Texas A&M Dean and Department Head Removed over Faculty Member Teaching about Gender
A student, her cell phone, and yet more authoritarianism in contemporary America.
Via KBTX: A&M Dean removed following student complaints over curriculum.
A Texas A&M professor under fire by university, state, and federal leaders is under investigation after a student in her class raised concerns over the topic of gender studies in the curriculum.
The matter was shared first on X by Texas Representative Brian Harrison, an Aggie, who added a cell phone video of the exchange between a student and Dr. Melissa McCoul.
The issue revolves around a course on children’s literature that included a discussion about gender and queerness in children’s literature. I can infer that the course was in the English Department, and I am unclear if it was intended for English majors, Education majors, or was a general studies level course.
Here’s the student’s video (and the thread has slides from the class). I would note that Harrison is equating LGBTQ studies/discussions of gender outside of boy/girl to be “indoctrination.” The fact that the Department Head put “(she/her)” in her signature line is treated as a massive gotcha!
(Link to tweet if embed isn’t working).
So, we are at the point where a student can record a faculty member saying something that the student doesn’t like, cite an Executive Order, and say that what the professor is teaching is “illegal” because Trump said that there are only two genders, so that’s that. The Leader has spoken! Also, the topic offends the student’s beliefs.
The notion that something can be “illegal” to speak about in a college classroom is, I must admit, a bit of a gut-punch to me as an university-level educator, especially when the alleged legality of the matter is a proclamation from a singular ruler and about a subject that is not some universally abhorrent practice or widely accepted illegal action, but is a point of social and political contoversy.
Given time, I could probably conjure topics that might, in fact, be worthy of the kind of treatment we are seeing here. But it requires the outlandish, like, “Now, class, I am going ot teach you how to drug girls so you can rape them. Please take notes, as the final exam will require six rapes for an A.” You know, it’s just chemistry and biology!
Again, the topic of gender is not such a category. It is a legitimate topic that is a matter of social and political disagreement. This is precisely the kind of thing academic freedom, and more widely the First Amendment, is supposed to protect.
But, here we have a student, in all of her early-twenties (if not younger) certitude, acting as if the word of the president is the law of the land, disrupting class in hopes of disrupting the lives and careers of adults because her “beliefs” give her the righteous energy to do so.
Now, the Dean of CAS and the Department Head of English have been taken out of their administrative jobs.
(Link to tweet if embed isn’t working).
There may be details about how A&M produces and utilizes course descriptions in ways that I am not privy to, but in my experience, they tend to be anodyne little paragraphs that provide the basics and cannot, by definition, be comprehensive. This is just a pretext, but it is a pretext that would likely allow any class to be attacked. No course description, nor for that matter any syllabus, will tell you everything that will be said/discussed in a class.
It is also possible to infer that maybe the Dean and Department Head had been trying to shield faculty from what they rightly saw as infringements on academic freedom, and are being removed as a result.
I also suspect that A&M’s President is reacting to the political climate created by Trump and Governor Abbot. The continued politicization of universities continues. I would hasten to add (before someone tries to counter something along these lines) that universities have always been steeped in politics, which is different than politicizing them the way the Trump administration (and some governors) are doing. That, yes, teaching about gender is, at least on one level, inherently political. But that is different than the government saying what is “proper” to teach or not in this micro a fashion.
And let me address the charges of “indoctrination.” The people trying to force an agenda here are the politicians. They are the ones using the power of the state to enforce our beliefs, and we will punish you if you don’t comply. This is a far cry from a professor and her PowerPoint slides.
This is not, by the way, “limited government,” nor is it respecting free speech. This is classic authoritarian use of the state to block ideas that those in power do not like. It is also, yet again, an amazing set of behaviors from a group of people who like to deride “cancel culture” and make fun of the “snowflake” libs who want “safe spaces.”
Forget providing trigger warnings and being concerned about others; they want to just force everyone to conform to their preferences.
Allow me to note that I taught for almost thirty years, and the notion that because I said something in a classroom meant that the students accepted it, understood it, and would faithfully repeat it back to me is laid waste by the fact that the exams I graded never averaged 100% (indeed, far from it).
As the joke goes, we can’t get them to read the syllabus, so the notion that college students are just empty-headed zombies waiting for notions to be poured into their heads is utterly absurd. And getting them to read the weekly, assigned texts? Forget about it.
But, sure, indoctrination!
Parents who want their children to go to college and never encounter any challenging ideas and never change their minds about anything are the ones who want those students to remain children, enthralled to whatever their parents taught them.
I am relieved not to be teaching courses on political theory or comparative democracy in the current climate. Honest, expert assessments of the current administration might have gotten me in trouble as well.
Are we going to allow (or have we already allowed) our university classrooms to be surveillance states wherein the professors are afraid to say something that might not be approved by Dear Leader?
When the President is allowed to have unilateral power over federal grants, he has too much power, which will make university presidents kowtow. When administrations and faculty members have their livelihoods threatened, many will be silent.
This is America in 2025.
And if you think, “What’s the big deal about silencing the discussion of gender?” then you didn’t pay attention in history class (nor to the news over the last 8 months), because it never stops with just one unpopular thing.
More from the Texas Tribune: Video of clash over gender-identity content in Texas A&M children’s lit class leads to firings.
Emblematic of the “stupidification” of our American public. How did this student even make it into a university (of some stature) and not know that our President neither “has laws” (let alone exclusively his own laws) nor does the President make laws.
Here’s the deal: “indoctrination” cuts both ways. Somebody is going to be “indoctrinating” some perspective, some worldview to some audience especially in every single learning situation. We can indoctrinate binary gender definition, OR, we can “indoctrinate” the complexities that arise from the interplay of human genetics, psycho-dynamics, and social interaction as fully documented by our (once) expanding empirical inquiry.
However, the forced imposition of of the former (binary gender definition) is pure politically motivated chauvinism. The latter, open discussion of gender complexity and multiplicity, does not exclude or deny the binary gender experience. But the rightward side has decided to make this a win-lose cultural battle.
We function better as a society prepared to adapt to a demanding environment, if our educational processes are free to explore, examine, and discuss the vast array of incoming data that confronts our species. This allows us to build a repertoire of responses with which to draw upon for continued existence. It’s how we got this far.
Yes, 100%. And I hope the school gets sued. I am nervous about this particular Supreme Court understanding the First Amendment though.
I will be forever thankful that I got to attend college when thinking and challenging was encouraged.
If I were a member of that department, I think I would probably not be asked to step in as department chair, but if I were, I would refuse unless the highest person in the food chain assured me that I would not be asked to police the teaching of my faculty in the classroom, nor would I be held accountable for it on any basis rather than the traditional ones of, “are they showing up and doing something?”
Maybe a general strike at A&M. Maybe a one-day walkout. I would definitely participate in the latter. This is really, really bad.
The president has never, and should never, be able to dictate what gets taught in a classroom. If a parent wants that, send your kid to Bob Jones University.
Huh. That statement from the president of A&M has the whiff of pretext. How on earth do you expect one paragraph to tell you everything about what is in a course?
What it means, though, is that they know the actual reason is a non-starter.
@Jen: Not just “don’t like” but rely on opposing as a culture war issue to get elected.
Or a medical school teaching eugenics, at least the soft eugenics of MAHA*. Which seems less outlandish than inevitable.
Anyway, that student seems nice.
——
*: the premise is that America will be healthy if we let nature take its course with the sick people — no vaccines, etc. Healthy people don’t die from measles, after all. Or Covid.
I find it odd that a retired general with no experience in academia was regarded as a suitable person to head up a university department immediately after leaving the military, subsequently being appointed as president of the entire university. I find it even more peculiar that despite his prestigious current office, he continues to use his old rank and presumably expects people to address him as “General”.
@Ken_L: I think the rank immediately above general is “coach”, but maybe he hasn’t earned that title. /s
@Ken_L: It’s not that odd, particularly at a Senior Military College. Welsh wasn’t hired as head of the political science department, but as the dean of the Bush School of Public Service. A former Air Force Chief of Staff (and Air Force Academy Commandant and Vice Commander of Air Education and Training Command) was certainly qualified for that post. And retired generals are hired to head up colleges—and, again especially SMCs (Citadel, VMI, Norwich, TAMU, Va Tech, and North Georgia)—with some regularity. It’s mostly a fundraising and strategy job; provosts run the academic side of the institution.
@James Joyner:
This. Presidents “set a vision” and then are out trying to increase the endowment and navigate politics.
And all too often, they also explore other modes of revenue generation (and academic cost cutting) for colleges and universities–especially those without sustaining endowments (which is most of them).