The interim president of Texas A&M, Tommy Williams, has publicly replied to last week’s reports of his university telling a philosophy professor to remove readings by Plato and others from the syllabus of his moral problems course.
In a message to faculty posted on the Texas A&M website, President Williams writes:
I want to address recent reports that we’re banning Plato altogether at Texas A&M. This is simply not true. Stunts intended to create this kind of noise discredit your hard work to incorporate a wide array of perspectives into your classes. A variety of courses this spring will teach Plato dialogues. We can – and will – teach and assign readings from the great thinkers of history while complying with updated System policies.
This is a dishonest and cowardly reply. It is dishonest because it misrepresents the “recent reports” it purportedly addresses, and it is cowardly because in it Williams does not himself describe and defend what his university did, but instead changes the topic.
Perhaps some random person said that Texas A&M is “banning Plato altogether,” but the post here about these events (which was viewed around 200,000 times in a single day and shared widely across the web), and every other news story about it, has been quite clear about what happened, namely that the university told philosophy professor Martin Peterson that he could only teach his moral problems course if he removed the Plato readings (and some other material) from it. See the emails here.
If Mr. Williams’ reply was honest, it would have instead said, “I want to address recent reports that a professor has been told by the administration to remove a reading of Plato’s dialogues from his course. This is true.”
If Mr. Williams’ reply was not cowardly, it would have then defended the ordered removal of Plato from Dr. Peterson’s course, and not insulted Dr. Peterson’s quite reasonable construction of his course and his expressions of concern about his academic freedom as a “stunt”, nor changed the topic to other courses.
It’s like a burglar defending himself against accusations he stole a pie cooling on the window sill by saying, “I want to address recent reports that I took everything they had. This is simply not true. And it’s their fault that they put that pie on the windowsill. And besides, look at all the people I didn’t steal from!”
Instead of responding like an evasive politician, Mr. Williams should have owned up to what his university has done. Perhaps he now thinks it was a mistake to tell Dr. Peterson to remove Plato from his course, in which case he could have said that, and probably argued for a change to the rule that was applied to Dr. Peterson’s course. After all, as Dr. Peterson notes in a recent op-ed:
The real problem is the absurd policy imposed by the Board of Regents. There is no state law that requires us to censor Plato. The policy could be dropped tomorrow if they chose to do so.
Mr. Williams’ message was addressed to his faculty. He could have spoken to the concerns most of them have about these recent violations of academic freedom, of political micromanagement of pedagogy, and the quality and reputation of their university. Yet he does not do this in any substantive way. The words “academic freedom” are amazingly absent from his statement. Perhaps his message was really addressed to the Board of Regents: don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
His full statement to the faculty is below:
