On Thursday, November 13th, the Texas A&M Board of Regents brought common sense back to College Station. The board unanimously approved revisions to university policy by mandating that faculty must seek approval before teaching a class or using materials pertaining to gender or race ideology. These changes provide guardrails for university instruction at a time when public trust in higher education is very low. In order to understand why this change was necessary we must look at how race and gender ideology are defined and how this change has been perceived by professors and professional academic organizations.
The Board of Regents defined race ideology as
a 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.
The response from faculty has bordered on the hyperbolic. Miranda Sachs, Texas A&M Assistant Professor of European History told the board that these restrictions will make it impossible for her to teach about the Holocaust, the state-sponsored murder of six million Jews. Sachs is wrong on two levels. First, the policy does not say what can and cannot be taught. Second, unless Sachs is teaching that it was not the Nazis, but white people as a whole who were responsible for the Holocaust, she need not be concerned.
The Board of Regents defined gender ideology as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.” The Board of Regents was not saying that faculty could not teach gender as a social construct. Gender is certainly influenced by society, but there are also biological and psychological explanations that should also be considered. The wording of the policy does not prevent faculty from discussing these various factors. What it should prevent is nonsense like that peddled by the World Health Organization, which writes, “women and girls face greater risks of unintended pregnancies [compared to men and boys], sexually transmitted infections including HIV, [and] cervical cancer.” Women face greater risk of unexpected pregnancies and higher rates of cervical cancer because men can’t get pregnant and don’t possess cervixes. Perhaps even this is allowable in the classroom, but the Board is stipulating that faculty teaching controversial theories must seek the approval of the CEO in advance.
American Academy of University Professors President, Todd Wolfson, has argued that
Texas A&M is effectively sacrificing free inquiry and the open exploration of ideas to a narrow, restricted partisan ideological perspective. In essence, this is an attempt at thought control. This will lead to classroom censorship of the free exchange of knowledge at Texas A&M, which will do great damage to the educational value for students.
Wolfson’s principled defense of academic freedom would be more believable had the AAUP’s flagship journal, Academe, not just published an article by Lisa Siraganian titled “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity.” For a full rebuttal of the partisan concerns and Siragian’s essay, see Samuel J. Abrams piece at Minding the Campus.
Professors, professional organizations, and publishers have all failed in their responsibility to maintain non-partisan norms in teaching and scholarship. Professors have enjoyed tremendous academic freedom, but some have used it to advance a political and social agenda instead of doing their duty. When one misuses their academic freedom, they don’t get to fall back on their “right” to academic freedom. This is like a person complaining that they had their license revoked after they got caught driving drunk.
At a time when faculty fear backlash from politicians and online pundits, Texas A&M’s new policy protects both the institution and the faculty member. Indeed, faculty who seek this approval and receive it, should expect the full support of the institution in the event of a public controversy. This would be a substantial improvement over the tenuous protection that tenure offers faculty in the 2020s. It is incumbent on college boards and academic administrators to remind faculty that their freedoms flow from their duties. Moreover, collaboration between regents and faculty will be necessary to identify the proper order of duties and freedoms. Indeed, such collaboration is the only way to restore public trust in higher education.
John M. Kainer is Associate Professor and Department Chair of sociology at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, and an affiliated scholar with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. His work has been featured in a variety of scholarly and popular outlets, including First Things, The American Spectator, Minding the Campus, Catholic Social Science Review, the Journal of Sociology and Christianity, and William James Studies. You can follow him on X@JohnMKainer.
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