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Texas A&M University System Regents on Thursday required professors to get approval from the school president to discuss certain race and gender topics, tightening the rules months after a viral video of a student confronting an instructor over his lessons sparked a major campus uproar.
The new policy will apply to all 12 schools in the system, including the flagship campus of Texas A&M, one of the nation’s largest universities.
The new policy states that no academic course will “advocate topics related to race or gender ideology, or sexual orientation or gender identity” unless previously approved by the campus president.
The new policy appears to be the first time that a public university system in Texas has created rules on what faculty can talk about in their classroom on topics of race and gender.
Other university systems in Texas have also banned classroom instruction or begun internal reviews of course offerings following the new state law.
Critics of the new policy say it will hinder faculty’s ability to teach, undermine academic freedom and may violate First Amendment rights.
Rana Jalil, chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Academic Freedom, said of the A&M system’s new policy, “It really strikes at the heart of what education means and what universities do, which is disseminate the exchange of knowledge without fear of retribution, without fear of censorship.”
Harvard, Columbia, and various universities across the country and their presidents University of VirginiaThis year conservatives have come under greater scrutiny from critics and the presidential administration. donald trump On diversity, equity and inclusion practices and schools’ responses to campus protests.
Last month, Trump asked nine major universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, to agree to various provisions, including a commitment to eliminate race and gender from admissions decisions, accept the government’s strict binary definition of “male” and “female” and promote conservative views on campus.
The new policy defines “racial ideology” as “a concept that attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity, accuse them of being oppressors in a racial hierarchy or conspiracy” or “assign them internalized guilt based on the actions of their supposed ancestors or relatives.” The policy defines “gender ideology” as “the concept of self-assessed gender identity that is replaced by and separated from the biological category of sex.”
James Hallmark, vice chancellor of the Office of Academic Affairs for the Texas A&M University System, told the Regents, “The goal is to be transparent and document cocurricular review, not control individual speech.”
In approving the policy, the Regents did not mention the September firing of Melissa McCall, a senior lecturer in the English department at Texas A&M University, after video was made public in which she argued with a female student over gender identity in a children’s literature class she taught. McCaul’s dismissal followed political pressure from Republican lawmakers, including Governor Greg Abbott.
Shortly after McCall’s termination, Texas A&M’s then-president, Mark A. Welsh III, resigned. He gave no reason for stepping down, but he and the school faced political pressure and criticism, including from Abbott, after the video was posted on social media.
Leonard Bright, president of the American Association of University Professors A&M chapter, said he believed McCall’s case opened the door for the university system to implement this policy.
Bright, a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School, said, “Our job is to teach the facts, to teach the truth, and if … we have to use a litmus test of whether or not it conforms to someone’s approval, and that obviously could be their political approval, then we don’t have any truth.” Government and civil service, he told the AP before the meeting.
During Thursday’s meeting, eight Texas A&M professors and instructors, including Bright, spoke against the policy, with several calling on the Regents to reappoint McCall.
Two A&M professors spoke in favor of the policy, including Adam Kolasinski of the Finance Department, who said he believed the policy does not violate academic freedom and that “academic freedom does not mean you can teach whatever you want.”
Regent Sam Torn said the policy is being created “to make sure we are educating, not advocating.”
A Texas law took effect on September 1 that prohibits Texas K-12 schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity. This law does not apply to universities and other institutions of higher education.
Texas A&M is located college stationAbout 95 miles (153 kilometers) northwest of Houston.
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