Someone on TikTok pointed out there are more kids in Texas with measles than trans college athletes in all of America.
Guess which they want you focused on?
Texas has been playing games with their universities.
Earlier this month, Texas Tech chancellor Brandon Creighton announced plans to close all gender and sexuality programs across the system and prohibit graduate students from researching the topics. Texas A&M similarly closed its women’s and gender studies program in January. The University of Texas ordered faculty in February to refrain from teaching ill-defined “controversial” topics in class. Nearly all Texas public university systems have conducted some kind of course-review process that screens instructional materials for gender and sexuality content.
This means weird conservative administrators with no relevant experience are meddling in the content of courses…courses they would not be qualified to teach, but hey, they’ve got rubber stamps and spreadsheets, that’s all the power they need. They’re now discovering the consequences.
Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content. Peterson’s colleague Linda Raznik, a philosophy professor and associate department head, is jumping ship with similar concerns about academic freedom. Lucy Schiller, a nonfiction writing professor at Texas Tech University, also has plans to leave her job.
They are just a few of the faculty members giving up their jobs at Texas public institutions as the systems deploy escalating censorship policies that restrict or explicitly ban any instruction, writing, research or discussion on gender identity and sexual orientation.
It’s almost as if they intend to demolish all of Texas higher education. Fortunately, I am no longer in the market for a job, because I wouldn’t ever consider working as an academic in Texas. I also wouldn’t encourage any students to enroll in a Texas school anymore — you don’t know where your university will be in a few years.
Texans deserve better.
Somehow, I feel like the conservatives in charge of this are not going to be upset at this outcome.
I’m sure there are an never ending torrent of loyal stooges ready to fill those vacant positions.
Texas is becoming more authoritarian by the day. Governor Hot Wheels Abbott has professed small government and “let the people decide.” It’s a lie, of course. He’s a tin-plated cripple with a huge chip on his shoulder and delusions of godhood, to paraphrase a line from Star Trek.
So, here in Houston the City Council at the urging of The People voted to restrain HPD from handing over to ICE undocumented people at traffic stops, with some conditions.
Alas, this enraged our Little Wheeled Hitler who pulled his face out of Mango Mussolini’s backside long enough to threaten canceling $110 million of public safety grants unless the ordinance was rescinded. Yes, Guv Twerp threatened to DEFUND THE POLICE to avoid a mean tweet.
Well, guess what? Our little Quisling mayor Whitmire reversed the decision all by his own self because he “didn’t want to fight the Governor.” “Coward” is the least of what Whitmire is being called and he’s considering reversing his reverse. Whitmire is up for re-election in November and, finally, the voters are seeing what a spineless toady he’s been all along. Here’s to good riddance!
The bottom line is that if these authoritarians don’t get their way they pull funding and we know that the Almighty Dollar speaks the loudest.
Thanks to the arrogance by Nosferatu Miller, the heavy-handed treatment of Latinos by ICE means a lot of former GOP voters of that demographic are changing their minds.
This may affect the senator sent to DC in the midterms. It can certainly affect the next gubernatorial election.
Almost?
It’s worth bearing in mind that this only applies to public institutions – as the article notes, “Peterson is taking his Plato lessons to Southern Methodist University. Though it’s still in Texas, like Grinnell, it’s private, and state legislators cannot “micromanage” the curriculum, he said. ”
It seems quite likely to me that they fully intend to demolish higher education as a public good.
“Texans deserve better.”
Why? Ever since the Karl Rove led smear campaign against Ann Richardson, texans (they don’t deserve a capital T) have elected the increasingly imbecilic $hithead$ that created the policies.
The quality schools in blue states should stop accepting Texas students without adding at least one, if not two years, of remedial courses to undo the brainwashing. That might eventually wake up texans to the fact that there is a price for stupidity. I won’t hold my breath. I’m too old for any effect to show up.
Didn’t Clarence Thomas speak at a Texas university recently about how educated people are the problem?
Isn’t what the Texas state government is doing, what they call “Cancel Culture”.
That is exactly what it is.
The three main sacraments of fundie xianity are hate, lies, and hypocrisy.
The Texas christofacists have got the hypocrisy requirement fulfilled for the next few decades.
You know, just for a laugh someone should tell Abbot’s boss DJT that “Darwinian evolution” is woke BS and Lamarckism is the non-woke way forward. Especially the theories of a certain Lysenko.
.
Fortunately the *ssholes are too incompetent to turn around basic biology education in the remaining two and a half years. This means they would be distracted from completing the ruin of gender studies and other topics they have been dismantling from the start (I am making the assumption no GOP congressmen would try to stop Trump if he claims we can make oranges grow in the arctic).
raven @8: No, it’s only “cancel culture” if liberals do it to them.
Heck, I bet those are courses they’re not even competent to take.
@4-“…the heavy-handed treatment of Latinos by ICE means a lot of former GOP voters of that demographic are changing their minds.” There are some encouraging polls, but I’m not counting on it.
@6- It was Ann Richards.
My daughter graduated as valedictorian of a large Texas high school in ’95. She was quickly accepted by California Institute of Technology, along with several other prestigious schools. CalTech was a perfect fit for her, and offered a full scholarship.
She was told that her school district was well-known for producing capable students.
By the time she graduated in 2000 with two STEM degrees, Caltech was accepting fewer students from her home district.
I taught in another high school in that district, and I was sadly watching the decline. We would have students who were accepted by good four-year schools, only to return home after a semester or two to enroll in a community college. They simply were not prepared for a rigorous program.
My daughter went on to earn a PHD at Duke, and returned often to CalTech to serve on the Alumni board. By the time that she was president of that board, she was aware that CalTech had become very reluctant to accept students from her high school, or any others in the district.
I think that the top schools in this country are very well aware of what has become of schools in Texas, and probably throughout the South. I am so glad to no longer be a teacher there!