Texas A&M University forced a professor to cancel a graduate-level ethics class after it had already started meeting, citing new rules for discussing race and gender issues in class last Wednesday.

Bush School of Government and Public Service Dean John Sherman said in an email to to the school that Professor Leonard Bright did not provide information about the curricum of “Ethics in Public Policy” despite being asked, which meant that administrators couldn’t see if the class would violate rules at the university that ban most discussions of topics related to LGBTQ+ people, race, and “gender ideology.”

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“We were not able to identify the specific information we needed to submit an exemption request and thus must cancel the course,” Sherman wrote.

“I told them it was going to come up every day,” Prof. Bright told The Texas Tribune. “During discussions, book reviews, case studies, throughout the course. There is no one day. That’s how this class works.”

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Bright said that he told Sherman that “issues of race, gender, and sexuality are not peripheral but integral” to the class.

“I tried to underline that throughout the course — in every reading and every case study they have, in current events, in book reviews — [race and gender] will be central to this class. I guess [Sherman] didn’t like that,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “It appears to me that he wanted me to say, ‘I’m just discussing it here,’ so they can limit or censor this and say that they’re only approving me to discuss it on this day or that day. I thought that that was inappropriate. I could not teach that class under that kind of condition.”

The university’s Board of Regents passed new rules last November to restrict discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in university classrooms, ban professors from straying from their approved syllabi, create a database for AI to crawl through in search of banned content, and set up a hotline for students “to report what they consider inaccurate or misleading course content.”

The new rules, which were immediately criticized for censoring professors and limiting academic freedom, came just after there was a controversy involving an education professor at Texas A&M who discussed gender fluidity in children’s books with her students. A student confronted the professor, saying that the books “promote something that is against our president’s laws, as well as against my religious beliefs,” and posted videos of her protests in a 23-part social media thread, drawing attention from Republican lawmakers in the state.

“CAUGHT ON TAPE,” Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison (R) posted on social media at the time. “TEXAS A&M STUDENT KICKED OUT OF CLASS AFTER OBJECTING TO TRANSGENDER INDOCTRINATION… and A&M President defends ‘LGBTQ Studies.’”

An introductory philosophy class was already told not to teach Plato because Plato discussed sexuality and gender in certain texts, but upper-level classes are supposed to be able to get an exemption from the new rules. They have to explain how LGBTQ+ issues will be discussed and justify their inclusion in a class.

Nine students were enrolled in the class that had already met last week. Sherman said that the school was now helping the students find an alternative class to replace the newly cancelled ethics course.

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