Anti-woke crusaders on college campuses have lost the plot when they cut Plato, architect of the Socratic method, from lesson plans.
Texas A&M University has been aggressively scrutinizing course material following accusations that a summer seminar violated the Trump administration’s executive order on gender ideology. University regents signed off on new rules in November mandating approval for courses covering race and gender before tightening the rules again in the weeks before the spring semester started on Monday.
The ancient Greek philosopher was caught in the crossfire.
Philosophy professor Martin Peterson was ordered to remove excerpts from Plato’s “Symposium” that seemed to violate the new guidelines: passages about Diotima’s Ladder of Love and Aristophanes’ speech regarding split humans. Peterson was told the course would be reassigned to someone else if he didn’t delete the readings from his introductory philosophy syllabus.
Peterson says his course does not “advocate” for any ideology but teaches students how to structure and evaluate moral arguments. A university spokesperson says Texas A&M will still teach Plato “in a variety of courses this semester and will continue to do so in the future.”
The clash between faculty and administrators highlights the risk of overcorrecting when addressing ideological imbalances on campuses. Exercising control over course material might satisfy political mood swings from the White House or culture warriors on the right and left, but it does not benefit students.
Peterson said he would revise the syllabus, focusing new readings and lectures on free speech and academic freedom, including news coverage of his own spat over Plato. Meta.
But the conflict isn’t over. Around 200 courses in the spring semester have been flagged for review or canceled by the university.
What is college without students tangling with the thorny moral and ethical subjects roiling politics and culture? Plato has been part of that process for millennia. His texts are foundational to understanding Western civilization, which is why they are widely taught by liberal and conservative professors.
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