unanimously approved a policy<\/a>\u00a0requiring professors to teach \u201cboth sides\u201d of all issues and avoid controversial subjects deemed not \u201cgermane\u201d to the course material, restricting the ability to have such conversations. By presenting classroom discussions of \u201ccontroversial issues\u201d as a threat to be prevented, the policy is notably disconnected from the reality of what happens in college classrooms across the UT system.<\/p>\nThis semester I am teaching a course on disability and reproduction, one of my areas of expertise. My students are reading articles on the history of eugenics, the disproportionately high rates of interpersonal and sexual violence experienced by disabled people, and access barriers to health care. All of these topics could be construed as \u201ccontroversial and contested,\u201d and since the new policy does not define what constitutes \u201ca broad and balanced approach,\u201d my students and I will not know what we are allowed \u2014 or required \u2014 to say.<\/p>\n
Instructors are left guessing.\u00a0When we discuss the Aktion T4 program in Nazi Germany, in which thousands of disabled children and adults were murdered as \u201clife unworthy of life,\u201d does a \u201cbroad and balanced approach\u201d mean that I am supposed to include work from Holocaust deniers or to include perspectives that disabled people should be murdered?<\/p>\n
Or when we discuss the disabling effects of slavery in the United States, must we read accounts that depict slavery as harmless?<\/p>\n
Or, in the interest of avoiding \u201ccontroversy,\u201d are we to avoid these topics altogether, making my students less informed and therefore less able to participate in civic society?<\/p>\n
According to my students, it is often the \u201ccontroversial\u201d nature of these topics that draws them to my course. They are eager for opportunities to engage in difficult conversations with their classmates and to wrestle with complicated material. They don\u2019t all agree about the use of assisted reproductive technologies, for example, but they come to class because they want to experience and learn from different perspectives.<\/p>\n
UT students deserve the right to engage in freewheeling debates on these issues, debates where we haven\u2019t decided in advance where the conversation will go. But this policy takes away this right by making any discussion of \u201ccontroversial\u201d topics suspect \u2014 rather than recognizing them as central to the academic project.<\/p>\n
UT should be empowering students to explore contested issues and to craft analytical, evidence-based arguments. Instead, this policy suggests that such arguments are to be feared, denying students their right to a world-class education.<\/p>\n
Rather than affirming our students\u2019 academic freedom, the Board of Regents has proven itself beholden to politicians and afraid of students\u2019 exchange of ideas.<\/p>\n
Alison Kafer is the Embrey Associate Professor of Women\u2019s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas and the director of\u00a0LGBTQ Studies. She is speaking for herself as a private citizen and not on behalf of her employer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students at the University of Texas are intellectually curious, actively engaged and hard-working. As I\u2019ve discovered over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-177840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177840","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=177840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}