One More Reason Curmie Is Glad He's Retired: So He Doesn't Have to Deal with Crap Like This

Regular readers of this blog will know that Curmie is a retired professor who taught for two decades at a state university in Texas.  He taught theatre, mostly the “academic” stuff like theatre history and play analysis.  As mentioned in a previous post, he taught plays and essays by a wide range of authors: some concentrated on race, others on gender, others on sexual orientation.  He showed a video of the Noble Call of Irish drag queen Panti Bliss after a performance at the Abbey Theatre. 

Some authors were communists; others were monarchists.  Their religious beliefs were Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or… you know, atheist.  Some wrote realism; others wrote anti-realism; others a hybrid.  Many wrote before the concept of “realism” existed except as mimesis, the “imitation of an action.”  Outside the classroom per se, Curmie directed at least three plays (As You Like It, The Breasts of Tiresias, and A Servant of Two Masters) which involved cross-dressing in one form or another, and at least three others in which a role written for a man was played by a woman.  Curmie’s job was to bring as much of the depth and breadth of theatre to his students as he could, to broaden their horizons, and ultimately to turn them loose on the world, whether they chose to pursue a career in theatre or not.

He was, and is, something of an intellectual snob: not in the sense that he believed himself to be the authority on all things theatrical, but in the confidence that he knew what material needed to be covered in a theatre history course or a topics course on Asian theatre or Non-Realism Between the Wars at least as well as, and probably better than, anyone up the food chain, certainly better than anyone more than one step up.  He was lucky enough to have deans and provosts who stayed out of his way, and department chairs who may have given the occasional piece of advice, but never commands.  And partisan political hacks would do well to steer clear.

Was Curmie further emboldened by being granted tenure and further by reaching the point where he could retire as opposed to resign if things got too problematic?  Yeah, probably.  But he also remembers a moment in grad school when some idiot state legislator (there’s another kind?) demanded that the university submit a list of all the courses that contained any reference to homosexuality.  Curmie’s solution, articulated in a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper, was simple: send the asshole a copy of the course catalog.  You might be able to strike a math course here or there, but the chances that Pythagoras engaged in activity that would now be called homosexual conduct at some point in his life are actually pretty high.  Besides, the demand was for a list of those courses, not for only those courses, and it we wouldn’t want to inadvertently leave something out, now would we?

Anyway, yesterday was an interesting day in the world of 1st Amendment rights for university professors.  On the one hand, Darren Michael, the Austin Peay State University theatre prof who was fired for posting a link to an article about Charlie Kirk’s argument that the 2nd Amendment was worth preserving even at the cost of a few lives, settled his lawsuit with the university.  As Curmie predicted, he got his job back along with $500k and a couple other goodies.  (Curmie didn’t predict the amount, but he knew it would be substantial).  All told, it was a nice FAFO message for the Austin Peay administration.

On the other hand, we also learned of Martin Peterson, a Philosophy professor at Texas A&M being essentially told that he’d either have to stop teaching Plato in his Contemporary Moral Issues course or be re-assigned to a different course, one that meets at 8:00 a.m.  Well, that’s slightly over-stated.  He’d have to skip the parts of Plato that some idiot state legislator (or weenie dean, or whoever) believes are icky.  As usual, Gentle Reader, please excuse the redundancy of both “idiot state legislator” and “weenie dean.”

Two essential points here: First, Texas A&M is a state institution, which means that the 1st Amendment cannot be circumvented just because a university administration or state legislature wants to do so.  Second, this isn’t some grad student in charge of this course.  Dr. Peterson is not merely a Full Professor; he’s got an endowed chair.  His MA and PhD are from Swedish universities, and he taught both in Sweden and in the Netherlands before accepting his position at A&M.  Oh, and he was a Research Fellow for three years at some place called Cambridge University.  Curmie is pretty sure he’s heard of that one.  If this man says that a particular reading from Plato is essential to his course, Curmie is going to believe him.  Nor are we talking about some obscure writing of Plato’s: it’s the Symposium, which is hardly a minor work.  Of course, Peterson is also the Chair of the Academic Freedom Council at A&M, which makes him an especial target for the censorial asshat brigade.

Professor Peterson dutifully submitted his syllabus for what he called “mandatory censorship review.”  That probably didn’t win him any points with… well, with the censors, but his description is apt.  There is a new policy adopted by the Board of Regents, declaring that “No system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”  Peterson is politic enough not to mention that forbidding discussion of race or gender ideology is in fact a means of advocating a position on those issues: that the social conservatives’ dogma and suppression of other viewpoints should be unquestioned.  Curmie, you will have noticed, Gentle Reader, is not similarly politic.

What Dr. Peterson does argue is that his course “does not ‘advocate’ any ideology.”  Rather, he “teach[es] students how to structure and evaluate arguments commonly raised in discussion of contemporary moral issues.”  No reasonable interpretation of the word “advocate” would suggest that Peterson should be forced to alter his course in any way.  Of course, Professor Peterson also cites a litany of legal precedents in support of his contention that the system policy in question is unconstitutional.  Needless to say, he’s right about that, too, but it probably did him more (short term) harm than good to point out that the emperor was in a state of deshabillé.

Texas, of course, has a terrible record with respect to 1st Amendment guarantees, especially during the regime of Grand Censorial Poobah Governor Greg Abbott.  There was the illegal suppression of student protests at the University of Texas in the spring of 2024; Angelo State’s banning of discussion of discussions of transgender issues and the spread of that attempt at thought control throughout the Texas Tech system; West Texas A&M’s ban on drag shows (subsequently ruled unconstitutional); the ongoing investigations of anyone deemed insufficiently hagiographic in describing Charlie Kirk; the horrific SB37, which restricts curriculum and radically reduces the faculty’s input into decision-making; and SB2972, which is downright silly, and so on.  And on.  And on.

Texas A&M itself, of course, was the site of a major contretemps last fall.  Here’s Curmie’s description (it’s the first link in this essay): “a single narcissistic and reactionary student circulated a surreptitious video of challenging a professor for including a discussion of verboten (by Trump/Abbott) topics like gender identity and transgender people.  A grandstanding pol got involved, and soon the professor was fired, the dean and department chair demoted, and the president at the very least under fire.”  This is not what universities are supposed to do.

And now there are perhaps as many as 200 Spring ’26 courses at A&M that may be subject to censorship, lest the cherubim hear something that challenges their ignorance.  Dr. Peterson’s case is the tip of the iceberg. 

The good news is that every free speech and academic organization you can think of is all over this story.  Here’s FIRE: “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.”  And PEN America: “Censoring classical texts in service of political orthodoxy is antithetical to the goals of education. Universities exist to engage students in difficult inquiry and not to suppress ideas just because they make some uncomfortable.”  And the AAUP: “A research university that censors Plato abandons its obligation to truth, inquiry, and the public trust—and should not be regarded as a serious institution of higher learning.”  You get the idea, Gentle Reader.  Curmie, of course, is honored to join the chorus.

So, you may well ask, what is going to happen to Professor Peterson’s course?  Curmie was rather hoping that the good prof would sue the university, its president, its regents, Greg Abbott, and anyone else he could think of.  After consultations with his lawyer, however, Dr. Peterson has decided to revise his syllabus.  Instead of the readings from Plato, he’s going to substitute an article from the New York Times which deals with contemporary moral issues.  Its title: “Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato.”  

Well played, Professor.  Well played.