‘Big Brother’ looms large as Texas A&M cancels ethics course

On 14 January, an email from John B Sherman, dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University (TAMU, College Station, Texas), announced the cancellation of Professor Leonard Bright’s graduate seminar, Ethics in Public Policy.

Bright, Sherman told the Bush School Team, had been “asked repeatedly to provide information on his planned instruction on the topics identified in System Policy 08.01. He declined to provide this information, which made it impossible for us to request an exemption”.

System Policy 08.01, which came into force last December, says that “no system academic course [that is, core courses] will advocate [for] race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” but allows that in limited “circumstances upon demonstration of a necessary educational purpose” the dean may allow graduate courses in some disciplines to teach race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

The cancellation of Bright’s course came a week after TAMU banned the teaching of Plato’s Symposium in Professor Martin Peterson’s Contemporary Moral Issues course because the 2,500-year-old text ran afoul of the same regulation, as University World News reported last week.

The text includes a speech about the myth of Androgyny, purportedly written by the comic playwright Aristophanes, which not only depicts homosexuality as natural but also says that in the mythic past, there were three genders: male, female, and a combination of both.

Banning Plato drew criticism from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

“Censoring Plato is an academic absurdity and a textbook violation of academic freedom. Barring a foundational philosopher who is a cornerstone of Western thought because his work touches on race or gender is a blatant attempt at thought policing that will not survive legal scrutiny.

“This is a direct attack on professional integrity and a clear-cut breach of constitutionally protected academic freedom,” said AAUP President Todd Wolfson in a press release.

An article in Rolling Stone Magazine on the issue opened with a scathing attack: “The crackdowns on ‘wokeness’ and ‘liberal indoctrination’ in American higher education reached a ridiculous new low last week when a philosophy professor revealed that Texas A&M University objected to him including one of history’s most revered minds on a course syllabus.”

In an email to University World News, PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, its Sy Syms managing director at the US free expression programme, characterised the cancellation of Bright’s ethics course as “just the latest casualty of this chilled climate.

“So much for academic freedom or education that challenges, inspires, or promotes critical thinking. Texas A&M doesn’t seem to want that reputation. Instead, they are setting new standards for the institutionalisation of censorship, full stop”.

New ombudsman portal

At the same time as Peterson, Bright, department heads and deans were emailing back and forth, Texas’s new State Ombudsman Portal went live. The portal, effectively a digital “snitch line”, gives students, faculty, other university staff and the public an easy way to inform state authorities that a course or professor has violated Senate Bill (SB) 17 or SB 37.

“The new ‘portal’ for reporting professors in Texas is not about accountability – it’s about government censorship. It doesn't promote viewpoint diversity; it promotes surveillance. And it will not just be used to monitor college teaching but to intimidate and chill the topics faculty raise in the classroom.

“Ironically, inviting students to report their professors like this will more likely narrow the education they receive, rather than improve it,” he wrote in an email to University World News.

Passed in 2023, SB 17 forbids diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in employment and admissions and forbids diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training. SB 37 does not forbid teaching of “race, gender or sexual ideologies”; rather, it gives institutions the power to end shared governance by centring power in boards and presidents appointed by Texas governor Greg Abbott, a conservative Republican whose administration has vied with that of Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis in its eagerness to crack down on what both call “woke ideology”.

Accordingly, following the dissolution of its faculty senate last December, TAMU rewrote its regulations, which now state: “No system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

SB 37 also established the Office of the Ombudsman, an Orwellian use of the word ombudsman. This ombudsman is not “a neutral third-party resource to help people navigate … the university or community college to find out what resources they need to resolve some issue they’re having”, said Brian Evans, the Engineering Foundation Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-A).

Rather, “Texas has set up a new investigatory arm, a new compliance office that is misnamed the Office of the Ombudsman.

“This [office] is [about] compliance and is investigatory,” Evans continued. “They have the jurisdiction to investigate with full civil investigatory authority. They can interview witnesses. They can subpoena records. Basically, they can act like a district attorney would, with all the civil investigatory powers of a district attorney.”

The ombudsman is under no obligation to tell a faculty member that they are under investigation or to afford them the opportunity to present evidence.

“There’s the investigation, their findings and the penalty, which is presented to the faculty member without any due process,” said Evans.

Evans suggested that the move to ban Plato and cancel Bright’s class at the beginning of semester may be tied to pressure generated by the confluence of the portal going live and the firings of TAMU English professor Melissa McCoul and Texas State University (San Marcos) history professor Thomas Alter II.

Alter was fired after the university became aware of a video of him speaking at a virtual socialist conference, at which, according to Fox 7 (Austin), the “university accused Alter of inciting political violence and calling for the overthrow of the US government”. Alter claimed he was lauding the “proud tradition in America of civil disobedience and opposing unjust laws”.

McCoul was fired after a student in her summer children’s literature class secretly videoed her saying that there were more than two genders. Her case is especially important, Evans explained, because TAMU’s internal investigation led to the removal of the provost and dean from their positions, as TAMU’s then president, General (Ret) Mark Walsh III posted on X on 8 December.

Abbott reposted Walsh’s post under the words: “Good. Now, fire the professor who acted contrary to Texas law” – which Walsh did.

However, Evans explained, the firing of McCoul was not enough to staunch the firestorm ignited by the video of McCoul that had gone viral. Less than a week after firing her, Walsh himself was forced to step down because, Evans told University World News, “he didn’t move fast enough to fire her”, making her case a stark lesson for Texas university administrators.

Teaching vs advocating

The emails* to and from Bright’s department head, Dr Lori Taylor, Sherman and Maria Escobar-Lemmon, executive associate dean, show that Bright refused to support seeking an exemption to allow him to “advocate” for two reasons.

First, as he told University World News, “I’m not advocating” but, rather, “teaching”. In his email to Taylor on 12 January, he emphasised that: “The course does not engage in advocacy as defined” by the regulations, that is, “requir[ing] students to hold, affirm, or renounce belief, nor does it penalise their views” because “students are evaluated on analysis, not belief”.

“This is a graduate course,” Bright said. “We have adults in this room who want to come and have these conversations. I may give my own professional judgement as it relates to the course since students routinely ask, ‘You know, Doctor, what do you believe?’ And I will say, again, this is my view in this contested area.

“This course isn’t about agreement, about them quoting my or anybody else’s opinion. It's about them analysing, debating, applying what they think,” he said.

Bright’s syllabus specifies: “Students are not expected to agree with the instructor’s perspectives, and respectful disagreement and critical engagement are explicitly welcomed.”

To apply for an exemption on the basis of “advocating” would have meant, as he told his students the first morning of the class, lying about the course and his actions, he told University World News.

“I told them I was not going to lie,” said Bright. “I mean, for God’s sake, I’m teaching ethics and public services. I’m going to be truthful about what the course is and does.”

The realities of graduate-level instruction

The second key issue the emails Bright shared with University World News lay bare is the administration’s apparent fundamental misunderstanding of how a graduate discussion seminar unfolds.

The administration repeatedly asked him to indicate precisely when and in which classes he will be talking about race, gender and sexuality, something he says is impossible since these topics will be talked about throughout the course when they come up.

One of the more curious emails is one from Escobar-Lemmon written on 13 January, which Bright characterises as her playing the ‘good cop’. She begins by saying how she understands that “students ask questions and current events spark discussions that are unforeseen at the start of the semester”.

She goes on to write: “Given that, help me help you: I know that what the dean is asking for is an identification of the days on which you plan to introduce topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Are there readings that discuss this which you will build on in lecture [and] discussion day that would allow for clear identification of this taking place on those days?”

Bright responded: “I appreciate your recognition of the realities of graduate-level instruction … However, as I have previously answered to Dean Sherman, the topics of race, gender and sexuality will be addressed throughout the course as relevant to the subject matter (emphasis in the original).

“I have no further response. I look forward to the final decision on this matter, so I may prepare my next steps.”

The following day, Sherman wrote to the Bush School Team cancelling the course.

The email “threw me under the bus and completely misrepresented what that discussion was. He described me as basically uncooperative, refusing to answer the questions, refusing to be clear on why I’m discussing these topics.

“He says he’s not censoring anything. He just can't approve it [the syllabus because of state regulations]. This is just a back way of trying to now creatively justify how he’s going to censor this class,” said Bright.

A no-win situation for professors

According to Evans, TAMU’s regulations and those in the Texas Tech University system put professors in a no-win situation. Given that it is impossible to write a syllabus that can anticipate all issues that could be raised in a class, what do you do if a student asks a question about race or gender or both? he asked rhetorically.

“You have to think, has this been approved or not? I probably don’t know. Do you have the conversation, risking noncompliance with your university policies and your system policies, which would now incur progressive discipline up to termination?

“Or I can leave the classroom and let the students have the discussion. Or do you shut it down and say: ‘We can’t talk about that, I’m sorry. I’ve not been pre-approved by the administration to talk about that topic’?”

Were a student to be discomforted by such an unplanned discussion that the professor chose to lead, that student could file a complaint through the ombudsman portal.

“The portal sets up the idea,” said Bright, “that if a professor does something that the student can claim has injured their ideologies, their beliefs, making them hold beliefs or shaming them, they can report this.”

Further, he explained, a student could take it that you endorsed a particular viewpoint because you may have given an extra reading on it. This could even be seen as creating a “hostile classroom environment”.

According to TAMU’s regulations, such claims come under the purview of the university’s civil rights division.

“They have the power to summarily fire you based on a quick investigation, and ther are no requirements on how they go about the investigation,” said Bright.

Class cameras

Had Bright chosen to apply for the exemption to ‘advocate’, for example, for ‘gender identity’, how could university officials verify that he was doing so in the second part of the class scheduled to meet on 29 January and then again in the second part of the class of 5 February only?

Bright’s answer was right out of George Orwell’s 1984.

“They have cameras in every classroom.”

Ostensibly these cameras record the class so that professors can send a link to students who either want to watch the class again or who missed it. Professors have control of the camera’s direction and [can] split the screen when doing a Zoom session, for example.

“But, I’m telling you that I have seen the camera move, and it wasn’t me [controlling it]. I’ve seen it move around my classroom, and then the blue light comes [which indicates the camera is recording], and I know someone’s watching. They can watch our classes in real time,” he noted.

Making light of the surveillance state he teaches in and his students learn in, Bright said sometimes when he sees the blue light, he tells his class: “Oh, wave to the camera.”

* These letters were provided to University World News by Professor Bright. University World News reached out to Texas A&M but no response was received at the time of publication.