New Reports Paint Texas as Ground Zero for Conservative College Takeover

Back in 2019, a Pew Research Center survey warned that over the prior four years, conservative Americans had increasingly lost faith in the United States’ higher education system. Nearly 60% of Republican-leaning adults reported that college campuses were having a negative impact on the country, even as Democratic support for the institutions remained stable. 

2025 saw Texas Republicans mount a campaign to take back the Lone Star State’s campuses for conservatives. It’s a plan that has been in the works for years, a result of that mounting conservative distrust in higher education, a series of new reports suggests. 

“Texas is targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a social media post in October. “We must end indoctrination.”

What Happened in 2025? 

While Texas universities have slowly dismantled offices and programs dedicated to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion since 2023, this year saw a ramp-up in the pressure on colleges to comply with conservative mandates. A recent poll by the student newspaper The Daily Texan found that 40% of faculty respondents are changing their syllabi or teaching to comply with state legislation.

This spring, the Texas A&M system, the University of Texas system and the University of North Texas system each enacted bans on drag performances, citing executive orders issued by President Donald Trump and Abbott that outlawed “gender ideology” and enshrined the belief in the existence of only two genders. The bans inspired backlash from students and performers, and the UNT system later lifted its ban. Meanwhile, the Texas A&M ruling was struck down by a federal appeals court, which found the ban to be a violation of students’ First Amendment rights. 

Individual educators also faced backlash for alleged noncompliant behavior. In September, a Texas A&M English professor was fired after a student published a video to social media that appeared to show the teacher discussing gender expression in the classroom. State Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, stoked anger over the video on social media, and Texas A&M President Mark Welsh III was eventually pushed by the university’s Board of Regents to resign after Welsh was captured on video defending the teacher. 

A Texas State University professor was fired this fall after a video surfaced of him speaking at a socialism conference, and Republican representatives called for the firing of educators at UNT after a video was posted online showing students in a classroom discussing the murder of Charlie Kirk. 

“If you can’t behave in a civilized fashion either as a student or a TA/prof, you should not be working at or enrolled in our public universities,” said state House Rep. Andy Hopper on X. Attorney General Ken Paxton called out the video and launched his second investigation of the month into the Denton school, claiming his intention to rid the university of its “violent radical leftists.” 

Most recently, the Texas A&M and Texas Tech University systems approved plans that restrict curricula related to race and gender. Leaders at both universities have warned that educators may face disciplinary action for failing to adhere to the new standards. 

A Plan in Motion 

One of this year’s most high-profile attacks on higher education was the forced resignation of A&M University’s president, Mark Welsh III. However, according to recent reporting by The Texas Tribune, Welsh’s downfall was a long time in the making. 

Thousands of pages of emails and interviews with dozens of people familiar with the university’s climate told the Tribune that Abbott was concerned that Welsh was not conservative enough back when Welsh was named to the interim president role in 2023. That year, Texas legislators passed the ban on DEI in higher education, one of the first major wins in the push to make colleges more conservative. 

The Tribune found that, over the last decade, Abbott and other major Republicans across Texas have pushed for the Board of Regents at each Texas university to have greater control over campus operations. The governor appoints regents to serve six-year terms, and every regent currently serving in a Texas public university system has been appointed by Abbott. 

Documents uncovered by the Tribune suggest that Welsh was not as amenable to the Board of Regents as Abbott would have expected. 

“If a regent calls me and says, ‘Hey, I really am worried about this,’ I’ll say, ‘Thank you for the call,’” Welsh told the Faculty Senate back in 2023. “But I’m not going to call the department head and tell them who to hire.”

While tension between Welsh and the Board (and, by extension, Abbott) simmered over the next few years, the start of 2025 saw Abbott calling for the university president’s firing over social media. As this year’s legislative session convened, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick threatened the university’s funding until Welsh agreed to veto the creation of a course titled “Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies.” Then, this fall, as Republicans grabbed hold of the classroom video on gender, Welsh was told to resign or be fired. 

“WE DID IT! TEXAS A&M PRESIDENT IS OUT!!” Rep. Harrison posted to social media. 

The New York Times contests that, while Republican-led states like Florida and Alabama have championed early conservative involvement in education, Texas is now leading the pack, and Welsh is just one example of the type of influence that conservative state leaders can have over university campuses. 

In October, Trump asked several universities to join the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, which would introduce international enrollment caps and freeze tuition raises, while also requiring universities to define sex as only the biological male and female genders as determined by one’s reproductive organs. The Trump administration suggested that signing the agreement would give universities priority for funding and grant programs, but many declined to join. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, Dartmouth College and Brown University all rejected the offer. 

The University of Texas, though, never said anything at all. The deadline to join the compact passed on Nov. 21, and UT failed to offer a yay or nay. A request by Inside Higher Ed for public records related to the university’s decision on the compact was appealed to the attorney general, who can help block the release of records. 

While the university has resisted speaking publicly about the offer, UT System Chairman Kevin Eltife wrote that the university would “welcome the new opportunity presented to us and we look forward to working with the Trump administration on it.”