This new policy won’t affect faculty in the natural sciences and engineering, where A&M is strongest, but it will affect faculty across the humanities and social sciences, as well as law. What’s especially shocking here is that isn’t a once-off attack on academic freedom,this is creating a systematic policy whose purpose is to shamelessly infringe the core academic freedom right of faculty to teach their subject as they see fit, consistent with the standards of their academic discipline. The new policy provides that:

“No system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity, unless the course and the relevant course materials are approved in advance by the member CEO.”

No definition of “advocate” is given. But “race or gender ideology” are defined:

Gender Ideology – means a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex…..

Race Ideology – means a concept that attempts to shame a particular race or ethnicity, accuse them of being oppressors in a racial hierarchy or conspiracy, ascribe to them less value as contributors to society and public discourse because of their race or ethnicity, or assign them intrinsic guilt based on the actions of their presumed ancestors or relatives in other areas of the world. This also includes course content that promotes activism on issues related to race or ethnicity, rather than academic instruction.

Whether “self-assessed gender identity” should “replace[]” or be “disconnected from the biological category of sex” is a topic that comes up legitimately in psychology, sociology, applied ethics, antidiscrimination law and on and on. Given the definition of “gender ideology,” does merely teaching about this topic constitute “advocacy”? The definition of “race ideology” is a bit better, but will cause a lot of anxiety for those teaching about American slavery or apartheid, or discussing the anti-subordination interpretation of equal protection law.

It would be consistent with academic freedom to remind instructors that the classroom is not to be used to proseltyze for partisan political causes. This policy, by contrast, is a massive violation of academic freedom for instructors who teach about topics related to gender and race across multiple disciplines, including philosophy.