Texas A&M’s Board of Regents in November banned race and gender ideology “advocacy” from classrooms. Credit: Shutterstock / University of College

The Texas A&M professor ordered to remove some of Plato’s teachings from a philosophy course informed the school he’ll replace the censured readings with one dealing with free speech and academic freedom, a screenshot of an email circulating online shows.

Instead of Aristophranes’ myth of the split humans and Diotima’s Ladder of Love, Texas A&M professor Martin Peterson will now instruct the students in his Contemporary Moral Issues class to read “Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato,” a news article that ran in the New York Times this week about Peterson’s conflict with the school.

A screenshot of Peterson’s response to the public university’s censorship is being widely circulated online, including by academics Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics and Professor Justin Caouette of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Peterson’s class became the subject of headlines this week after he was instructed by the head of Texas A&M’s philosophy department to remove certain Plato readings from his syllabus because they included “race ideology and gender ideology.”

Texas A&M has since clarified that the school hasn’t banned all of Plato’s teachings, just those that violate new rules passed by the Board of Regents in November, which ban race and gender ideology “advocacy” from the classrooms without prior approval.

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Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...