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Courses that \u201cadvocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity\u201d now require presidential approval at Texas A&M system campuses, the system Board of Regents decided Thursday. <\/p>\n
Faculty members and external advocacy groups say the new rules violate academic freedom, and for many professors, questions remain about how the policies will be implemented and enforced. Approved in a unanimous vote after a lengthy public comment period, the policy changes fit a pattern of censorship at Texas A&M that escalated after a video of a student challenging an instructor about a lesson on gender identity went viral, leading to the instructor\u2019s firing and the resignation of then-president Mark Welsh. <\/p>\n
Dan Braaten, an associate professor of political science at Texas A&M San Antonio and president of the campus American Association of University Professors chapter, said he was shocked \u201cat the egregiousness\u201d of the policies, but not surprised by them.<\/p>\n
\u201cFaculty are extremely worried,\u201d Braaten said. \u201cThey\u2019re wondering, can they teach the classes they\u2019re scheduled to teach in the spring? Who\u2019s going to be looking at their syllabi?\u00a0\u2026 Is the president of each A&M university going to have to approve every syllabus? Are there penalties for any of this? It\u2019s just a complete\u00a0\u2026 serious violation of academic freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The board approved the new rules as revisions to existing system policies. A policy on \u201cCivil Rights Protections and Compliance\u201d will be amended to state that \u201cno system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity unless the course is approved by the member CEO.\u201d It will also define \u201cgender ideology\u201d as \u201ca concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, \u201crace ideology\u201d is defined as \u201ca concept that attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity, accuse them of being oppressors in a racial hierarchy or conspiracy, ascribe to them less value as contributors to society and public discourse because of their race or ethnicity, or assign them intrinsic guilt based on the actions of their presumed ancestors or relatives in other areas of the world. This also includes course content that promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity, rather than academic instruction.\u201d <\/p>\n
A previous version of the revision proposed that no system academic course will \u201cteach\u201d race or gender ideology, but the verb was changed to \u201cadvocate\u201d before the policies were presented formally to the full board. It\u2019s unclear how the system will differentiate between advocacy and regular instruction on these topics. Representatives for the board on Wednesday declined to comment on the policies ahead of the board vote. They did not respond to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s questions after the policies were approved.<\/p>\n A second policy on \u201cAcademic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure\u201d previously stated that \u201ceach faculty member is entitled to full freedom in the classroom in discussing the subject that the faculty member teaches, but a faculty member should not introduce a controversial matter that has no relation to the classroom subject.\u201d The approved amendment adds that faculty members may not \u201cteach material that is inconsistent with the approved syllabus for the course.\u201d<\/p>\n In a partially redacted Nov. 10 email obtained by Inside Higher Ed<\/em>, a Texas A&M faculty leader said that administrators at several universities were already discussing implementation plans ahead of the board vote. An administrator also told the faculty leader that the changes to the policy would not likely lead to a formal syllabus-approval process and instead are intended to keep course content aligned with learning outcomes.<\/p>\n The board received 142 written comments ahead of Thursday\u2019s vote, and eight faculty members spoke out against the policy changes during the meeting\u2019s public comment period. Several of them also called for Melissa McCoul, the professor fired in September, to be reinstated. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is not university-level education, it is cruelty and political indoctrination in wolf\u2019s clothing,\u201d said Leonard Bright, a professor of government and public service and president of the Texas A&M College Station AAUP chapter. \u201cI would need to tell my students that \u2018What you came here to learn, I\u2019m unable to tell you, because I\u2019m restricted to tell you that information, even though such knowledge is available at every major university in this world.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Sonia Hernandez, a liberal arts professor who teaches about Latin American history, shared a past example that highlighted the pitfalls of the new policies.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a student once who took issue with my discussion of the importance of military history. He was against war and felt strongly about war\u2019s damaging effects on society, yet it was full academic freedom\u2014not cherry-picking of topics, not advocacy, not ideology\u2014that allowed me to share research on the intersections of war and identity with my class,\u201d Hernandez said. <\/p>\n Two faculty members\u2014finance professor Adam Kolasinski and biomedical engineering professor John Criscione\u2014spoke in favor of the policy changes. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think somebody should be able to say that Germans born two generations after the Holocaust somehow bear guilt for the Holocaust, because that\u2019s really what\u2019s being prohibited here,\u201d Kolasinski said. \u201cMy colleagues seem to think that the policy says something it doesn\u2019t.\u201d Kolasinski also suggested the board change the language back from \u201cadvocate\u201d to \u201cteach.\u201d<\/p>\n AAUP president Todd Wolfson urged the board to reject the proposed policy changes in a statement Tuesday. So did Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the AAUP, which includes faculty at Texas A&M campuses. <\/p>\n \u201cBy considering these policy changes, the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents is telling faculty, \u2018Shut up and teach\u2014and we\u2019ll tell you what to teach,\u2019\u201d Evans said in the statement. \u201cThis language and the censorship it imposes will cause irreparable harm to the reputation of the university, and impede faculty and students from their main mission on campus: to teach, learn, think critically, and create and share new knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n In a Monday statement, FIRE officials wrote, \u201cHiring professors with PhDs is meaningless if administrators are the ones deciding what gets taught\u00a0\u2026 Faculty would need permission to teach students about not just modern controversies, but also civil rights, the Civil War, or even ancient Greek comedies. This is not just bad policy. It invites unlawful censorship, chills academic freedom, and undermines the core purpose of a university. Faculty will start asking not \u2018Is this accurate?\u2019 but \u2018Will this get me in trouble?\u2019 That\u2019s not education, it\u2019s risk management.\u201d<\/p>\n Also on Thursday, the board discussed a detailed, systemwide review of all courses using an artificial intelligence\u2013driven process. The system has already piloted the review process at its Tarleton State University campus, where most of the courses that were flagged are housed in the College of Education, which includes the sociology and psychology departments, the Nov. 10 email from a faculty leader stated. Board members said they intend to complete the course review regularly, as often as once per semester. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Texas A&M system is stepping up first, setting the model that others will follow,\u201d Regent Sam Torn said about the course review at Thursday\u2019s meeting. <\/p>\n The system will also use EthicsPoint, an online system that will allow students to report inaccurate, misleading or inappropriate course content that diverges from the course descriptions. System staff will be alerted when a student submits an EthicsPoint complaint, and if the complaint is determined to be valid, it will be passed along to the relevant university.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Courses that \u201cadvocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity\u201d now require presidential approval at Texas A&M system campuses, the system Board of Regents decided Thursday. Faculty members and external advocacy groups say the new rules violate academic freedom, and for many professors, questions remain about how the policies will be implemented and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[19127,10122,13086,19128,176,1010],"class_list":{"0":"post-33395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-advocate","9":"tag-approval","10":"tag-courses","11":"tag-ideologies","12":"tag-requires","13":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}AI-Driven Course Review<\/h2>\n