Texas A&M University this week quickly fired a children’s literature professor and removed a department head and a dean from their administrative positions after a state representative shared a video of the instructor teaching about gender identity.
On Monday, Texas State Rep. Brian Harrison took to social media to accuse the professor and Texas A&M of perpetuating “DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination,” a common refrain among conservative critics of higher education.
The video Harrison shared went viral, spurred conservative outcry and prompted the Texas A&M system to announce a coursework audit of every class at its 12 universities. Harrison also called for the flagship’s president to be fired over the incident.
The speed and punitive nature of the university’s response stirred outrage from faculty and free speech organizations and left the massive public system at the center of a maelstrom over academic freedom, due process and bans on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“We are witnessing the death of academic freedom in Texas, the remaking of universities as tools of authoritarianism that suppress free thought,” Jonathan Friedman, managing director of Pen America’s U.S. Free Expression Programs, said in a statement. “Faculty at Texas A&M and across the state have been put on notice: they must not teach about any concepts politicians disfavor, because Big Brother is watching.”
Ousted in a day
Harrison posted a two-minute video on Monday that he described, in all capital letters, as showing a student “kicked out of class after objecting to transgender indoctrination.” The lawmaker also called on the Trump administration and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to take action against the university.
In the video, a student tells a professor that teaching there are more than two genders goes against the student’s religious beliefs and violates an executive order from President Donald Trump. Trump signed an executive order in January directing the federal government to only recognize two sexes, male and female, a position at odds with the scientific and medical communities.
The professor replies that the subject matter is not illegal to teach, despite what the student says, and tells them to leave if they choose.
Neither speaker’s face is shown on camera, and the video is not dated or timestamped.
Texas A&M on Wednesday did not immediately respond to a request for comment and to verify the video.
Swift and escalating responses from Texas A&M leaders
Texas A&M President Mark Welsh took to social media to respond to Harrison’s video the same day.
In a late evening statement, Welsh said he learned Monday afternoon that leaders of the university’s college of arts and sciences “approved plans to continue teaching course content that was not consistent with the course’s published description.”
As a result, Welsh told the university provost to immediately remove the college’s dean and English department head from their administrative positions.
“Our students use the published information in the course catalog to make important decisions about the courses they take in pursuit of their degrees,” Welsh said. “If we allow different course content to be taught from what is advertised, we let our students down.”
The next morning, Welsh announced that the professor involved had been fired, just a day after he said he learned about the incident.
“This isn’t about academic freedom; it’s about academic responsibility,” Welsh said in the Tuesday statement. “Our degree programs and courses go through extensive approval processes, and we must ensure that what we ultimately deliver to students is consistent with what was approved.”
Welsh also ordered the university’s deans and department heads to audit the content of their courses “to ensure they align with the course descriptions.” The flagship Texas A&M campus has 16,000 course sections, according to the president, and enrolls over 79,000 students.
The inconsistency between course descriptions and taught material was not a new problem, said Welsh. Earlier this year, the arts and sciences college signed off on another children’s literature course for the summer term “that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course,” he said.
This isn’t about academic freedom; it’s about academic responsibility.
Mark Welsh
President of Texas A&M University
After someone raised the issue, the university provided students with alternatives to complete the class and “made changes to ensure this course content does not continue in future semesters,” Welsh said. He did not provide further details on the summer course or the inconsistencies.
“At that time, I made it clear to our academic leadership that course content must match catalog descriptions for each and every one of our course sections,” he said. But the president said the latest discrepancy between a course description and its content shows the problem persisted.
The system’s board of regents also announced Tuesday that it had directed Chancellor Glenn Hegar to audit every course for “full compliance with all applicable laws.”
In a statement, the board said it was working “to ensure that what happened this week will not be repeated,” saying it “will not tolerate actions that damage the reputation of our institutions.”
Auditing the entire system’s courses will be a massive undertaking. The university system, one of the country’s biggest, enrolls about 175,000 students across 12 institutions and has an annual budget of $8.1 billion, according to institutional data.
Hegar confirmed the systemwide audit shortly after the board’s statement and applauded Welsh’s decision to fire the professor.
“His action shows insubordination and indoctrination have no place on our campus or in our classrooms,” Hegar said Tuesday evening.
State pressure and federal inquiries
Abbott this week praised Welsh for stripping the college officials of their administrative positions and called for the “professor who acted contrary to Texas law” to be fired.
It is unclear what law the governor is referring to, and his office did not respond to questions Wednesday. In 2023, Texas passed a sweeping ban on most diversity, equity and inclusion work at public colleges, but the law does not affect what faculty can teach.
However, Harrison said on social media Tuesday that the professor’s termination wasn’t enough. “The President must also be fired,” the state lawmaker said.
In his calls for governmental intervention, Harrison accused Welsh of mishandling the student’s complaint about the professor. He shared two audio recordings that he says include Welsh initially declining to fire the professor at the student’s request and defending education on LGBTQ+ topics.
Abbott and Welsh have already clashed once this year. The governor threatened the Texas A&M leader’s job after a university email invited some employees and Ph.D. students to attend a higher education conference for Black, Hispanic and Native American participants. Welsh ultimately said no one would attend, to comply with state law, The Texas Tribune reported.
Harrison also called on the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services to investigate Texas A&M. The state lawmaker, who served as HHS’ chief of staff during the first Trump administration, further requested the agencies “ensure that Texas universities receiving federal funds are complying with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
Neither department responded to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division, called Harrison’s video “deeply concerning” in a Monday social media post and said her office would look into it.
‘An abuse of their power’
Texas A&M’s rapid-fire termination of the professor, removal of academic leaders from administrative roles, and decision to audit all coursework drew significant condemnation from faculty groups and free speech advocates.
Faculty at Texas A&M and across the state have been put on notice: they must not teach about any concepts politicians disfavor, because Big Brother is watching.
Jonathan Friedman
Managing director of Pen America’s U.S. Free Expression Programs
Zeph Capo, president of Texas American Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday that neither recent state laws nor Trump’s executive orders supersede the U.S. Constitution, adding that nothing legally takes away faculty’s right to due process and free speech.
“Lawmakers and the governor himself using their considerable platforms to publicly call for the removal of a faculty member, a dean, a department chair, and the president of the university based on viral video clips is an abuse of their power and a level of histrionics that ought to concern us all,” Capo said in statement. “This is not normal, and we cannot let this race to a moral panic become the new normal.”
The Texas Conference of the American Association for University Professors sounded alarms Wednesday after Texas A&M announced its systemwide course audit.
“What has happened at Texas A&M this week should concern every Texan,” Texas-AAUP said. “Not only has the integrity of academic freedom come under fire, but the due process rights of a faculty member have been trampled at the urging of state politicians + the governor himself.”
The same day, the University of Texas-Austin’s AAUP chapter expressed solidarity with its Texas A&M peers and cast doubt on Abbott’s accusation that the professor had violated state law.
A petition to reinstate the fired professor and Texas A&M administrators to their positions garnered over 1,900 signatures as of Wednesday evening.
Laura Spitalniak
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