Southern Methodist University seems like a rarity in higher education.
Students consider SMU to be politically balanced or more conservative, according to Niche, and the school has an “average” free speech climate, according to a survey from College Pulse and FIRE. The school attracts conservative donors like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his wife Suzanne Youngkin, an alumna. The Dallas school’s motto is “Veritas Liberabit Vos,” or “The Truth Will Make You Free.”
It also has an ostensibly religious nature and is well-known in Christian theological circles. It displayed the world’s earliest, most complete 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible in April. It has also produced several Republican political figures including former First Lady Laura Bush, Sen. Rick Scott, and the late Sen. John Tower, and it is home to the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
But when SMU embraced left-wing demands in the turbulent summer of 2020, it opened the door to critical theory in the forms of race and sexuality. The school has since allowed this unorthodox ideology to begin creating an internal structure of enforcement.
“SMU’s fight against racism and discrimination must be enacted as a university-wide effort, not a mere student concern,” reads a letter of demands from the school’s Black Unity Forum, sent in late summer of 2020.
SMU’s Board of Trustees responded with a Sept. 18, 2020 letter encouraging university President Gerald Turner and the administration to make progress on meeting many of the group’s demands.
The group’s demands included mandatory training to “persistently educate those who
