Texas A&M System Sued Over Syllabus Review Policy That Restricts Race and Gender Ideology
“argues the policy that prohibits professors from advocating for race and gender ideology in the classroom is too vague and violates the professors’ First Amendment rights”
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is behind this lawsuit because, of course, they are.
The College Fix reports:
Texas A&M system sued over syllabus review policy restricting race and gender ideology
The American Association of University Professors has filed a lawsuit against the Texas A&M University System alleging its policy that limits leftwing ideology in the curriculum is illegal.
The complaint, filed Monday, argues the policy that prohibits professors from advocating for race and gender ideology in the classroom is too vague and violates the professors’ First Amendment rights.
“The censorship policy was implemented in November 2025 amid a sustained campaign to limit speech on certain topics in the college classroom,” an AAUP news release states. “As a result of the policy change, numerous classes have been cancelled or forced to remove content and the women’s and gender studies program has been shuttered altogether because the program could not be reconciled with the new censorship policy.”
Texas A&M’s system policy 08.01 states that no academic course “may teach race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity, unless the course and its materials are approved in advance by a university president.”
“The faculty impacted by this policy work throughout the Texas A&M system, which includes twelve universities, and across departments, from the Bush School of Government and Public Service to English departments,” the AAUP news release states.
The policy made headlines earlier this year after a philosophy professor at Texas A&M University said he was forced to remove sections about “race” and “gender ideology” – including readings by Plato – from his spring “Contemporary Moral Issues” class to comply.
The same policy was also cited in the university’s decision to cancel Professor Leonard Bright’s graduate course, “Ethics in Public Policy,” after he refused to make the syllabus changes Texas A&M leadership requested, as The College Fix previously reported.
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Comments
These policies are about finding ways to retire or fire the parasites with tenure rather than about issues regular Americans care about. They will find a way one way or another.
The question here is whether one believes in the principle of academic freedom. I assume that, as a professional academic, Prof J does believe in it. I don’t.
The principle is that at the university level, as opposed to primary and secondary schools, everyone understands and assumes that each instructor speaks only for himself and not for the school, and the opinions he expresses are his own. Therefore they are free to say whatever they like, and it’s none of the school’s business. They’re hired to teach a subject, but not to express any particular views, and they can teach that subject while inserting their own views whatever they happen to be.
The idea is that only in such an atmosphere of absolutely free inquiry and expression can the sum of human knowledge grow, or something like that.
The opposite view, which I agreed with more, is that the only reason the state is operating universities in the first place is to advance the public interest, and to raise a generation of patriotic citizens who will benefit society, and therefore it’s very much the government’s business what is taught there and how it’s taught. While a government can embrace academic freedom and let faculty say whatever the hell they want, it doesn’t have to do that. It can declare that regardless of what happens at other institutions, at this one the teachers speak for the school, and thus for the state, and therefore the employees who are hired to speak the government’s words can be required to do so.