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By Diego Ramos / Original to ScheerPost
A professor at Texas A&M University was forced to remove Plato readings from his syllabus after a crackdown on academic freedom in the university system and Texas at large. Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at the university, fell victim to a proposal adopted in November that limits teaching “advocat[ing] race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Campus presidents, in accordance with the new measure, are required to sign off on courses that fit this description as well as those related to sexual orientation or gender identity. According to a report from The Texas Tribune, the university “had identified roughly 200 courses as potentially affected by policy restrictions.”
For Peterson, his story has garnered national attention after his syllabus was reviewed and his department head, Kristi Sweet, gave him two choices — either remove “the modules on race ideology and gender ideology, and the Plato readings that may include these,” according to a New York Times report, or teach another course.
In an interview with the Times, Peterson expressed, “A philosophy professor who is not allowed to teach Plato, what kind of university is that? Is that really what they want?”
Peterson blames the Board of Regents for implementing an “absurd” policy, one, he says, that can be easily reversed. “There is no state law that requires us to censor Plato. The policy could be dropped tomorrow if they chose to do so — and I very much hope they will,” Peterson wrote in an op-ed for MS NOW.
The course in question, Philosophy 111, or Contemporary Moral Issues, featured Plato’s “Symposium,” and sought to teach “representative ethical positions and their application to contemporary social problems,” according to a syllabus found online.
The university has responded to several outlets, including the Tribune, which reported: “A&M said the decision did not amount to a ban on teaching Plato and that other sections of the same course that include Plato — but do not include modules on race and gender ideology — had been approved.”
The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Todd Wolfson, issued a statement on Jan. 12 regarding Peterson’s situation, stating,
“Silencing 2,500-year-old ideas from one of the world’s most influential thinkers betrays the mission of higher education and denies students the opportunity to engage critically with the foundations of Western thought… A university that censors Plato — as well as other significant texts — abandons its obligation to truth, free inquiry, and the public trust… A college or university of this sort harms its students, faculty, and traditions, and consequently can no longer be regarded as a serious institution of higher learning.”
The incident follows a chilling trend in Texas academics, where legislation such as Senate Bill 37 and Senate Bill 17 have served as harbingers for future crackdowns on academic freedom. The former, which went into effect in the summer of last year, “grant[s] political appointees unprecedented oversight of the state’s public universities,” according to The Tribune.
Furthermore, the bill, according to the Legal Defense Fund, “transfers curriculum authority from faculty to politically-appointed governing boards, converts elected faculty senate positions into appointed positions, and strips faculty of their due process rights during the disciplinary process.”
Senate Bill 17, which went into effect in early 2024, forced universities to close their diversity, equity and inclusion offices, curb diversity training and overall reduce campus resources relating to DEI.
The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas, Austin, published a series in 2024 that focused on the impact of the bill on campus, highlighting stories of how the bill’s provisions affected students and student organizations across the university.
“It just sucks that a couple of legislators thought a group of students of color coming together and creating safe spaces for each other was a threat,” William Ramirez, vice president of the Student Government at the time, said.
The Daily Texan also ran a survey to see how faculty would respond to the incoming changes and found,
“Out of 434 faculty who answered a Daily Texan survey question, about 40% agreed or somewhat agreed that they changed their syllabi or teaching approach to avoid potentially violating the new law.”
In a report on SB 37, the New York Times highlighted student responses that all reflect negatively on the bill’s passing.
“There’s this large looming fear on campus,” Mia Reballosa, a junior majoring in government, said to the Times. “I take classes that are supposed to be about politics, and a lot of professors are scared to even apply anything we learn to the modern day.”
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Diego Ramos
Diego Ramos, ScheerPost Special Projects Editor and New York bureau chief, is a journalist from Queens, NY. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He has previously worked at BuzzFeed News and was managing editor of Annenberg News at USC. He’s covered and researched myriad topics including war, politics, psychedelic research and sports.