Another Texas state university has caved to press from right-wing idealogues and is removing classes that don’t meet the MAGA “non-woke” criteria from its core offerings.
Texas A&M University System’s board of regents voted today (Thursday, Sept. 3) to “scale back” the number and kinds of classes that meet graduation requirements. Most of the classes being removed are related to LGBTQ+ literature, climate change and women writers, according to The Texas Tribune.
The vote came “after a review prompted by a new state law that requires public university boards to examine what classes undergraduates must take regardless of their majors,” the Tribune reports.
According to Senate Bill 37, regents must ensure that any required course is “foundational and fundamental for a college education and that they prepare students for civic life and the workforce.”
Texas A&M in College station has the most classes being removed with 103. The courses being removed at the College Station “flagship school” include introduction to women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ literatures, introduction to Latinx literature studies, women writers, introduction to race and ethnicity, gender and health, Blacks in the U.S., the Bible as literature and climate change.
Dr. Leonard Bright, president of the American Association of University Professors chapter at A&M’s College Station campus, said, “This is a political decision. You are basically telling us now that the globalness it once valued and said that it was going to protect is no longer a priority. …They’re going to basically whitewash our programs.”
In case you were wondering the vast majority of the members of the Texas A&M University System board of regents are white men. Here’s the breakdown, per the Texas A&M system website:
Board chair is Robert L. Albritton, a white man. Vice chair is Jay Graham, a white man. Other members are white man David C. Baggett, white man John W. Bellinger, white man James R. “Randy Brooks,” Hispanic man Michael A. “Mike” Hernandez, Black man William “Bill” Mahomes Jr., white woman Kelley Sullivan Georgiades and white man Sam Torn.
In other words, all but two of the A&M regents are white, and all but one are men.
All of these regents are appointed to overlapping six-year terms by Greg Abbott, and all have backgrounds “primarily rooted in business, and leadership within the state,” according to KERA.
Regents with an actual background in education seem to be missing from the line-up.
— Tammye Nash