Texas A&M, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Academic Common Sense
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but at least it keeps my fingers on the keys, not scratching my head or tearing my hair out. And I know that my words here will have no impact on the policies that absurdly censor teaching at Texas A&M University and other public institutions in Texas. None. And what do I have at stake, beyond, say, my sanity and sense of humanity, or my lingering belief in the importance of public education, democracy, the advancement of knowledge, and the pursuit of truth? (So earnest, I know!)
Normally, I lean toward the ironies of history, but we seem to be living in a post-irony epoch. I’m retired, no longer in the classroom, and during my thirty years as a public university professor, I never taught in a women’s and gender studies department or in the state of Texas. But maybe I write because I am not a scholar of gender and sexuality, because I have not already written this a hundred times, because I (we) need to take a stand against such absurd and destructive official behavior. Not that my colleagues in the field, despite their fatigue, have lost their commitment, or their willingness to continue their Sisyphian efforts, rolling that ball up the hill time after time . . .
To state the obvious: the policing of class materials, mandated for state universities, to prohibit alleged advocacy of “race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity,” clearly violates academic freedom, the First Amendment, and those colleges’ own academic missions, which presumably include the production and dissemination of knowledge.
There’s nothing explicitly acknowledging these core tasks on the university’s webpage, “Our Purposes & Values.” However, it does address “the First Amendment on Campus,” saying: “At Texas A&M, we are a community where the free and open exchange of ideas and information is valued, promoted and encouraged.”[1] Really? Someone’s messin’ with Texas.
On January 30, 2026, the university administration acknowledged not only that hundreds of course syllabi had been altered under its new policies but that it was also ending its women’s and gender studies program. Tommy Williams, Texas A&M’s interim president, cited low enrollment and, more to the point, “the difficulty of bringing the program into compliance with the new system policies.”[2] Of course. Which should be a wakeup call to the physics department when Texas abolishes advocacy for the law of gravity, or to the math department when the state declares that 2+2≠4.
In particular, the policy demonizes “advocacy.” What is it? And is that actually what we do in the classroom?
It’s true that advocacy exists in the university – it has engendered new disciplines, advanced fields, and improved the world. In environmental studies, which I taught in addition to history, a core belief is that life on earth depends on protecting and sustaining the planet. Women and Gender Studies is underpinned by the notion that people are equal. Is this advocacy? Schools of business tend not to be neutral on capitalism. Is that OK?
Much more teaching and learning – information acquisition, synthesis, analysis, interpretation, discussion, debate – than “advocacy” goes on in college classrooms, and the latter is seldom anything close to the fever dreams of right-wing activists.
Teaching is not necessarily advocacy, and even advocacy isn’t necessarily objectionable. I taught courses (among other topics) on the American Revolution. Should I have taken a stand as a rebel or loyalist, a patriot or Tory? If I had, should I have been sanctioned? Or the Declaration of Independence – may I make any judgments about it, or its claim that “all men are created equal”? These things are ideological. Would I be on thin ice if I came out in favor of American, or even human, equality? Would I need to excise early American critiques of American law and policy by the likes of Abigail Adams or Judith Sargent Murray from my reading lists? Or by social critics who saw themselves as antislavery advocates, not merely, say, Black activists like Absalom Jones or James Forten, but even some who practiced slavery themselves, like George Washington?
It’s hard to believe that interim president Williams has the time, let alone the expertise, to personally vet syllabi, but some apparently have reached his desk. He’s been willing to make the call: “common sense is what we’re trying to use as our gauge.” Common sense? You needn’t be Thomas Paine to reject this tyrant’s intrusions. To paraphrase a later pamphlet by the patriotic author of Common Sense, these are “times that try men’s souls.” (Is that comment sexist, betraying a gender identity or ideology?)
Mr. Williams assures critics, according to the New York Times report, that the university was “not looking to cut material in ways that might prevent students from being competitive in the marketplace,” and that opponents “had confused what academic freedom is.” But of course, students are not units of production, not mere widgets or even industrial operatives, and there are non-economic ways to evaluate a university’s purpose. I think we might look to others to define and value academic freedom and the academy itself.
If “advocacy” is fraught in the Texas diktat, so are “ideology” and “identity.” Would Mr. Williams allow me the “academic freedom” to teach as if heterosexuality or whiteness were standard or “normal,” say, in a course on American social or political history, by never mentioning any instances of human variety, as if it didn’t exist? I could design my teaching to avoid matters of sexuality or gender, but wouldn’t that willfully misrepresent history as it actually happened, and wouldn’t that, at least implicitly, advance a particular cisgender and heteronormative identity and ideology?
I’ve often written and taught about the formation of American identity in the era of the early American republic and beyond. Should I have left out – and thus distorted – aspects of identity that blended gendered and racialized senses of the self with those centered in class, religion, and region? What about claims that America is essentially a white, Christian, manly nation? Texas might let me get away with that one, complexity and historical accuracy be damned.
The fix is in. Ideology is not “ideology” if it’s the right ideology. Identity does not count as “identity” as long as your identity politics are skewed right. But we can call out this corruption even if we cannot immediately correct it, and we can stand up for the integrity of higher education and its democratic mission. Texas university faculty have not been silent or unresponsive to these assaults, and one wonders if other programs like Ethnic Studies are on the chopping block as well. We should identify with them, and we should advocate for their cause, which in fact is less tinged with ideological advocacy or identity politics than those taking the hatchet to higher education, whether in College Station, Texas, or in Washington, D.C.
Notes
- “Our Purposes & Values,” online at https://www.tamu.edu/about/purpose-values.html. ↑
- Alan Blinder, “Texas A&M Alters Classes and Ends Women’s Studies,” New York Times, February 2, 2026, A!3. online at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/us/texas-am-gender-ethnic-womens-studies-academic-freedom.html. ↑
Featured image caption: Texas A&M University’s Academic Building in College Station. (Photo by Kailynn Nelson, 2022)
Matthew Dennis is Professor of History and Environmental Studies Emeritus, University of Oregon. His books include Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in 17th-Century America (Cornell University Press, 1993); Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar (Cornell University Press, 2002); Riot and Revelry in Early America (Penn State University Press, 2002; co-editor); Encyclopedia of Holidays and Celebrations, 3 vols. (Facts on File, 2006; general editor); Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023); and The Arresting Power of Blood: An American History, to be published by the University of California Press.
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