Texas Christian University to sunset race, gender studies departments

November 28, 2025

Texas Christian University (TCU) has announced that it will be shuttering two race and gender studies departments at the end of the academic year, after enrollment in the programs plummeted.

The Christian Post reports that TCU will close its Department of Women & Gender Studies and the Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies in June 2026.

A spokesperson for the Fort Worth-based university said the decision to end the departments was based, in part, on low enrollment numbers rather than simple politics.

According to TCU, less than a dozen total students were enrolled as majors in its Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies and Women & Gender Studies, as of fall 2025.

In the Women & Gender Studies program, students are taught concepts such as “social construction of gender, sex, and sexuality, intersectionality, [and] privilege and oppression” along with instruction on how to “create and execute activist projects focused on social justice.”

Meanwhile, the Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies department page states that it aims to “decolonize higher education” and educate students for the purpose of “ending various systems of oppression in every facet of our shared society.”

TCU says that all faculty, major and minor students, and classes will be moved to the oversight of the English department once the departments are dissolved next year.

In April, the school eliminated its Office of Diversity and Inclusion and removed any related content from its website.

The university’s Burnett School of Medicine and Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences have removed their DEI pages as well.

According to the Christian Post, shortly after Trump took office in January, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a ban on DEI in all state agencies, mirroring Trump’s executive order on DEI.

Photo: top, Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Amymay52/Public Domain