Greek philosopher Plato is under attack by Texas A&M as the state school ordered a professor to remove the foundational scholar’s writings from his curriculum or risk being reassigned to teach a different course.
Kristi Sweet, head of Texas A&M’s philosophy department, demanded in an email that Martin Peterson, a professor charged with teaching the “Contemporary Moral Issues” class, remove the Plato readings because they featured “race ideology and gender ideology.”
Sweet’s email began circulating online on Wednesday.
“I’m not picking a fight, I’m just doing my job,” Peterson told the Houston Chronicle. “I’m teaching contemporary moral issues. Some contemporary moral issues are related to sex and gender, race, etc. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I were to exclude those topics from my syllabus because they’re controversial.”
The battle over Plato comes after A&M’s Board of Regents in November passed sweeping reforms banning race and gender ideology “advocacy” in lessons without prior approval.
“This is what happens when the board of regents gives university bureaucrats veto power over academic content,” Lindsie Rank, director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, said in a statement.
Rank continued: “The board didn’t just invite censorship, they unleashed it with immediate and predictable consequences. You don’t protect students by banning 2,400-year-old philosophy.”
The readings specifically targeted by Texas A&M include Aristophanes’ myth of the split humans and Diotima’s Ladder of Love, in which Plato argues that there are more than two biological sexes and defends homosexuality, according to the Chronicle.
Peterson told the Chronicle the point of including the readings in the syllabus is not to teach students how to think, but rather, to teach them how to think critically and to formulate arguments supporting their point of view.
Peterson is now meeting with attorneys and considering litigation, the Chronicle reports.
Texas A&M’s fight over Plato is the latest battle brewing on a Texas campus over what educators are allowed to teach or even publicly state.
Earlier this week, the Texas American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit to block the state from investigating teachers’ remarks and social media posts following the assassination of right-wing media personality Charlie Kirk.
Meanwhile, at the University of Texas at Austin, 60% of the 437 faculty members who responded to a November Daily Texan survey said they have considered leaving the school due to Senate Bill 37, which directs state universities to increase curriculum oversight and restructure their faculty councils.
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