From Inside Higher Ed: Courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity” now require presidential approval at Texas A&M system campuses, the system Board of Regents decided... Faculty members and external advocacy groups say the new rules violate academic freedom, and for many professors, questions remain about how the policies will be implemented and enforced. Approved in a unanimous vote after a lengthy public comment period, the policy changes fit a pattern of censorship at Texas A&M that escalated after a video of a student challenging an instructor about a lesson on gender identity went viral, leading to the instructor’s firing and the resignation of then-president Mark Welsh...
The board approved the new rules as revisions to existing system policies. A policy on “Civil Rights Protections and Compliance” will be amended to state that “no system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity unless the course is approved by the member CEO.” It will also define “gender ideology” as “a concept of self-assessed gender identity replacing, and disconnected from, the biological category of sex.” Similarly, “race ideology” is defined as “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.”
A previous version of the revision proposed that no system academic course will “teach” race or gender ideology, but the verb was changed to “advocate” before the policies were presented formally to the full board. It’s unclear how the system will differentiate between advocacy and regular instruction on these topics...
Also..., the board discussed a detailed, systemwide review of all courses using an artificial intelligence–driven process. The system has already piloted the review process at its Tarleton State University campus, where most of the courses that were flagged are housed in the College of Education, which includes the sociology and psychology departments.... Board members said they intend to complete the course review regularly, as often as once per semester... The system will also use EthicsPoint, an online system that will allow students to report inaccurate, misleading or inappropriate course content that diverges from the course descriptions*...
Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2025/11/13/texas-am-requires-approval-courses-advocate-certain.
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*If you search for EthicsPoint online, it is primarily a whistleblowing system used by a number of universities and other organizations. Example:
Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PqNyatmA78.
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