This piece should alarm anyone who cares about freedom, truth, or higher education. When Plato is treated as a political threat and factual texts are recast as “ideology,” something has gone profoundly awry. This is not policy oversight—it is the raw politicization of knowledge itself.
Professor Beck is not just right. She's righteous. A university that must ask permission to teach the truth has already forfeited its democratic purpose.
-Angela Valenzuela
When leaders want to control what people think, they first strive to control knowledge. We're seeing that in Texas.
In recent months, political pressure has been reshaping Texas’ public universities. Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
In recent months, political pressure has been reshaping Texas’ public universities.Teaching and research, the drivers of university excellence, increasingly answer to politicians rather than the knowledge of experts. Anyone who cares about freedom should be concerned about these developments. When leaders want to control what people think, they first strive to control knowledge: what is discovered, what is learned, what is taught. Such control is antithetical to what America stands for. We must reject attempts by politicians to constrain what we think.
Courses on gender at public institutions in Texas are being audited. Texas recently made national news after Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, was told that he could not teach Plato because it would violate a policy that imposes restrictions on courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
One way to think for ourselves is to know the facts. In “Symposium,” the text Peterson was told he could not include in his syllabus, what does Plato say?
The “Symposium” describes a dinner party of ancient Athenians, including Socrates, the teacher of Plato, and Aristophanes, a prize-winning writer of comic plays. Each guest gives a speech about love.
In the passage at issue in Peterson’s syllabus, Aristophanes tells a human origin story in which the gods created three types of people that eventually gave rise to male homosexuals, female homosexuals and heterosexuals. The upshot of Aristophanes’ story is that human beings and human love come in different varieties, and that all derive from the gods.
This is what Plato said. It is not “ideology” or “advocacy.” It is a fact.
In libel suits, truth is an absolute defense. Apparently, this is not so when writing a college syllabus in Texas.
For millenia, Plato has been part of an education that equips people for the freedom to govern themselves. The “liberal arts” got its name not from a left-leaning political stance but from the Latin word “liber,” or “free.” The subjects taught in the liberal arts befit us to exercise the responsibilities and to enjoy the privileges of freedom.
We need Plato more than he needs us. Long after this political moment has come and gone, Plato and Socrates will be thriving.
Socrates would have some questions for the University of Texas at Austin as well. News recently broke that departments facilitating community engagement, teaching effectiveness, student advising and undergraduate research will soon be closed. These programs have fostered the central missions of the university for decades. Yet the university has not explained why they were canceled or what will take their place.
For Socrates, a good and just life entails asking thoughtful questions, talking them over with lots of different people, and listening to the answers. If we don’t even know what questions led to the cancellation of these programs, let alone what the answers to those questions were, how do we know that the closure of these departments will foster the educational excellence of which Texans are justly proud?
Shuttering effective university services with no plan for what comes next does not lead to innovation or to excellence. It leads to chaos.
Socrates would have recognized this moment all too well. In 399 B.C., he was charged, convicted and put to death on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. He kept asking questions his entire life, even as the fatal hemlock with which he was executed gradually took effect. He refused to go into exile to avoid punishment, because that would disrespect the laws of Athens and his own principles.
Needless to say, university employees today are not being executed by the state. But faculty and staff are losing their livelihoods. Many educators are trying to leave Texas rather than submit their subject area expertise to the oversight of politicians.
Socrates lives on as one of the founding voices of European philosophy. His refusal to forswear what he believed makes him a beacon to anyone who is targeted because of their ideas.
Universities governed by political considerations are antithetical to freedom. Free people accept facts as true. They choose what to learn and they choose what to think.
Just ask Socrates.
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| Deborah Beck |
Deborah Beck is the Christie and Stanley E. Adams, Jr. Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts in the Department of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is expressing her views as a private citizen.
