Be Careful What You Teach: Trump’s Minions May Get You Fired
A lecturer in the English Department at Texas A & M University was fired from her position after a student in one of her courses complained that she was “not entirely sure [material on gender identity] is legal to be teaching… because according to our president, there’s only two genders… and also this very much goes against not only [mine] but a lot of people’s religious beliefs.”
The student recorded her voicing of the complaint in class (see the video at the end of this post) and shared it, along with audio recordings of her conversation with Texas A & M’s president, Mark A. Welsh III, with Texas State Representative Brian Harrison.
Initially President Welsh had told the student that firing the instructor was “not happening.”
Harrison, who describes himself on X/Twitter as a “believer in freedom,” shared the recordings widely on the social media platform on Monday along with a letter he wrote to the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, in which he demands that he fire both the instructor and Welsh.
Later that day (on social media) and then again yesterday (in a statement on the university website), Welsh announced he was firing the instructor.
Here’s what Welsh said:
This afternoon, following full consideration of the facts related to this situation, I directed the Provost to terminate the professor involved, effective immediately. Please understand that these decisions were mine alone and were not made lightly. While I cannot provide all the details at this time, I will share the following facts.
This summer, a children’s literature course contained content that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course. After this issue was raised, college and department leadership worked with students to offer alternative opportunities for students to complete the course, and made changes to ensure this course content does not continue in future semesters. At that time, I made it clear to our academic leadership that course content must match catalog descriptions for each and every one of our course sections.
However, I learned late yesterday that despite that directive, the college continued to teach content that was inconsistent with the published course description for another course this fall. As a result, I took the above administrative actions, and deans and department heads will conduct an audit of course offerings to ensure they align with the course descriptions.
Our students use the published information in the course catalog to make important decisions about the courses they take in pursuit of their degrees. If we allow different course content to be taught from what is advertised, we break trust with our students. When it comes to our academic offerings, we must keep faith with our students and with the state of Texas.
Faculty! You must not depart from the official course descriptions! They are, as you know, comprehensive in scope, never subject to interpretation, and brook deviation only at the cost of your employment!
The lecturer who was fired, Melissa McCoul, was teaching English 360, “Children’s Literature.” Here is the official bulletin description of the course:
The full course description in the Texas A&M Undergraduate Bulletin for Literature for Children, the course Melissa McCoul was teaching when she was fired for, according to the university’s president, Mark Welsh, “teaching course content that was not consistent with the course’s published description.”
In addition to firing McCoul, Welsh also removed the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Mark Zoran, and English Department Chair Emily Johnson from their administrative positions.
“These decisions were mine alone,” said Welsh, anticipatorily protesting too much against the complaint that he was selling out his faculty and abandoning any pretense of concern for academic freedom in order to please politicians.
He added, “This isn’t about academic freedom; it’s about academic responsibility.” Which responsibility? The responsibility to not “allow different course content to be taught from what is advertised.” Again, please see the course description above. And why isn’t “this” about academic freedom?
Anyway, I think the lessons are quite clear:
Students — to avoid learning about ideas different from ones you were brought up with, please contact your local Republican government official.
Faculty — just one more reason to ban phones and laptops and the like from your classes.
Administrators — literally anything can be used as a pretext for violating faculty academic freedom.
The student’s video is below.
🚨CAUGHT ON TAPE: TEXAS A&M STUDENT KICKED OUT OF CLASS AFTER OBJECTING TO TRANSGENDER INDOCTRINATION… and A&M President defends “LGBTQ Studies.”
I’m referring @TAMU to the Trump Administration for investigation… and asking Gov @GregAbbott_TX to fire the A&M officials… pic.twitter.com/J6IWsfw62I
— Brian Harrison (@brianeharrison) September 8, 2025
Some further info is at the student newspaper, The Battalion.
(Thanks to several readers for the pointer.)
From https://philarchive.org/archive/CHAOAS: “[W]hen designing a weapon, it is probably helpful to imagine that weapon used
against you (if history is any indication, it will be).” Voilà.
Charlie Kirk is leading that movement of firing “woke” scholars. These are plotted movements, fellow colleagues. With the news from Utah today, let’s see how far this will go…
Charlie Kirk just got shot for sitting at a desk and verbally debating people on campus. From https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAOAS.pdf : “Academics who indulge in exaggeration (see the ‘quasi’ comparison between Trump and Stalin in Pihlström 2023, 4) may think that they are talking only among themselves. However, sooner or later, someone somewhere gets the hint and takes such exaggerations seriously. In fact, as of this writing, at least one major assassination attempt has taken place in the US [….]. I therefore want a time-stamped textual alibi showing that, if this powder keg explodes, I was not among the intellectuals who called for the vilification to increase and the dialogue to cease.”
There was no exaggeration or even quasi-exaggeration in Buzzmoose’s post. I’ve never heard anyone, academic or otherwise, compare Trump to Stalin.
I assume the assassination attempt you’re referring to is Crooks’ attempt on Trump. Do you have any evidence that Crooks, who was a Republican, an anti-Semite, and a xenophobe, was moved by what you consider to be academics’ supposed exaggerations about Trump?
I don’t know how you define “villification” or who has called for it to increase. Certainly, it is a problem; there’s some nice discussions of its recent origins in US politics in How Democracy Dies (think Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and the like). In any case, I’m happy there are timestamps out there (non-anonymous ones) of me opposing a nascent authoritarian regime. I’d hate to be on the record making excuses for it.
He’s advertising his paper in the comments. No relevance to what I said.
We have no idea why Charlie Kirk was killed yet. No suspect or motive, so to say he was killed for sitting at a desk and debating people is probably just reading into it your own biases.
even if we suppose that kirk was assassinated for political reasons, which mourinho notes below is an assumption rather than a fact, it is very unlikely that he “got shot for sitting at a desk and verbally debating people on campus.”
it is much more likely under that assumption that he was murdered for many years of inflammatory positions and comments, some of which have been patently white supremacist and xenophobic. he has also lied repeatedly to foment anger and fear, and at some points advocated—jokingly or otherwise—for unlawful state violence including opening fire on undocumented people.
none of this means his murder was justified, acceptable, or excusable in any way. it does mean that we ought to be clear.
I realize you’re not claiming the murder was justified. You make that clear. But the structure of your comment matters. Rehearsing his most inflammatory and xenophobic positions alongside the fact of his killing risks suggesting that the violence is less troubling because of who he was. That is the danger: if the ugliness of someone’s speech shapes our judgment of their murder, we erode the principle that sustains free expression in a democracy.
The point is not to minimize how harmful his views were. They can and should be condemned on their own terms, and if they crossed into incitement, that should be addressed through legal and institutional means. But that condemnation must be kept separate from our judgment of the violence. Political violence in response to speech, however reprehensible, is anathema to democracy. To blur that line is to concede, even unintentionally, that some voices are more permissible targets of violence than others. That is a concession a democratic society cannot afford to make.
One could argue that that concession has long ago already been made. It has become painfully clear that the status quo can tolerate certain deaths, certain acts of political violence, treating them as regrettable but inevitable facts of how the machine operates; but that others must be loudly condemned, and that to not perform one’s mourning sufficiently convincingly—or to even dare question whether the level of pageantry is proportionate and reasonable—is considered odious and uncouth.
I think you are correct that commentary should not be seen to suggest that the violence is less troubling because of who he was and his views. But by the same token, commentary that eulogizes him, purporting that he was doing politics “the right way,” is irresponsible; it shifts the focus away from the act and on to its target. Moreover, it’s an evaluative claim about the content of the target’s speech and/or his mode of political engagement. Such commentary cannot be done honestly without “rehearsing his most inflammatory and xenophobic positions.” And if it does omit them, then it is “minimizing how harmful his views were”—presenting instead a sanitized image that distorts what the man stood for.
It seems that the obvious solution then would be to focus on the act and why the act itself is troubling. And many media outlets and commentators have done exactly that. But for those who haven’t, and who have instead opted to focus on the person and, crucially, to make claims about the virtue of his positions or engagement, I think it’s entirely fair game to respond to that by pointing out that the santized image they are presenting is a distortion. And even a distraction from the issue that should be foregrounded here (the use of political violence as such).
I should add that, apart from condemning political violence and/or drawing attention to the disparity in how certain acts of political violence are treated (some apparently warranting society-wide mourning while others treated as expected and inevitable), it is possible to interpret the tragedy of it as a tragedy in multiple senses.
There’s the tragedy of political violence in itself, and what that means for democracy. (One might argue that that’s where our attention should be primarily, but it’s okay if it isn’t; we can maintain multiple areas of focus.) There’s the tragedy of the loss of a human life, and the deep personal impact that is no doubt felt by those who knew and loved the victim. There’s the tragedy that the victim wasted so much of his life on hate, on advocating for conditions that would immiserate many of his fellows, as well as promulgating views that would justify as acceptable the sort of shootings he would ultimately become a victim of. There’s the tragedy of how many in the media and elite political class have responded: picking out targets for collective punishment and reprisal, well before knowing anything of the killer’s beliefs and motives; essentially seizing the tragedy as an opportunity to legitimate their own hate and put the hated “other” on notice. There’s the tragedy of the disparity: of how we are supposed to be especially shocked by this act of political violence, and yet also inured to the images of continual, unrelenting violence that we’re subjected to, whether it’s in the form of school shootings at home or bombs dropped on families abroad.
In short, tragedy, in multiple senses. And we barely seem to have to the will to address it in more than one.
i don’t disagree with your point here.
i’d simply say that the phrasing i take issue with is no more accurate than saying martin luther king jr was assassinated because he was staying at a motel in memphis.
i also think that you risk tying yourself in knots with this response. i didn’t actually rehearse anything—i just stated some facts. I didn’t say that you have to dislike his views either. there are xenophobic white supremacists who accept those terms and wear them proudly.
if i were to critique my comment, i’d say that calling kirk a liar who foments anger and fear puts my cards in the table. but of course both of these accusations are not only factually true but also admitted tactics of the far right: pet eating, “critical race theory,” doubling down on fake images because they fit the narrative, calling portland “hell,” citing rising crime to justify national guard deployment, and on and on.
like king, kirk was assassinated not for “debating” or free speech but (probably) for the content of that speech. you’re 100% correct that political violence is bad for democracy and bad for a free society. i completely condemn kirk’s murder, full stop. i also completely condemn kirk’s content. but what i hear in your comment is an inability to reckon with that content.
I agree Kirk’s views were harmful and deserve condemnation, but that judgment must stand apart. When it is paired with his murder, it risks implying the killing is less troubling because of who he was. In a democracy, we must hold two distinct judgments: speech can be condemned, violence against speech must be condemned. To blur them is to concede that some speakers are more permissible targets of violence than others, which is a concession no democracy can afford.
But calling it a murder would give thought a pause.
but again, how does my comment blur these two? a great deal rests on your use of “imply” even when in that comment i directly state that these two judgements ought not to be blurred and clearly condemn his assassination multiple times.
your position seems to assume that we cannot do both things at the same time, or even articulate the factual matter at hand at the same time as condemning the murder. but i think that suspending our moral values in order to defend abstract political positions is misguided. political violence is tragic, murder is never the best answer, but that doesn’t mean we need to wear kid gloves when talking about the views, positions, rhetoric, and legacy of political actor.
i have two theories about this: the first is that you’re really referring more to a general sense in the left-leaning air that seems to want to excuse kirk’s murder more than to my specific comment, which you take as a synecdoche for that position. i think that’s a misreading of my comment.
the second, and i recognize that this is not playing fair but i’ll say it anyway, is that you find yourself deeply conflicted on this matter. i get the sense that (or if you prefer, to me your comments “imply” that) if you articulate what kirk believed and said out loud, you find yourself in an uncomfortable moral position of defending the indefensible. this isn’t a new problem with speech, of course, but i do not take myself to be similarly conflicted.
On what he was murdered “for”, I get your emphasis on speech content over mere form (“debate”); nonetheless it can be both. Many share Kirk’s opinions but don’t face the danger he did, because they don’t espouse them as he did (publicly, forcefully, and yes, in debate). Hence Marc wasn’t entirely off base in calling attention to the form.
This point may be related to the issue with you and Tenured Realist. Maybe it’s like this. Token speeches, including condemnations thereof, are moves in the democracy game, but murdering speakers jeopardizes the game itself. It deserves a whole “different level” of condemnation. I don’t think you’ve “blurred” the distinction between the wrongness of Kirk speeches and the wrongness of his murder in the most straightforward sense: you clearly distinguish and affirm both.
Here are some possible “blurring” ideas nearby though: “If you pair the condemnation of the murder with condemnation of his speech, then you suggest that… (1) the murder wasn’t as wrong/bad as other murders.” This seems false; at least, one needn’t suggest that. (2) “…the murderer isn’t as culpable for the wrong, and/or that the victim is somewhat responsible.” This strikes me as a legitimate worry. (3) “…the victim’s speech was just as wrong/bad as the murder.” This also seems like a legitimate worry. When you say “i completely condemn kirk’s murder, full stop. i also completely condemn kirk’s content.”, this suggests an equivalence. Or maybe that’s unfair; a weaker claim: many individuals in the democracy game who say that sort of thing would be suggesting an equivalence.
I think your way of parsing this is helpful. I agree Marc isn’t “blurring” in the most straightforward sense, since he clearly condemns both the content and the murder. My concern really is with the nearby risks you identify under (2) and (3). When condemnation of the content is paired so closely with condemnation of the murder, it can suggest, even unintentionally, either that the killer’s culpability is mitigated by the target’s speech, or that the victim’s speech and the act of killing fall into the same evaluative frame.
That’s why I stress the need for separation: not to deny the wrongness of the content, but to protect against even the appearance of equivalence or partial exoneration. As you put it, murder is not just another “move” in the democracy game. It’s a violation of the conditions that make the game possible.
Some have speculated (and emphasis here on speculated, given that we know little of the circumstances surrounding the shooting) that the political motivations here might spring from “groypers,” who appear to have long hated him and related prominent figures in the mainstream hard right. If the person is a groyper, then it’s likely that they wouldn’t have taken issue with the inflammatory rhetoric as such, but with something else. There was a video a while back of “groypers” joining an event where Kirk was speaking and it’s clear that there’s animosity between the groyper faction of the hard right and the faction that Kirk is seen to represent. But as of now there’s little actual information about the killer’s motives.
In the immediate aftermath of a political figure’s assassination, they are treated as a martyr. There is intense social pressure to focus on that assassination, and if you try to advance thoughtful critiques of the political figure’s behavior – even after condemning their murder – you are likely to face severe criticism.
Good.
Assassinating a politician makes it harder to speak against their cause, and generally advances it. Whatever you think of that in a particular case, in general it is one of our society’s safeguards against political violence. Heaven knows, we need those safeguards right now.
Charlie Kirk is dead. Whatever things he may have done that we might have opposed, he will never do them again. His followers, allies, and friends will probably do things in the future that I and others despise. When they do, that will be the time to call them out and oppose them. If not doing so right now whitewashes Kirk: too bad. That’s the price we pay for treating assassination as unacceptable.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
But the claim isn’t that “not doing so right now” is what results in the whitewashing; it’s that some media outlets and commentators are actively whitewashing; that is, they are presenting a deliberate, laudatory image of the figure that goes beyond stating that it is reprehensible that the figure was assassinated. Making claims that advance the figure’s views, or sanitize them, is not a neutral act, and certainly goes beyond merely ensuring there are safeguards against political violence in general.
They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, and I think that’s true. But you also shouldn’t lie about the dead in an attempt to lionize them. I think what we are seeing is the desire, on the part of some, to give a eulogy—something that is generally positive in tone about its subject; it honors, commemorates, and celebrates a person’s life. And that’s fine. But it’s necessarily not a neutral stance. And for centrist or liberal pundits who engage in that, I think it’s entirely appropriate to say, if that’s what they want to do, they will necessarily have to whitewash. And that whitewashing will necessarily take them beyond merely condemning the act of assassination as reprehensible to glorifying the figure by attributing to him virtues he did not have; indeed, virtues that, in life, he said he despised.
there may well be requirements at many schools (to allow for fuller participation for students with learning issues) that recording be allowed, tho ironically those may soon be falling with other bad-faith attacks on “DEI”, so folks should check first before banning. Perhaps this post should be labeled don’t work for administrators who act like this under pressure…
For schools where recording is not otherwise allowed, recording in class because of a learning issue would come through an ADA accommodation. The question it seems is whether recording a class otherwise, without the faculty member’s express permission should be allowed.
sure was just noting that one should consider/address such accommodations before issuing blanket bans no need to stigmatize folks while trying to make classrooms more accommodating to learning.
I do not allow recording in class, period. If nothing else, it’s a violation of the other students’ rights.
This is another example of where things that are (rightly, I’d say) taken to be part of academic freedom (how to run one’s class) in the US is decided top-down in Australia. In both places I’ve worked here, we have no choice but to record our classes. It’s mandated centrally (not even by the department or school, but by the university.) (The recordings do actually pick up student chatter before class and during breaks, including sometimes things said about other students. This is only one of several problems with the practice.)
That’s awful, sorry to hear.
don’t know if you teach in the US but for now (as Claire notes above) you should follow the ADA and all, The Project 2025 crowd are gunning for such civil rights accommodations so perhaps soon you will be entirely free to carry on as you are…
The law requires granting reasonable accommodations, where “reasonable” means “doesn’t alter the fundamental nature of the class,” or something to that effect. If we’re supposed to be having class discussions about controversial issues, and students know they’re being recorded, they’re 1000x more likely to keep their mouths shut. This is fundamentally altering the nature of the class and thus unreasonable. There are workarounds such as peer notetakers that might work.
This is correct and our own disabilities office has acknowledged this point. With the emphasis on reasonable, not all classes are suitable to be recorded— especially those focused on discussion.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the A&M admin took the path of least resistance in this firing – given the current political state of things. However, though the OP was speaking tongue-in-cheek, faculty should indeed think about and be able to defend whether their particular course content fits with the course competencies (which, if written well, should be plenty broad). It’s good for self-interest, and frankly, probably a professional obligation.
As to the laptops and phones in class, this varies by jurisdiction. In Florida, where I teach, students are permitted to record class without the consent or even knowledge of the professor.
There are at least two issues here. One is whether the state is a ‘one party recording state’– that makes it legal to record a conversation in which one is a participant without the knowledge of the other participating parties. But a second question is about academic integrity policies. I also live in a deep red, one party recording state (advantage– *I* can record everything). But faculty are permitted to ban laptops and recording devices from the classroom, and put that into the academic integrity policy, and fail a student who violates it. And a student’s grade may (always, not just in these cases) be changed to a failing grade after the course ends if that’s when the violation is discovered.
Not even the one party consent is enough. As it was explained to me recently, in Texas that simply makes it permissible but is not a right. There are circumstances in which unauthorized recording is not allowed and our classrooms are one such place.
Texas A&M is no longer a university. The entire faculty should either resign or go on strike until such time as the fired instructor and the demoted administrators are reinstated.
If Texas A&M does not reverse course, employers should treat Texas A&M grads with degrees granted after this date as if they had no education beyond high school. Conference organizers should not invite Texas A&M faculty who remain on the job.
Without academic freedom, our work has no value.
I very much share the concern, but I don’t think boycotts or dismissing Texas A&M students’ degrees is the right move. Right now we have a vague course description, a student complaint amplified by a politician, and a president who reversed his stance under pressure. That strongly suggests political interference, but the details of what was actually taught and how the university handled it are still unclear. If the instructor’s teaching was genuinely unprofessional, that should be addressed through normal academic procedures, not through political pressure or public grandstanding.
A more constructive response is to defend academic freedom through established channels: professional associations, faculty unions, accrediting bodies, and legal challenges. Public campaigns and organized statements from faculty across institutions can also pressure administrators and politicians without isolating students or devaluing their degrees. In contrast to other topics recently discussed here, this is exactly the kind of case where professional association statements are appropriate. And these remedies apply whether the teaching was sound or unsound, because the real issue is not the content alone but the integrity of academic processes. Punishing uninvolved students and faculty only weakens solidarity when what’s needed is collective pressure on the administration and state officials.
I dunno, this is bound to be a divisive issue, so the APA shouldn’t speak to it unless the membership as a whole votes to instruct it to do so.
I appreciate the snark, but this is at least something directly relevant to the members of the APA and the discharge of their professional duties (were philosophers involved).
But anyway, I would think just about any bit of subject matter could be defended as relevant to instruction in most philosophy courses.
I don’t think that strike or resignation is appropriate. But if I were still at Texas A&M, I would e-mail President Welsh my lecture notes and the course description of my class, and ask which material I am allowed to teach that goes beyond the few sentences in the course description. Until he replied to my e-mail, I would strongly consider holding my classes by reading out the few sentences of course description, and then stating that the President of the University has said that we are not allowed to teach any more than this until he has given his permission. I would encourage students to talk to each other about anything they can think of related to that description, but I would aim not to violate my duty not to tell them anything more than what it says in the catalog.
Anyway, I categorically condemn any effort to get conference organizers to punish the victims here. Not just because I like my former colleagues (and the people they have hired since I left, including a co-author of mine) but because I don’t see how punishing the faculty leads to any benefit for anyone.
And for what it’s worth, I haven’t talked to anyone at Texas A&M about this. My coauthor and I had a call a few days ago about our paper, but this event hadn’t yet occurred.
The strategy you describe sounds appropriate to me.
I hear your point and “Tenured Realist’s” point about not punishing the victims. Violations of academic freedom should have and do have reputational consequences for universities. Those consequences will inevitably affect people who work at those universities and students who attend. In the most extreme cases, when an institution’s curriculum is dictated by politicians, the institution has ceased to be a university. Treating the degrees granted as null is not coercion or punishment. It is a recognition of what the institution has become.
Perhaps rather than refusing to invite faculty from such institutions, conference organizers should extend invitations as usual but not embarrass speakers from politically destroyed universities by reminding conference attendees of these speakers’ affiliations. (Don’t list their affiliations on the program; don’t identify their affiliations when introducing them.)
Faculty! You must not depart from the official course descriptions! They are, as you know, comprehensive in scope, never subject to interpretation, and brook deviation only at the cost of your employment!
For what it’s worth, at the two universities I’ve taught at in Australia, this would be only a slight exaggeration. Our course descriptions are quite long, must be approved by a committee well in advance, and we are required to stick very close to them. Maybe it’s different in other disciplines (I teach in law) and other universities, but the above would be more or less the attitude of most of the administrators, and lots of the faculty, I’ve known here.
I taught at an Australian university for close to 10 years. Although I did also find that course descriptions had to undergo a fairly rigorous process of approval—through department, faculty, and eventually a committee of academic board—in practice there was huge leeway in actual content. This was largely because the course description, although long, was sufficiently general that we could satisfy it in multiple ways, including with new content that had come up well after the course description, learning outcomes, etc. had been approved. That said, in practice, I also found that we weren’t teaching certain things that the course description said we’d teach, and there was no mechanism for monitoring that would’ve allowed that to come to light. It was up to staff (in this case, myself) to point it out and fill that gap by creating new content for teaching.
No need to wait for dictatorship–it’s fully here.
So college administrators are spineless cowards?, not the vanguard of the revolution? Oops.
It seems so. But many college presidents were professors too. They make a lot of money to throw it away by going against politicians or state law.
Oh look, it’s fascism.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/university-student-groups-in-nazi-germany
“The law mandated the dismissal of all tenured German civil servants who were “not of Aryan descent,” as well as “political opponents” of the regime. In the university context, the law authorized the release of Jewish and “politically undesirable” faculty members from service. Exceptions were those who had served on the front in World War I or were appointed before the beginning of the Weimar Republic. This action resulted in the removal of over 1,100 faculty members from service by 1935. It emboldened radical student groups to employ violence and intimidation against students and faculty members.
The more brazen groups used the resulting atmosphere of denunciations and threats to act on their antisemitic sentiments. They also carried out grudges against students and instructors. The National Socialist German Students’ League directly targeted Jewish students and the remaining Jewish faculty members.”
Let the chorus of right-wing apologists claiming the comparison doesn’t hold begin.
Misuse of “literally.”
Hyperbole isn’t a misuse, it’s a rhetorical use
And another one – this time a tenured faculty member.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/10/texas-state-university-professor-fired/
“A Texas State University professor was fired on Wednesday after he was accused of inciting violence in a video of him speaking at a socialism conference posted on social media… Thomas Alter, an associate history professor, can be seen talking during a Zoom meeting as part of the Revolutionary Socialism Conference, an online meeting organized by several socialist groups… The video circulated on X cuts one portion of Alter’s speech in half, during which he criticized “insurrectional anarchists” for their method of protesting, urging organization into a party to better reach people. In the full speech posted on YouTube, he notes that some anarchists have faced jail time for their methods of protest, praising their efforts but questioning whether they can achieve their goals.
“While their actions are laudable, it should be asked, to what purpose do they serve?” Alter said during his speech, which is not included in the video posted on X. The second portion of his statement is included. “Without organization, how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty, profit-driven, mad organization in the history of the world — that of the United States?””
The student’s complaint confuses three issues:
The instructor’s reply was “My gender is not illegal,” which is directly rebutting a 1-style objection. But I think that objection is confused on a much more fundamental level. Even if such-and-such beliefs about gender really were ruled to be illegal, instructors should be free to teach the arguments in their favor.
The real question, for academic freedom purposes, is whether the instructor was going off topic. If yes, they were in the wrong. If no, they were just doing their job.
(Of course, there are borderline cases of relevance, and there are other issues at stake, too. I don’t think it’s good procedure to fire faculty whenever an aggrieved student calls up the government. What if the grievance is illegitimate?)
I mean, the legitimacy of the grievance isn’t even particularly relevant in this case, at least with respect to determining the justice of the firing. However “wrong” it may be to go off topic in a class, it is not a fireable offense, certainly?
If a lecturer goes off topic 99.9% of the time, that’s obviously a fireable offense. If it’s more like 0.1%, then firing would obviously be overkill.
The problem is that there are many borderline cases in between, which political actors can use as a pretext for getting someone fired for their disfavored views. This is a genuine problem. But the solution can’t be to say that “certainly” academics are allowed to go off topic as much as they want. That’s an abdication of a fundamental responsibility to our students.
I have to say, debates like this represent what I think almost always goes wrong when academics try to respond to these kinds of political issues. The claim that the instructor was “off-topic” was weaponized completely in bad faith. It is utterly stupid, politically speaking, to debate the merits of a charge made entirely and obviously in bad faith. Why is this stupid? Because if this charge were not ready to hand, they would have come up with some other bullshit charge to suit the purpose. That is what bad faith means: you do not at all care about the principle you are invoking, you are merely crudely exploiting and weaponizing it for whatever use it can provide. The instructor was fired because she talked about gender in a certain way (i.e. transgressed the lines set in the culture wars), not because she was “off-topic.” Thinking or pretending otherwise is daft in the special kind of way that only an academic can be about politics. It is similar to watching people putting on a play and thinking it is all real.
What a superficial, uncharitable comment. I never said that the firing was done in good faith. On the contrary:
Let me explain what I meant by analogy. Not long ago, activists were going after university leaders like Claudine Gay by digging up instances of plagiarism in their work. Obviously, this was not done out of pure-hearted concern for academic integrity. But it would be a terrible idea to respond by saying, “Who cares about plagiaraism?” Academics have to care about plagiarism!
Similarly, I think it would wrong to respond to this case by saying, “Who cares about shoving random content into classes?” Academics have a responsibility to teach the actual classes that they’re assigned to teach!
As political pressures mount on academia, we have to be crystal clear about what academic freedom does and doesn’t protect. It protects us against political interference. But it doesn’t protect us against all bad faith accusations — otherwise, even well-substantiated accusations of plagiarism would be dismissable on the grounds that the accusers acted in bad faith.
The student doesn’t understand the difference between a law and an executive order either. She’s probably young enough to get a pass from me; I held some terrible beliefs until I was 19 or 20. The scary part is how many American adults are operating at her level.
I am fairly certain the person saying “my gender is not illegal” is another student in the room, and not the instructor.
Thanks for the correction, Lewis.
Students may ask off-topic questions, but answering them is on-topic.
Indeed, most of the times I go ‘off-topic’ (not infrequently), this is prompted by a student’s comment or question.
the idea that there are clear indicators of “going off topic” is absurd, the idea that students(or even MAGA federal monitor) would be well placed to make such calls is even more questionable. This is part of why automated content moderation is such a thorny task….
Imagine if Welsh had been around in September 1930 when von Neumann abruptly began teaching material literally inconsistent with everything on his course syllabus and continued on that way until the end of the term.
that she was “not entirely sure [material on gender identity] is legal to be teaching… because according to our president, there’s only two genders… and also this very much goes against not only [mine] but a lot of people’s religious beliefs.”
Vow, now that’s a picture of a legal system…
If you want you want to do something meaningful here one of her colleagues has set up a gofundme. If ever there was a time for real solidarity it’s now.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-support-our-childrens-literature-colleague
The president of Texas A&M just resigned: https://apnews.com/article/texas-am-university-resignation-mark-welsh-4ca9d1fa21a35e632c3c4a568efa46dd