Conservative cancel culture confronts Texas A&M, leading to termination of women’s and gender studies program.

Texas A&M University is discontinuing its women’s and gender studies program, revising the syllabi for hundreds of courses, and canceling six classes as part of a new policy that restricts how professors can address certain race and gender topics, according to a Friday announcement from school officials.

The course modifications and cancellations follow months after a widely circulated video of a dispute over a lecturer’s lessons caused significant turmoil at Texas A&M, one of the nation’s largest universities.

University administrators sought to reassure the campus community that the new policy’s effects would be limited, impacting only a small fraction of the available classes and that the canceled courses would not hinder students’ progress toward graduation.

“Robust oversight and standards safeguard academic integrity and rebuild public trust, ensuring that a degree from Texas A&M holds value for our students and their future employers,” Interim President Tommy Williams stated in a news release. “This has been our priority throughout this process and will continue to be as we advance.”

However, faculty and students, with hundreds protesting the changes on campus Thursday evening, have charged Texas A&M with violating academic and student freedoms.

“They have diminished this marketplace of ideas by now favoring or advancing a specific perspective on race, gender, and sexuality. This perspective effectively erases the experiences of people of color and the LGBTQ+ community,” said Leonard Bright, president of the Texas A&M chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

The Friday announcement came after the university conducted a comprehensive review of 5,400 courses, which was initiated when the Texas A&M University System regents approved the new policy in November.

Texas A&M stated that the six canceled courses constitute just 0.11% of the classes offered this semester. The affected courses are from the Bush School of Government and Public Service; the College of Arts and Sciences; the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; and the College of Education and Human Development.

The university noted that faculty were provided an opportunity to seek exemptions for certain courses. Of the 54 course exemption requests submitted to Williams, he approved 48.

Texas A&M indicated that the choice to terminate the women’s and gender studies program was partly due to low student enrollment.

The university announced Friday that Williams would not be giving interviews to the media.

“I acknowledge that the recent Texas A&M University System policy changes have been disconcerting for many, and I understand your worries. Nonetheless, our collective duty is evident: our students,” Williams said in a January 12 statement.

The new policy seems to mark the first instance a public university system in Texas has implemented regulations governing what faculty can discuss in their classrooms regarding race and gender. Other university systems in the state have also imposed limits on classroom instruction or started internal assessments of their course catalogs in response to a new state law.

Bright, whose graduate-level ethics class was canceled under the policy, said that despite the university’s assurances, the changes are fostering a climate of fear where instructors are self-censoring their teaching content to avoid issues.

“They disseminated a chilling message to the faculty that we were promoting woke ideology, and … that individuals could be fired for teaching subjects that some conservatives undoubtedly oppose,” said Bright, a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service.

During Thursday’s campus protest, Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M, claimed the new policy prevented him from teaching specific works by Plato.

“No reasonable person would argue that a philosophy professor should be barred from teaching Plato in a philosophy class. Yet, that is occurring,” Peterson said.

Williams had previously stated that Texas A&M was not banning Plato.

The new policy at Texas A&M was implemented after the September firing of Melissa McCoul, a senior lecturer in the English department, following the release of a video showing her arguing with a student about teaching gender identity in a children’s literature class. McCoul’s dismissal occurred after political pressure from Republican lawmakers, including the Governor.

Soon after McCoul was terminated, Texas A&M’s president at the time,

Republican state Representative Brian Harrison, a critic of Texas A&M, praised the decision to end the women’s and gender studies program on Friday.

“After years of applying pressure and revealing that department’s woke agenda, I am proud to have secured another major conservative victory for Texas taxpayers against transgender indoctrination!” Harrison posted on the social media platform .

Texas A&M is situated in College Station, approximately 95 miles (153 kilometers) northwest of Houston.