{"id":43842,"date":"2025-11-10T22:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T22:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/43842\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T22:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T22:27:07","slug":"texas-am-to-vote-on-banning-race-and-gender-ideology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/43842\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas A&M to vote on banning \u201crace and gender ideology\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for The Brief<\/a>, The Texas Tribune\u2019s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.<\/p>\n

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Texas A&M University System will vote on Thursday on whether to prohibit faculty at its 11 universities from teaching \u201crace or gender ideology\u201d unless those lessons are pre-approved by each campus president or a delegate.<\/p>\n

The proposal appears to be the first time that a Texas public university system offers definitions of what kind of instruction related to race and gender should not be permitted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRace ideology,\u201d the draft of the proposal says, would encompass any concept that \u201cattempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity\u201d or \u201cpromotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity rather than academic instruction.\u201d The proposal would define \u201cgender ideology\u201d as \u201ca concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The policy does not say how the university would decide what constitutes \u201crace ideology\u201d or \u201cgender ideology,\u201d or what would happen if a faculty member is accused of violating the rule. A Texas A&M University System spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The regents\u2019 Committee on Academic and Student Affairs will hear presentations and consider the proposed policy on Thursday morning, according to the agenda<\/a> for the meeting. The full board of regents will take public testimony on the proposal and vote on it later that day. The meeting will be livestreamed<\/a> and the public is invited to testify.<\/p>\n

Leonard Bright, president of the Texas A&M Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said faculty were not consulted on the proposed changes, which he called \u201ca direct violation\u201d of their expertise and freedom to teach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if that\u2019s the case, there\u2019s just going to be a further black eye on higher education here in Texas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Robert Shilby, special counsel for campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the proposal would \u201cinvite unlawful censorship, chill academic freedom, and undermine the core purpose of a university,\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHiring professors with PhDs is meaningless if administrators are the ones deciding what gets taught,\u201d he said. \u201cFaculty will start asking not, \u2018Is this accurate?\u2019 but \u2018Will this get me in trouble?\u2019 That\u2019s not education, it\u2019s risk management.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faculty are already signaling they will show up in force to the regents\u2019 meeting to push back against the proposal. Bright, a professor at Texas A&M\u2019s Bush School of Government and Public Affairs, said professors are organizing testimony, drafting statements and coordinating with colleagues across Texas to oppose the revisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said the policy would affect disciplines across the university \u2014 from political science and history to public service and biology \u2014 and that some faculty fear it would shift control over classroom content from faculty to administrators. He added that some of his colleagues believe the revisions are an attempt to \u201cinstitutionalize indoctrination\u201d and that if the proposed changes are approved, they will likely be challenged in court.<\/p>\n

The proposed prohibition comes two months after the system\u2019s College Station flagship fired Professor Melissa McCoul, whose discussion of gender identity in a children\u2019s literature class was secretly recorded<\/a> by a student and later circulated online, drawing fire from Republican lawmakers and ultimately toppling the university\u2019s former president<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since McCoul\u2019s firing, other university systems have begun imposing their own restrictions on classroom content.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Sept. 25, the Texas Tech University System instructed its faculty<\/a> to ensure their courses comply with a federal executive order, a letter from Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> and a new state law that recognizes only two sexes. In the weeks that followed, Texas\u2019 other public university systems \u2014 including the University of Texas, University of North Texas, Texas State and Texas Woman\u2019s University \u2014 announced or began internal audits<\/a> of their course offerings. All said they were acting to ensure compliance with state or federal law, though few detailed what they were looking for or what changes might follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No state or federal law prohibits instruction on race, gender or sexual orientation in universities. However, recent state legislation has put direct and indirect pressure on how universities implement policies related to race and gender.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2023, the Texas Legislature approved Senate Bill 17, which banned diversity, equity and inclusion offices and initiatives at the state\u2019s public universities. Earlier this year, lawmakers approved Senate Bill 37, which gave governor-appointed university regents the final say on whether to approve new courses and prohibited lessons that \u201cadvocate or promote the idea that any race, sex, or ethnicity or any religious belief is inherently superior to any other.\u201d An earlier version of the legislation would have required that college courses \u201cnot endorse specific public policies, ideologies or legislation,\u201d but the proposal was narrowed down after pushback from professors who said such a restriction would lead to self-censorship and infringe on academic freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Texas A&M Board of Regents will also consider on Thursday a new policy that would bar faculty from teaching material \u201cinconsistent with the approved syllabus for the course.\u201d The clause mirrors the reason university officials gave McCoul for firing her<\/a>. They said she refused to change her course content to match the catalog description, but McCoul and other faculty have countered that course descriptions are often broad and that professors are expected to design their own syllabi and teach according to their expertise.<\/p>\n

McCoul has appealed her termination through the university\u2019s Committee on Academic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure, which concluded its hearing last week. The committee is expected to share a recommendation with interim university President Tommy Williams in the coming weeks on how to respond to McCoul\u2019s appeal, but Williams is not obligated to follow it.<\/p>\n

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University System, Texas Tech University System and University of North Texas 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":"Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune\u2019s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,2687,3097,29,28],"class_list":["post-43842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-am-university-system","tag-texas-am-university-college-station","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43842","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=43842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}