{
"type": "rich",
"version": "1.0",
"provider_name": "Action Network",
"provider_url": "https://actionnetwork.org",
"html": "",
"author_name": "American Association of University Professors",
"author_url": "https://actionnetwork.org/groups/american-association-of-university-professors",
"title": "Defend Academic Freedom at Texas A&M University!",
"thumbnail_url": "https://actionnetwork.org//images/generic_facebook.jpg",
"description": "On December 18, 2025, the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents approved System Policy 08.01, which fundamentally undermines teaching and student learning. This policy has been implemented to prohibit any content related to race and gender in the core curriculum. For other courses, including those at the graduate level, faculty are required to preemptively identify, justify, or remove course content that may address race, gender, sexuality, or related social identities, and may only teach these materials subject to the approval of the university president. These practices contravene academic and disciplinary norms, and are incompatible with the development of critical inquiry at a serious academic instruction. At least since the unjustified firing in September 2025 of Melissa McCoul for including books with LGBTQ content in a course on contemporary children’s literature, Texas A&M administrators have been implementing policies that have resulted in a chilling of classroom discussion, widespread self-censorship, and chaos across the College Station campus and the A&M system. Hundreds of courses across the curriculum have been impacted, as have thousands of students. Students are not only being infantilized with an intellectually-compromised education, but are also scrambling to meet graduation requirements. Texas A&M must abandon its policy of censorship and prioritize a high-quality education for its students.",
"url": "https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/defend-academic-freedom-at-texas-am-university"
}