COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — The Texas A&M University System’s Board of Governors on Thursday required professors to get approval from the president to discuss some topics related to race and gender, tightening the rules months after a video went viral. students facing the instructor The flagship campus was thrown into chaos over her class.
The new policy applies to all 12 schools in the system, including Texas A&M, one of the nation’s largest universities.
The new policy states that academic courses “will not advocate topics related to race or gender ideology, or sexual orientation or gender identity” without prior approval from the dean.
The new policy appears to be the first time Texas’ public university system has set rules for what faculty can talk about race and gender topics in the classroom. Other Texas university systems are also imposing limits on classroom instruction and starting internal reviews of course offerings in response to the new state law.
Critics of the new policy argue that it hinders teachers’ ability to teach, undermines academic freedom, and could be a violation of First Amendment rights.
Lana Jaleel, chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Academic Freedom, said the A&M system’s new policies “get to the heart of what education means and what universities do: circulate the exchange of knowledge without fear of reprisal or censorship.”
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Various universities and their presidents across the country harvard university, Columbia,and University of Virginiahas come under intense scrutiny this year from conservative critics and President Donald Trump’s administration. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Practice And the school’s response to it Campus protests.
last month, President Trump questions nine major universitiesincluding the University of Texas at Austin, agreed to a variety of regulations, including excluding race and gender from admissions decisions, accepting the government’s strictly binary definition of “male” and “female,” and promoting conservative views on campus.
The new policy defines “racial ideology” as “a concept that seeks to shame a particular race or ethnicity and blame them as oppressors in a racial hierarchy or conspiracy,” or “a concept that imposes on them an inherent sense of guilt based on the actions of their presumed ancestors or relatives.” The policy defines “gender ideology” as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity that replaces and is separate from the biological category of sex.”
“The goal is not to police individual speech, but to document a transparent co-curricular review,” Texas A&M University Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs James Hallmark told regents.
In approving the policy, regents did not mention that Melissa McCall, a senior lecturer in the English department at Texas A&M University, was fired in September after a video surfaced of her arguing with a female student over gender identity being taught in a children’s literature class. McCall’s firing came after political pressure from Republican lawmakers, including Governor McCall. Greg Abbott.
Immediately after McCall was fired, then-Texas A&M president Mark A. Welsh III, resigns. He did not give a reason for his resignation, but he and the school came under political pressure and criticism, including from Mr Abbott, after the video was posted on social media.
Leonard Bright, president of the A&M chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said he believes McCall’s lawsuit opens the door for the university system to implement the policy.
“Our job is to teach the facts and teach the truth. If we have to use a litmus test of meeting someone’s approval, which frankly could be a political approval, then we don’t have the truth,” Bright, a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Civil Service, told The Associated Press ahead of the conference.
At Thursday’s meeting, eight Texas A&M professors and instructors, including Mr. Bright, opposed the policy, and many called on the regents to rehire Mr. McCall.
Two A&M professors, including Treasury Secretary Adam Kolasinski, spoke in favor of the policy, saying they did not believe the policy would violate academic freedom. “Academic freedom does not mean you can teach whatever you want.”
Regent Sam Tone said the policy was being put in place to “ensure we educate rather than defend”.
A Texas law that prohibits K-12 schools in the state from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity went into effect on September 1st. This law does not apply to universities and other higher education institutions.
Texas A&M is located in College Station, approximately 153 km (95 miles) northwest of Houston.
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