The Department of English at Texas Christian University is looking for a new professor. The job posting lists the desired areas of expertise: "trans rhetoric, Black studies, antiracist rhetoric, disability studies, global/transnational rhetorics, feminism, queer rhetorics." The position starts August 2027.
The word "Christian" is right there in the university's name. It's on the letterhead. It's on the buildings. Apparently nobody in the hiring committee looked up.
This isn't a standalone posting from a rogue gender studies department. TCU's gender and race studies departments were just collapsed into the English department due to budget issues and low enrollment. Students didn't want the courses. So instead of letting the market speak, TCU folded the ideology into a department students actually need — rhetoric and composition — and started hiring for it there.
The strategy is worth understanding. You can't force students to major in gender studies. But you can require them to take English. And if the English department's new hires specialize in "trans rhetorics" and "antiracist rhetoric," the students get the curriculum whether they signed up for it or not.
Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, put it plainly. "TCU's job ad for a rhetoric and composition professor reads like a DEI loyalty test," he said. "Students in rhetorics and composition should learn how to write clearly, build an argument, use evidence, and handle grammar."
He wasn't finished. "Universities keep staffing writing programs with political activists and then wonder why graduates can't produce a coherent sentence."
DeAngelis also noted what should be obvious: "'Trans rhetorics' does not belong on the hiring criteria for a writing professor. Parents and students deserve instruction in literacy, not another faculty search built around gender ideology."
TCU isn't just hiring activists for its English department. The university's affiliated Brite Divinity School — a seminary — previously sought a Biblical scholar with a background in "gender and sexuality studies, womanist, feminist, queer, postcolonial, postmodern, and racial/cultural studies." A divinity school. Looking for a queer postmodernist to teach the Bible.
Charisma Peoples, an ambassador with Project 21, responded to the Brite Divinity posting directly: "Divinity schools should exist to train pastors, not produce progressive academics."
The school's own faculty aren't exactly hiding the ball. In a video released earlier this year, TCU Professor Aesha Johnson was asked about the university's Christian identity. Her answer: "I think we are very progressive." She also acknowledged that TCU is not, "in a lot of ways," Christian in practice.
A professor at Texas Christian University saying the school isn't really Christian. On camera.
When TCU spokesman Greg Staley was asked about the trans rhetoric posting, his response was three words: "I'll look into it." That's the institutional version of hoping a story goes away over the weekend.
The job listing also mentions connections to TCU's Gender Studies program, Ethnic Studies program, Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Digital Culture and Digital Analytics. For a rhetoric and composition hire. In the English department. At a Christian university.
The enrollment numbers already told TCU what students thought of standalone gender ideology programs. The budget already told them what the market would bear. They heard both messages and found a workaround.
