The New Censors of College Station: Texas A&M’s regents are trying to ban ideas, not “ideology.”
The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents is preparing to vote on a policy that would ban any class teaching “race” or “gender ideology” unless it receives prior presidential approval. Let’s call this what it is: a direct assault on academic freedom and the public university itself.
This is not about “viewpoint diversity.” It’s about control—about transforming higher education into a compliance arm of a political movement that cannot tolerate dissent. The terms “race ideology” and “gender ideology” are not scholarly; they are political inventions, designed to delegitimize entire fields of knowledge before the debate even begins. They caricature scholarship as indoctrination and turn inquiry itself into a suspect activity.
The policy defines “race ideology” as teaching that “shames” a group or “ascribes intrinsic guilt.” This is rhetorical sleight of hand: a way to equate studying racism with promoting hate. The idea that exploring racial hierarchy or systemic injustice is itself “ideological” is absurd—and chilling. By that logic, teaching U.S. history, sociology, or constitutional law could all become suspect.
Texas A&M’s proposal does not clarify what counts as “approval” or who decides when a topic crosses the line from instruction into forbidden territory. The ambiguity is the point. It invites fear, self-censorship, and administrative intervention in what should be the domain of scholarly judgment. Once faculty must seek permission to teach the truth, the classroom becomes a monitored space rather than a space for learning.
It is grimly ironic that A&M’s regents propose to insert these restrictions into the section of their policy titled “Civil Rights Protections.” There is nothing protective about censorship. In fact, the very disciplines now being targeted—Ethnic Studies, women and gender studies, and queer studies—are the ones that gave us the intellectual tools to understand discrimination and civil rights in the first place. Erasing them does not defend students; it erases the very history of freedom itself.
This new censorship is a betrayal of the university’s core purpose: to pursue truth, test ideas, and prepare citizens capable of critical thought. It signals that the regents trust neither their own faculty nor their students. It reduces education to indoctrination by omission—a sanitized curriculum tailored to avoid discomfort, reflection, or social complexity—and which woefully misses the mark on a need to prepare students for an increasingly diverse society.
Those pushing this policy claim they are protecting students from being “shamed.” In reality, they are protecting power from being questioned. What they call “ideology” is simply scholarship that exposes how race, gender, and power operate in society. They seek not academic balance but political obedience.
Texas A&M once stood for service, discovery, and intellectual independence. If its regents pass this policy, they will trade that legacy for something smaller and meaner: fear. The university will lose credibility not because it teaches too much, but because it has decided to teach less.
The crisis in higher education isn’t about “bias” in the classroom—it’s the orchestrated attack on higher education that has led to a corrosion of public trust through bad-faith attacks on the pursuit of knowledge itself. Academic freedom is not a partisan indulgence. It is the lifeblood of democracy. Once administrators dictate what can be thought, taught, or named, education ceases to be education at all.
Texas deserves better. So do its students. Much better.
TAMU Regents will vote to ban classes in race, gender ideology without prior approval
A TAMU Board of Regents proposal would ban classes teaching race and gender ideology unless the president approves it, the latest threat to academic freedom.
By Lily Kepner, Staff WriterNov 10, 2025
Texas A&M University Regents will vote on a proposal to ban courses with race or gender ideology unless they obtain prior approval from the president or a designee.Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Texas A&M University System regents will vote Thursday to ban classes on “race” and “gender ideology” unless they are approved by the institution’s president or a designee — the latest escalation in a statewide conservative push to rid universities of liberal leaning teaching.
If passed, the Texas A&M System, which serves 175,000 students as the second largest university system in the state, would be the first institution to explicitly bar teaching related to “race ideology.”
Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh greets supporters as he exits the administration building after resigning under pressure Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in College Station. Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
The policy proposal describes the term as “a concept that attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity, accuse them of being oppressors in a racial hierarchy or conspiracy, ascribe to them less value as contributors to society… assign them intrinsic guilt” or promotes activism “rather than instruction.” It defines gender ideology as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex,” though biology and Women’s and Gender Studies scholars for decades have found that not all people fit into male or female categories neatly.
The prohibition, set to be considered at a Thursday board meeting, doesn’t detail the approval process for these courses or what would happen to Texas A&M’s ethnic and LGBTQ studies departments. Both definitions would be added to the “Civil Rights Protections and Compliance” policy, and this would be the first form of prohibited instruction in that policy.
A Texas A&M System official declined to comment on the policy, but said it will be discussed at the meeting. Members of the public can submit written testimony at least 24 hours before the meeting begins.
Opponents of the proposal say the policy will impede academic freedom and hurt Texas A&M University’s quality of education. The Texas American Federation of Teachers and American Association of University Professors chapter said the “unconstitutional” policies would “codify institutional censorship.”
“By considering these policy changes, the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents is telling faculty, ‘Shut up and teach — and we’ll tell you what to teach,’” Brian Evans, president of Texas AAUP-AFT, said in a news release. “This language and the censorship it imposes will cause irreparable harm to the reputation of the university, and impede faculty and students from their main mission on campus: to teach, learn, think critically and create and share new knowledge.”
The intensifying political pressure to stop teaching that “belittles” conservative views or encourages “liberal ideology,” boosted in posts on X by Gov. Greg Abbott and a compact deal from President Donald Trump, has pressured universities across the state to reform fast.
DEEPER DIVE: As UT, Texas face increasing political pressure, experts warn: We’ve been here before
Texas Tech University System Chancellor Tedd Mitchell banned classroom instruction that teaches there are more than two genders to comply with a new state law, House Bill 229. Angelo State University reportedly told professors to remove pronouns from their bios and pride flags from their walls to avoid unwanted attention, though it later walked back the directives.
The University of Texas System announced a course audit of gender studies courses for alignment with the law and its “priorities,” and the flagship campus is considering consolidating departments that may have become “overly fragmented.”
But Texas A&M University has been at the epicenter of recent political turmoil. Controversy first erupted Sept. 8 when a state representative posted a video from an anonymous student whistle blower accusing her professor, Melissa McCoul, of breaking the law by teaching there are more than two genders.
McCoul, her department head and college dean lost their jobs within two days of the online controversy, and President Mark Welsh resigned shortly after. Regents agreed to pay him a $3.5 million settlement. Welsh had said McCoul was fired for “academic responsibility” because her class strayed from the approved syllabus, but McCoul’s syllabus, which was public, disclosed she would be covering diverse groups in children’s literature that may at times be controversial.
Another Texas A&M System proposed policy change would require faculty to teach only material consistent with the approved curriculum, but Leonard Bright, a professor at Texas A&M and president of the Texas A&M Chapter of the AAUP, said that standard is unrealistic for a professor. He said it infringes on a professor’s right to craft their teaching based on expertise alone.
The policy, if passed, would also invite subjective restrictions on gender identity and race-related teaching that would impede professors' ability to accurately teach the full breadth of all fields or answer students questions if they pertain to current events, he said.
“We’re telling people that we’re going to sell you a whole piece but what they’re going to get is half of it,” Bright said. “We’re going to have to tell them that with a straight face that I cannot teach this without getting bullied. It’s going to severely impact our classes in ways that we can’t even we can’t even predict.”
Robert Shibley, the special counsel for campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the policy would be a violation of academic freedom, a principle upheld by the Supreme Court after the McCarthy era, which gives professors the freedom to teach without political interference.
“The warping of the search for truth and the pursuit of knowledge happens when administrators get involved in making academic judgments instead of the faculty,” Shibley said. “That kind of centralization is a very bad idea. It’s an invitation for political interference. And if it happens, and it will happen, that kind of interference is unconstitutional.”
Lily Kepner
HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER
Lily Kepner started at the American-Statesman in October 2023. She has appeared on BBC, NPR and Texas Standard to talk about her coverage, which has spanned the impact of state laws and politics on the University of Texas, pro-Palestinian protests, free speech, the anti-DEI ban, LGBTQ student belonging and more. Kepner graduated with honors from Boston University's College of Communication in 2023, where she received the college's highest awards for writing and journalism leadership and led the award-winning student newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. In her time with the American-Statesman, she contributed to reporting that won an Edward R Murrow Award for breaking news, won the School Bell Award for Outstanding Feature from Texas State Teachers Association, and Critics Choice for Best of Austin in the Austin Chronicle. Previously, she has been published in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and GBH. Kepner is passionate about accountability and service journalism and encourages anyone to reach out to her to tell their story or share a tip.
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