The Censorial Asshats at Texas A&M Are at It Again

Dr. Leonard Bright

Yes, there are probably more important stories to write about, but Curmie was a college professor for a very long time, and taught multiple courses in which topics related to race and gender figured reasonably prominently.  Curmie has already expressed his relief that he’s now retired, because now the university doesn’t have to fire him for thinking he knows more about what’s appropriate reading and/or discussion material for his course than some administrator too busy kissing the ass of grandstanding politicians to actually care about education does.

So, here we are again, because, as the title of this essay suggests, the censorial asshats at Texas A&M University are at it again.  And in some ways it’s worse than ever.  Yes, demanding the removal of a selection from Plato’s Symposium from a Philosophy course is probably stupider, but this one may show even less regard for the way universities are supposed to operate.  It’s bad enough, in other words, that Professor Leonard Bright’s graduate level Ethicsand Public Policy (PSAA 642) course was cancelled, but these idiots did so after the class had already met!

Dean John Sherman claims that Bright had declined repeated requests for more specifics about his course.  Bright says, quite reasonably, that issues of race, gender, and sexuality were likely to arise every day: “During discussions, book reviews, case studies, throughout the course. There is no one day. That’s how this class works.”  Well, duh.  Sherman, of course, had no relevant experience in an academic environment prior to being hired as dean, so, not to put too fine a point on it, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.  Curmie’s a reasonably smart lad, too, but you don’t want to put him in charge of a national security agency. 

Sherman is clearly far from stupid, but he is ignorant, and that may be even worse under these circumstances.  Let’s start with some basic facts.  First off, the more advanced a course is, at least outside the so-called “hard sciences,” the more it tends to be run as a seminar.  Students are actively engaged in discussing, debating, and interrogating course materials.  People who don’t understand how seminars work—and, unfortunately, this includes a good many university administrators—think this makes for a lesser load on the professor, even trying to claim that teaching a three-credit-hour seminar should count as less than three hours of courseload in lecture courses.  

In fact, of course, the opposite is true.  True, you do less of the talking, but you don’t know what direction a student wants to take the discussion, so you’d better be ready for anything.  That means more prep time and a greater need to clarify one’s own perspectives.  An analogy might be the difference between a speech (lecture) and a press conference (seminar).

Importantly, these are graduate students, who are curious by nature and both intelligent enough and scholarly enough to have been admitted to grad school at Texas A&M back when it was a reputable university (i.e., last year or earlier).  They’re going to ask questions.  They’re going to have, and state, their own opinions.  Even in the wet dreams of the Christian dominionists, there is no means to completely control what students say in a classroom.  The censors can claim that a faculty member’s mentioning the fact that gay people exist is somehow “advocating” for homosexuality, but they don’t have a rejoinder for a student who says, “I’m LGBTQ+, and this policy affects me in the following manner…” 

What is the professor to do in that scenario?  Sure, there’s an opportunity to open the floor for other student input, but what if there is none, other than perhaps a handful of nods in agreement?  Students deserve a response to their commentary, and they deserve to hear the professional perspective of a recognized authority (the professor), not some equivocation inspired by trying to obey an unconstitutional imperative.

In other words, Dr. Bright’s assertion that the verboten topics might arise in literally any class period is 100% accurate, and he would be compelled to respond.  Expecting him to be able to predict when and how often such conversations would happen is not merely unreasonable; it betrays a profound misunderstanding of how university coursework works, especially in advanced courses.  Yes, we can put much of the blame on the idiot state legislators (the usual apologies for redundancy) who passed SB37, but Sherman deserves plenty of criticism, too.

But that’s not all!  As Curmie wrote last October about the suppression of a high school play, “If you’re going to be a censorial asshat, at least be timely about it.”  As noted above, the course was cancelled after classes has already started!  Yeah, yeah, the university promises to help students find new classes, where, of course, they’ll already be behind.  If they as much as wrote their names on the inside cover of a textbook, they can’t sell it back to the bookstore for full price.  Most importantly, this was the course that best fit those students’ needs, which they chose, presumably in consultation with their advisors, for that reason.  It was the only ethics course to be offered in the department this spring.  Curmie won’t bother you with the obvious joke in that regard, Gentle Reader; he knows you can get there on your own.

There is precisely one legitimate reason to cancel a course after the semester has started: that the professor is unable to continue teaching it for reasons beyond the university’s control: serious illness, for example.  Clearly, that’s not the case here.  QED.

Oh, by the way, you know how Curmie mentioned in his blog post of January 8 that Dr. Martin Peterson, whose choice of a selection from Plato led to censorship, was the Chair of the Academic Freedom Council at A&M, “which makes him an especial target for the censorial asshat brigade”?  Well, the Texas Tribune article linked above reports that Dr. Bright, who is, by the way, a tenured Full Professor, also happens to be president of the Texas A&M Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, “a faculty group that opposes the system’s new race and gender ideology policy.”  What a coincidence, huh?  Dr. Bright argues that his “decision to speak out in defense of academic freedom and the integrity of higher education has clearly placed a target on [his] back.”  It is difficult to argue with that analysis.

Back when Curmie was teaching, he not infrequently expressed views that he freely admitted were not shared by the majority of theatre historians—about the motivations behind creating the Dionysian festival or about the demographics of Shakespeare’s audience, for example.  He made a point of explaining why most scholars thought the way they did, and why he disagreed.  He didn’t care which argument students regarded as more persuasive; he wanted them to think, to reach a conclusion based on all the available arguments.  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must believe Dr. Bright when he says that students are not expected to agree with him.  It’s the administration that has clearly taken a side, and it’s not in favor of free inquiry.

Texas A&M has quickly turned into the Augean stables, and is desperately in need of a Herakles.