Numerous organizations, including the American Association of University Professors and PEN America, have condemned Texas A&M University (one of the state’s two flagship campuses) for instructing Prof. Martin Peterson to remove Plato’s Symposium from an introductory philosophy class because its open discussion of ancient Greek sexual ethics violates the university’s vague policy prohibiting undergraduate classes from discussion of “race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.” Instead, Prof. Peterson has assigned his students readings on free speech and academic freedom. By creating an environment in which foundational texts of Western civilization cannot be taught because they might be relevant to modern debates, the university degrades students’ educational experience and cheapens its own reputation for academic rigor. This step is an outgrowth of repeated political attacks over the last five years on the state’s flagship universities by the Texas legislature. One of the many ironies is that Plato himself was an advocate of literary censorship, believing that tragedy and epic should be banned from his ideal state in favor of hymns to the gods and encomia of good men. Nearly 200 other courses at A&M have been flagged by administrators for similar reasons.
Read Prof. Peterson’s description of the incident HERE.
See reaction by another academic philosopher HERE.
