossil fuel investments: Notre Dame University, University of Texas and Texas A&M University.
At Rutgers, a committee of faculty, students and staff helped create a divestment policy that put an end to all investments in fossil fuels, moved those investments to environmentally friendly index funds which actively seek investments in renewable energy.
“If we don’t do this work for the future that we’re not going to see, the one thing we know is the future will be worse. We know that. So, if we know that, don’t we have an obligation to do something about it? I think we do,” Holloway said.
Embattled Republican Congressman George Santos has been assigned to two House despite growing calls for his resignation amid questions about his finances and background. The University of Texas at Dallas has joined a growing list of post-secondary schools in that state blocking access to TikTok on campus WiFi. And the world’s oldest known person has died at 118. French nun Sister André– passed away peacefully at her retirement home.
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