On November 13, 2025, Texas A&M University System regents voted to approve new policies restricting teaching related to race and gender and encouraging students to report courses they believe violate the policies.
The policy changes followed the highly publicized dismissal of Melissa McCoul, a senior lecturer in the English department at the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, whose firing was related to her teaching on gender and sexuality (see report). Texas A&M regents approved two policies at a special meeting on November 13. The first policy stated that each campus president would henceforth be required to approve any course that could be viewed as advocating for “race and gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.” The second policy prohibited faculty members from teaching course material deemed inconsistent with the approved syllabus.
On December 18, the regents approved a more restrictive version of the presidential approval policy, which stated that “no system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.” The policy made an exemption for non-core curriculum or graduate courses for which discussions of race or gender ideology serve a “necessary educational purpose.” The campus president must approve such exemptions in writing. The new policy used overbroad and vague language, defining “race ideology” as “attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity” and “gender ideology” as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.”
The regents also approved new rules for ensuring compliance with the new policies, including a “24/7 reporting mechanism” encouraging students to report what they deem to be “inaccurate or misleading course content.” In addition, the Texas A&M system will conduct a review of course syllabi each semester, including by using an AI assistant to flag courses for additional review.
In early January 2026, a review of courses scheduled to be taught during the upcoming semester reportedly flagged around 200 College of Arts and Science courses for possible cancellation because of their inclusion of material related to race or gender (the precise number was unconfirmed at the time of writing). Among the material flagged as violating the university’s new policy were readings from Plato’s *Symposium* discussing patriarchy, masculinity, and gender identity, in a philosophy course on “Contemporary Moral Problems.” According to the course syllabus, the course teaches students to “understand, articulate, and evaluate arguments from multiple points of view,” focusing on contemporary social problems. At least one other course, a sociology course on “Introduction to Race and Ethnicity,” was canceled because, according to Texas A&M administrators, it could not be brought into compliance with the new policy in its current form.
Scholars at Risk is concerned about the imposition of ideological restrictions on teaching and research content by non-expert government authorities outside of the university, and about the use of vague and overly broad terms for defining such restrictions. Such policies—even if written in a viewpoint neutral manner—increase the likelihood that students and faculty will self-censor, seeking to avoid sanctions. SAR is also concerned about the imposition of administrative hurdles—in this case, presidential approval requirements—which impedes free inquiry unless specifically authorized. Of further concern is the encouragement of surveillance and reporting, which undermines collegiality and chills free inquiry and the exchange of ideas.
Update 2/4/2026: By the end of the course review for the spring 2026 semester, six sources had been canceled and Texas A&M had decided to close its Women and Gender Studies program.
Sources:
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/12/18/texas-am-race-gender-courses-new-rules/
https://www.chronicle.com/article/texas-a-m-system-sharply-restricts-how-faculty-can-teach-about-race-and-gender
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/us/texas-am-gender-race-ideology-rules-classroom.html
https://dentonrc.com/education/higher_education/texas-universities-deploy-ai-tools-to-review-and-rewrite-how-some-courses-discuss-race-and/article_476c6b71-5a56-43f9-b440-5aa8aff1a3e6.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/tamu-plato-race-gender.html
https://dailynous.com/2026/01/06/texas-am-bans-plato/
https://www.chronicle.com/article/texas-a-m-bans-plato-excerpt-from-a-philosophy-course
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2026/01/07/plato-censored-texas-am-carries-out-course-review
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/us/texas-am-gender-ethnic-womens-studies-academic-freedom.html