Drop the race and gender material from your course and the Plato readings, or teach a different course. You have a day to decide.
That’s a paraphrase of what Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, was told by university officials today about his upcoming “Contemporary Moral Problems” course, due to start next week.
When I read this I started thinking about George Orwell.
OK… could you explain to me why they hate Plato?
It’s not Plato specifically; it’s about Plato talking about gender issues–which Texas is very negative about in university courses.
Because of Plato’s theories on critical thinking skills and his love of education?
Hmm, that noted liar Plato has sent dozens of crackpots and even more sane people questing for a placed that never existed, so I see their point. Their reasoning nauseates me however.
They think that ancient Greeks = gay, from what I’ve heard.
Prof. Martin Peterson shared emails with the website Daily Nous detailing orders he received from administration to “remove the modules based on race ideology and gender ideology and the Plato readings that may include these.” These are readings from Plato’s Symposium, specifically from Aristophanes’ story about the origin of love and Diotima’s ladder of love, which include discussions of love between people of the same sex.
Plato wrote a book called The Republic. That’s just a little bit too much shared power for Trump’s liking.
Although it’s been 45 years since I read The Republic, IIRC, it was far from a ringing endorsement of democracy.
It’s not.
It’s where the whole concept of philosopher Kings comes from. I was just trying to make a bad joke by playing on the title.
I failed. I can admit that. 
ETA: Just for the record, I have read The Republic. But it’s probably been 20 years at least to be fair.
It is only via the rigorous methods of philosophy that one can check whether some concept or argument of Plato (+ friends) is valid or bullshit. How are you going to do that without studying the source material?
Of course, if people used their brains some of the time this world would not be a cyberpunk dystopia.
Specifically, “I also ask my students to read a few passages from Plato (Aristophanes’ myth of the split humans and Diotima’s Ladder of Love).”
The arrticle’s headline (and the title of this thread, which echoes it) is somewhat click-baitey.
So studying pirates’ views on gender issues is also prohibited?
They don’t. Or rather, they don’t think they do, but an unintended consequence of a broad ban on “gender ideology” IS indeed a ban on Plato’s Symposium, and I suspect that Peterson (who is tenured and holds an endowed chair, i.e., pretty close to untouchable, and is also white, male, and presumably cisgender) made a principled decision to be the test case, purposefully picking the a text that is at the core of the western canon. Reading his letter, it’s clear that he is planning to fight a court battle that he is pretty confident that he can win, and he has the legal citations to back it up. Reading between the lines of his chair’s letter (note the “I am writing individual faculty members who have communicated with me an intent to include potentially relevant material in a course” phrasing), I would say there is a very good chance that she, and the entire department, was in on the planning and agreed that he would be the test case.
Absolutely none of this is intended as any disparagement. Rosa Parks wasn’t some random lady who sat down one day because her feet were tired, either.
The buccaneers didn’t appear to have much use for women….so yeah?
In a sense, yes (and based on his CV and other publicly available information, Peterson does appear to be an immigrant from Sweden, so he may be taking some real personal risks here). However, there is a MASSIVE difference between being tenured, being tenure-track but as yet untenured, and being contingent (not eligible for tenure) and everyone in academia understands this distinction and why it’s important. Among other things, terminating a tenured professor is usually a multi-year process involving extensive documentation at every step, and Peterson has legal recourse if that process isn’t followed. Usually, the only real exception is financial exigency, and the powers that be will have a very hard time making that case if he holds an endowed chair.
(Also based on a publicly available information, Peterson has a side gig running a charter yacht in the Mediterranean, and he may well be in a position to say “Fuck it, if worse comes to worse, I’m going back to Europe and settling into my very pleasant post-retirement career.” None of which diminishes the fact that this is an act of legit personal courage, especially in an era when organizations like TPUSA specialize in secretly filming and doxxing faculty. But I can easily see why he, and perhaps his whole department, might have decided he was the right person to take on this fight.)
An article in the New York Times on this quoted the professor.
“A philosophy professor who is not allowed to teach Plato?” Dr. Peterson said in an interview on Wednesday. “What kind of university is that? Is that really what they want?”
“How,” he added, “can we possibly teach philosophy without being allowed to discuss Plato, even if some of Plato’s ideas are a little bit controversial?”
And I remember thirty years ago when Harold Bloom wrote a book advocating for an education based on the Western canon, which Plato is at the heart of.
What surprises me is that anyone in Texas knows who Plato was.
It’s that fun squishy stuff with the cool colors; the smell reminds you of childhood.
Oh WHO … nevermind.