Overview
- Texas A&M’s Board of Regents approved a policy in November, tightened in December, that bars courses from advocating race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity unless pre-approved as upper-level with a necessary educational purpose.
- This week, a philosophy chair directed Professor Martin Peterson to remove two Plato readings and modules on race and gender from his Contemporary Moral Issues class or face reassignment, and he complied.
- Peterson replaced the scrapped material with lectures on academic freedom and free speech and said he has not ruled out filing a lawsuit.
- FIRE and PEN America urged the university to reverse course, with FIRE labeling the policy and its enforcement unconstitutional and describing the intervention as undue administrative control over pedagogy.
- Texas A&M says Plato will still be taught in other sections and that core syllabi are under review, with reported spillover effects including a canceled sociology course on race and ethnicity and guidance against core literature with major LGBTQ plotlines.