The university is reviewing courses under new rules restricting teaching about race and gender. Administrators told a philosophy professor to cut some lessons on Plato to comply.
Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M University, was thunderstruck when he was told on Tuesday that he needed to excise some teachings of Plato from his syllabus. It was one way, his department head wrote in an email, that Dr. Peterson’s philosophy class could comply with new policies limiting discussion of race and gender.
Days before the start of the spring semester, one of the nation’s largest public universities is racing to interpret and enforce the A&M system’s rules. Some professors are reconsidering syllabuses at the direction of administrators, or are unsure whether they will be able to lead certain classes. Course sections are being canceled or potentially reclassified, threatening students’ schedules.
And professors are worried that they are losing the academic freedom they prize.
“A philosophy professor who is not allowed to teach Plato?” Dr. Peterson said in an interview on Wednesday. “What kind of university is that? Is that really what they want?”
“How,” he added, “can we possibly teach philosophy without being allowed to discuss Plato, even if some of Plato’s ideas are a little bit controversial?”
“How can we possibly teach philosophy without being allowed to discuss Plato?”
Because hamstringing education and freedom of thought is a basic tenet of fascist autocracy. Can’t teach people how to think if you want the kind of citizens that will be wage slaves and willing troops in a technofascist meat grinder.
Yesterday my six year old daughter said that when she’s ready to go to college, she’s going to go to A&M. She doesn’t know anything about it other than that her mother and some other family members went there.
I told her that A&M used to be a good school, but it isn’t anymore. I said maybe it’d be good again by the time she’s old enough.
Philosophy classes from now on will be limited to studying the Bible, “Mein Kampf” and “The Art of the Deal”.
Plato!? Fucking why?
Be stupid, or else.
Again, teaching about something does not equal advocacy, dumbasses. Do they think history professors are all Nazis? That all psychology professors are Freud fanatics?
This is what happens when political decisions by high school drop outs are allowed to run things. School board members should be required to have bachelors or better degrees.
Good thing the students can still hear a critique of political economy.
