Texas A&M is being sued by a group of professors and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas over a policy that led to, among other things, a professor being banned from teaching Plato’s Symposium, the cancellation of an “Ethics and Public Policy” course, and the closure of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. The policy, instituted by the university’s Board of Regents in the fall of 2025, prohibits courses from “advocating race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.” The policy does not define “advocating” but the university appears to have interpreted it to mean “including”. The results of this have been a number of academic freedom violations and some faculty fleeing the university. According to the lawsuit, the university’s policy and its implementation of it “violate Plaintiffs’ First Amendment free speech and Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. The Censorship Policy imposes unconstitutionally vague, viewpoint discriminatory, prior restraints on First Amendment protected academic speech throughout the Texas A&M University System.” The lawsuit refers to the policy in question as “the Censorship Policy” and states: On its face, the Censorship Policy imposes a complete prohibition, in all core curriculum courses, on courses “advocat[ing]” particular disfavored views of race or gender, or any topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity, but the Policy does not impose any corresponding ban on opposing views on these issues. For non-core and graduate courses, any “teaching” at all—not just “advocacy,” though the Censorship Policy does not define either term—on disfavored viewpoints of race or gender or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited. Exceptions are only permitted through a standardless pre-clearance process available “in limited circumstances,” upon a showing of a “necessary educational purpose” that the Policy does not define.  The lawsuit makes clear that the policy involves the kind of viewpoint discrimination incompatible with the free speech protections, and that it intends to “cast a pall of orthodoxy” over A&M classrooms: While there is considerable ambiguity about what is allowed and what is not, it is clear that the Censorship Policy is asymmetric on its face. As written and enforced, the Censorship Policy burdens only one side of each contested question. Because it forbids “race ideology”..

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