Peterson from Texas A&M to SMU
Martin Peterson, currently professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, will be moving to Southern Methodist University (SMU).
Professor Peterson works in ethics, particularly normative ethics, engineering ethics, and the ethics of technology. His latest book is Ethics in the Gray Area: A Gradualist Theory of Right and Wrong. You can learn more about his work here and here.
Readers may recall that Professor Peterson was told by administrators at Texas A&M at the start of this year to remove texts from Plato from his philosophy course. I am told that the censorship policies recently adopted by the university motivated his decision to leave.
He is the second philosophy professor to decide to leave Texas A&M owing to the administration’s disregard of academic freedom (Linda Radzik’s impending move to Binghamton University was reported on last month).
Peterson’s resignation from Texas A&M is effective July 31st, 2026, and he starts at SMU in August as Professor of Philosophy and the Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor in Human Values: Endowed Chair of Ethics in Artificial Intelligence.
Legalize Plato!
He also wrote a great introduction to decision theory!
Perhaps all these departures will make the petty despots in the Texas state government realize that the only result their fatuous initiatives have achieved is the loss of their best talent. Ah, but that would require a modicum of receptivity to reason, on their part.
“Losing” their “best talent” was the plan all along.
I’m glad Radzik and Peterson have had the opportunity to move to better institutions. At the same time, the situation is discouraging for junior scholars, who often have little choice but to apply to departments like these given current job market conditions. On the off chance that they get a job there, they won’t have the same clout or standing to challenge such censorious behaviour from admin, and they may also find themselves without senior colleagues who could stand up to the admin, since such folks will likely just leave if they can.
Of course one always has a choice about whether to serve a fascist regime. Nobody has to be a philosophy professor. Anyone can have the integrity to say, this is my ideal career, but not If I would be complicit with and serving bigotry and authoritarianism.
When I had been looking for a TT job for several years, I was offered what was, in many ways, an extremely attractive job teaching law and philosophy at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. I love Moscow – it was one of my favorite cites in the world. My wife is Russian, and she would have been glad, for the most part, to go back. The university was one of the top schools in Russia. There were some other draw-backs, but the thing that kept me from taking the job, more than anything else, even though I didn’t have any other academic job lined up, was that Russia had recently passed laws making it a serious crime to promote “gay propaganda” and some other similar things. I would have been teaching legal and political philosophy, and I was seriously worried that I’d either have to censor myself a lot more than I am willing to, or risk being deported or put in jail. I decided I’d not take the job. Now, I don’t mean to make myself out to be a hero of any sort. I did have another option – I had an offer to work as a law clerk for a court of appeals judge, which, while only for a year, was a good option in itself. And, there were other problems about taking the job. But mostly, I decided that the political situation in the country made it impossible to do the job I wanted. As it turned out, that was one of the best decisions I’d ever made.
I 100% agree with your characterization of what is happening at A&M and totally support Peterson, Radzik, and Lane, but I’m little less sure that working there necessarily serves or is complicit with the regime. Thinking out loud, since I’m unsettled about this: What if one engages in resistance or subterfuge against admin? What about the students and serving them (it is also their university)? Is abandonment the only ethical option? I suppose I can see that…ultimately it is the regime that is signing your paycheck, and that does feel like complicity. Not that any of our paychecks are signed by clean hands, but these are especially dirty.
Paying taxes is directly helping/funding a fascist regime, no matter what you do. You could at least do what you love in the meantime!
Congrats on the endowed chair, Martin!
It’s also worth noting that a junior philosopher, Elek Lane, withdrew from an offered TT position there. He wrote about his decision in the Chronicle for Higher Education: https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-i-withdrew-from-my-dream-job
As an SMU faculty member, I am both thrilled that Martin will be joining us and regretful that the politically appointed A&M Board of Regents acted without faculty input or approval to implement censorious policies that undermine academic freedom and led to Martin’s departure.
Dr. Peterson sent this resignation letter to his dean — here is the text, which he shared with his colleagues and is copied from a public post by the TAMU-CS AAUP Chapter:
Dear Interim Dean North,
I am writing to notify you that I will resign from my tenured position at Texas A&M University, effective July 31, 2026. (See the attached letter.)
I have met many inspiring colleagues and friends at Texas A&M, and it has been a great pleasure to teach thousands of students. However, I strongly oppose the Board of Regents’ new censorship policy. No other serious research university maintains a policy on “prohibited instruction.” As Chair of the Academic Freedom Council, I regard this as an outright violation of one of the most basic principles of academic freedom. Faculty—not a politically appointed board—should control the curriculum.
I admire the many federal prosecutors across the country who have chosen to resign rather than carry out illegal or immoral orders. To my knowledge, no department head, dean, or other administrator at Texas A&M has taken any meaningful action to defend academic freedom. As John Stuart Mill points out in On Liberty, certain ideas must be “fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed”; otherwise, they will “be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.” Because faculty no longer control the curriculum, Texas A&M is quickly becoming an institution of dead dogmas.
Sincerely,
Martin Peterson
Sue G. and Harry E. Bovay Jr. Chair
Department of Philosophy
Texas A&M University
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tamu-aaup-1280023b6_texas-am-has-suffered-a-great-loss-the-activity-7448144761569312768-ztCv
Is he going to keep up the lawsuit he started with A&M?