Drop the race and gender material from your course and the Plato readings, or teach a different course. You have a day to decide. That’s a paraphrase of what Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, was told by university officials today about his upcoming “Contemporary Moral Problems” course, due to start next week. Here’s the actual email: “Rule 08.01” refers to these recent policy changes at the university. “Kristi” is Department of Philosophy chair Kristi Sweet, who, I think it’s safe to assume, was merely passing along the verdict of “the college leadership team“, headed up by interim dean Simon North. (The above email and other documents in this post were provided by Professor Peterson.) I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato. The Plato readings were from the Symposium, particularly passages on Aristophanes’ myth of split humans and Diotima’s ladder of love. The other readings are from Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues (10th edition) by Andrew Fiala and Barbara MacKinnon. Professor Peterson had been contacted by his chair on December 19th about the review of syllabi for Contemporary Moral Problems courses. Here’s that email: Professor Peterson replied to this, submitting his syllabus for what he referred to, correctly, as “mandatory censorship review”. Among other things, he said, “Please note that my course does not “advocate” any ideology; I teach students how to structure and evaluate arguments commonly raised in discussions of contemporary moral issues.” (See “The Charade of Banning ‘Advocacy’“.) He also reminded his chair and college officials that “the U.S. Constitution protects my course content,” as do the norms of academic freedom. Here is his full reply: Here is Professor Peterson’s syllabus (also here): It was clear that Texas A&M’s new policies were going to lead to conflicts with the First Amendment and academic freedom. That the first such conflict involves telling a professor to remove from his syllabus the writings of the person who created what was arguably the west’s first institution of higher education is too perfect an irony, though. This reality is unbelievable. (Thanks to several readers who alerted me to the story.) Related: A..
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