Texas A&M University will not reinstate a lecturer who was fired in the fall after a video of her teaching about gender identity in a children\u2019s literature class went viral, despite a faculty appeals panel unanimously concluding that her dismissal was not justified.<\/p>\n
The New York Times first reported<\/a> Wednesday that interim Texas A&M president Tommy Williams deferred the decision to the university system, and that James Hallmark, the system\u2019s vice chancellor for academic affairs, wrote in a Dec. 19 memo that Melissa McCoul\u2019s termination in September was supported by \u201cgood cause.\u201d He did not explain his reasoning.<\/p>\n McCoul\u2019s attorney, Amanda Reichek, confirmed to The Texas Tribune that this sequence of events occurred.<\/p>\n \u201cDr. McCoul is disappointed by the University\u2019s unexplained decision to uphold her termination, but looks forward to pursuing her First Amendment, Due Process, and breach of contract claims in court very soon,\u201d Reichek wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n Chris Bryan, the system\u2019s vice chancellor of marketing and communications, also confirmed McCoul was not reinstated, but declined to comment further.\u00a0<\/p>\n McCoul was fired in September<\/a> after a student over the summer secretly recorded a classroom exchange in which the student disagreed with McCoul about whether it was legal to teach that there are more than two genders. The student then met with \u2014 and also secretly recorded \u2014 then-university president Mark Welsh III, who initially refused to fire McCoul. State Rep. Brian Harrison<\/a>, R-Midlothian, posted the videos on X weeks after they were made.<\/p>\n Although there is no law prohibiting instruction that acknowledges more than two genders, Welsh did eventually fire her after the videos drew conservative backlash, saying her teaching was not consistent with the course description. Welsh later resigned<\/a>.<\/p>\n After McCoul\u2019s firing, the university system began reviewing courses across its 12 universities, including through the use of an artificial intelligence tool<\/a>. On Dec. 18, the Board of Regents passed<\/a> a policy prohibiting courses from \u201cadvocating race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity\u201d except in certain non-core or graduate courses that are reviewed, shown to serve a \u201cnecessary educational purpose\u201d and approved in writing by a campus president.<\/p>\n Two faculty panels have found McCoul\u2019s termination was not justified<\/a> and that her academic freedom was violated, concluding the university fired her over what she taught and failed to follow required dismissal procedures.<\/p>\n The controversy at Texas A&M, along with new laws expanding the power of governor-appointed regents over curriculum, hiring and discipline and expression on campuses, sparked changes across Texas higher education, with university systems launching course audits and adopting new restrictions on how race, gender and sexuality are taught.<\/p>\n The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.<\/p>\n Disclosure: The New York Times, Texas A&M University and the Texas A&M University System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas A&M University will not reinstate a lecturer who was fired in the fall after a video of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[289,287,27,2687,3097,29,293,28],"class_list":["post-100162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-higher-education","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-am-university-system","tag-texas-am-university-college-station","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}