Professors sue Texas A&M System over limits on teaching race, gender

Four professors and a national faculty group asked a federal judge Monday to block the Texas A&M University System’s restrictions on teaching about race, gender and sexuality and to reinstate courses canceled under the policy.

The university system bars professors from “advocating” race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. The policy applies to all 12 universities in the system. It requires presidential approval to address those subjects in certain courses and, according to the lawsuit, prohibits them in core courses.

The lawsuit asks the judge to rescind instructions requiring professors to remove particular readings or subjects and declare the policy unconstitutional. The professors and faculty group allege the restrictions violate the professors’ First Amendment rights and are so vague that faculty cannot determine what they may teach without risking discipline. They want the judge to restore courses removed from the core curriculum and prevent the regents from imposing similar restrictions.

The American Association of University Professors brought the lawsuit alongside four professors: Texas A&M professors Leonard Bright, Vanita Reddy and Landon Sadler and Tarleton State University professor Aaron George. They are represented by the ACLU of Texas, the national ACLU and the Houston law firm Yetter Coleman. They sued the system’s regents in federal court in Houston.

“We believe this lawsuit is without merit, and the system will vigorously defend its policies and procedures,” Chris Bryan, the system’s vice chancellor for marketing and communications, said in a statement. “The A&M System remains focused on the important work of supporting our students and fulfilling our duty to the state.”

Chloe Kempf, an ACLU of Texas staff attorney, said the policy censors discussion of the rights and identities of Texans who have historically faced discrimination.

“What’s more, it undermines all of Texans’ First Amendment rights,” Kempf said. “If public officials can abuse their power to ban these topics and perspectives today, there’s nothing stopping them from targeting other subjects and points of view, including your own, down the line.”

The lawsuit is the second filed in less than a month challenging restrictions on what professors may teach. The National AAUP and Texas AAUP-AFT sued Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the system’s regents on July 8 over limits involving race, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Unlike the Texas A&M case, the Texas Tech lawsuit was brought by two faculty groups rather than individual professors and challenges two directives issued by Creighton.

The Texas A&M restrictions came after months of upheaval in College Station that began after a student secretly recorded her confrontation with a professor over a lesson on gender identity last summer. A Republican state lawmaker then posted the video on social media that fall, fueling conservative outrage over what the university was teaching.

Then-President Mark A. Welsh III, who initially defended the professor, fired her after the video went viral. He resigned days later amid Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s criticism of his handling of the controversy. Chancellor Glenn Hegar subsequently ordered a systemwide review of courses.

Texas A&M regents first adopted the policy in November and revised it in December. The regents defined “race ideology” as concepts that shame a race or ethnicity, assign people guilt based on their ancestry or promote racial activism instead of academic instruction. 

They defined “gender ideology” as the idea that a person’s gender identity could replace biological sex and that biological sex has less value or legitimacy. 

They did not define what advocacy was. 

Regent Sam Torn said at the time that the board left it to university presidents to determine the difference between teaching and advocacy. 

“What we’re doing is pretty simple,” Torn said. “It’s not as complex. We’re simply making sure that we do educate, and we’re simply making sure that we teach what the course syllabus specifies that we teach.” 

The policy allows professors to teach the restricted subjects in non-core and graduate courses only if they establish a “necessary educational purpose” and receive the university president’s written approval. The lawsuit argues that because the policy does not define “necessary educational purpose,” administrators have sweeping discretion to decide meets that standard.

The rules also shifted as professors tried to comply, according to the lawsuit.

Early guidance allowed professors to teach the restricted subjects in graduate courses without approval and to advocate them with presidential approval. A later FAQ barred advocacy altogether and required approval merely to teach the subjects in graduate and non-core courses. It prohibited teaching them in core courses.

After the policy took effect, professors submitted syllabi for review. Some were told to change their courses or teach something else. In one example, administrators told a professor to remove readings from Plato’s “Symposium” from a philosophy course to continue teaching it as a core course, or instead teach a different philosophy course that would not fulfill a core requirement.

Texas A&M officials have said the university still teaches Plato and have emphasized that only six of more than 5,400 courses reviewed were canceled in the spring, but the lawsuit argues that the cancellations alone understate the policy’s effects.

Bright, president of Texas A&M’s AAUP chapter, had his graduate seminar on ethics in public policy canceled in January, three days after the spring semester started, because he could not identify every class meeting in which sexual orientation might arise during discussions. Bright told administrators that he did not advocate for a particular position.

The lawsuit alleges the policy continues to affect courses planned for the fall. Texas A&M canceled an LGBTQ literature course that Reddy and Sadler were scheduled to teach this fall and required Sadler to remove the Academy Award-winning film “Moonlight” and a poem titled “Trans-Generation” from another course. Administrators allowed him to show “Barbie,” the complaint says.

At Tarleton State, administrators ordered George to remove “The Gay Manifesto” and Kevin Kruse’s book “White Flight” from a history course, while not flagging a reading by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly opposing equal rights for women, according to the lawsuit. The professors and AAUP argue that the contrast shows the policy allows certain viewpoints while censoring others.

The lawsuit also alleges Tarleton officials used an artificial intelligence-powered platform to screen syllabi and told professors that courses containing words such as “gender,” “diverse,” “bias” and “ethnicity” would receive extra scrutiny.

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