No Plato Please, We Is Aggies

Y’all may have heard of the great rivalry between The University and A&M. No? Where you been? Somewhere with Yankee values? Where they believe in civil rights, gun control, and other noxious forms of socialism? Figures. We got to get yore mind right, as the man famously said in Cool Hand Luke. Cause some men–and I do mean men, don’t need wimmin (women) here-just don’t want to learn. Bless their hearts. But you will learn the Truth as we teach it in Texas. Now I have perfessed at The University, although that was many years ago. Austin was different then, with The Drag and Quackenbush’s, even if Fred Akers had replaced Darrell K. Royal  as Head Honcho of Football. Nothing is forever. Other than God.

Now, Christianity is big in Texas, as you surely know. Hell, during Covid Pandemic, there were even Texans who claimed they didn’t require to be masked for protection in public places because they werer Godly people. And by God they sure as Hell meant the God known as Jesus Christ, not some demonic representation thrown up by one of them Islamic cults. They’re sort of like snake handlers, you know. I didn’t say they were snakes, mind you, although there are quite a few of them there as well. Just to be clear.

Many of my devoted readers–probably a dozen at last count–know that I graduated from Villanova University, a near contemporary of the Holy Father, although he was a math major and, therefore, smarter than me. But he is an Augustinian priest, and Villanova is run by the Augustinian Order. Now, they–the Augies–may not be as rigorous as the Society of Jesus or as voluble as the Dominicans, but give them credit, they do tend to know something about Saint Augustine (he had no direct connection to the Order). No, people didn’t walk around spouting Augustine or anything. In my time, the BTOC (Big Theologian On Campus) was probably Theilhard de Chardin, with people like Heidegger and Sartre up there too. But you could take a course on Augustine (and Aquinas), although nobody forced you to. And people did. It was the 1960s and there was more than a bit of honest idealism in the air, even at Nova, made famous on national television as The Beercats by Ed McMahon in banter with Johnny Carson. You read this stuff because you hoped it would make you a better person–or to impress the newly-admitted women. Whatever.

If you read Augustine, you inevitably bumped into The Confessions and The City of God. Hell, we had mosaic at the entrance to the library with the famous words, “Tolle, Lege” from The Confessions, which, on hearing (from some precocious kids) sent Augustine to St Paul and his conversion from Manicheanism. At Villanova, it was tough to miss as you walked into Falvey Library. Book, read, library. Get it?

Well, Augustine had been classically educated, so he had read the Greek and Roman authors, one of whom was, you guessed it, Plato. Geez. Surprise. One of the founding fathers of Western philosophy. Amazing. Now, to avoid accusations that I am making this stuff up, I am reproducing an article from “The Battalion” (sic) A&M’s paper of record, January 11, 2026. Here goes:

A reading from Plato’s “Symposium” has been removed from the syllabus of a philosophy course in order to comply with revisions to Section 8.1 of Texas A&M’s Academic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure policy, fostering national attention and online controversy.

The course, PHIL 111 Contemporary Moral Issues, had its syllabus altered to remove a section featuring content university administration claims contains race and gender ideology, subjects that were defined and unanimously approved to be restricted from instruction in November 2025.

One text from “Symposium” that was stricken from the syllabus includes Aristophanes’ Myth, which contends that humans were once single beings that were separated into two sexes after ancient gods became fearful of their combined power, posing questions about sexuality, soulmates and the nature of love. Another, Diotima’s Ladder of Love, assigns a hierarchical structure to different forms of love and attraction.

Supporters of the changes argue that the relatively progressive ideas of gender and sexuality presented in the readings fall out of compliance with the introduced changes to Section 8.1. The professor who instructs the course, Martin Peterson, Ph.D., believes his First Amendment rights are being violated. 

“Please note that my course does not ‘advocate’ any ideology; I teach students how to structure and evaluate arguments commonly raised in discussions of contemporary moral issues,” Peterson wrote in an email to department head Kristi Sweet, Ph.D., that made rounds online. “If you interpret System Rule 08.01 § 2.1(b) as prohibiting these topics, I would like to remind you that the U.S. Constitution protects my course content.”

If Peterson fails to comply with the revisions, he would be forced to be reassigned to an upper-level ethics course, an email from Sweet reads.

Peterson told the Houston Chronicle that he would consult with legal counsel and consider pursuing litigation against the university. Various free speech organizations have spoken out against university administration, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.

“Texas A&M now believes Plato doesn’t belong in an introductory philosophy course,” Director of Campus Rights Advocacy at FIRE Lindsie Rank said in a statement published to the organization’s website. “ … This is what happens when the board of regents gives university bureaucrats veto power over academic content.”

Administration contends it is not the stance or goal of the university to restrict the discussion or assignment of philosophical texts or ideas, but to ensure compliance with updated policies.

“Texas A&M will teach numerous dialogues by Plato in a variety of courses this semester and will continue to do so in the future,” the university said. “… The head of the Department of Philosophy rejected one section of Philosophy 111, a core curriculum course, because the professor slated to teach the class had included modules on gender and race ideology. These were added following the new policy approved by the Board of Regents specifically prohibiting the teaching of such ideologies.”

After consulting legal counsel, Peterson opted to remove the contended section and replaced it with a module of lectures on academic freedom and free speech, which reportedly is set to include a New York Times article covering the controversy. 

If you ask yourself what in God’s name is going on here, welcome to Texas. Greg Abbott and his confreres in Austin have, for political reasons, pursued a relenless policy of seeing that the state defines gender in a binary way, assigned at birth. HB 229, passed by Texas Republicans in May of 2025, prohibits Texas instititions from defining gender as anything other than binary. There have been a series of rulings saying, in essence, boys are boys, girls are girls, and that is that. That’s as God intended, and if you have a different idea, well tough. Nobody gives a damn about psychological or biological evidence to the contrary. Case closed. And that means you really can’t teach anything else, especially if you are at a state-related institution. And the Aggies (A&M) have been busily looking to reassure Austin that they are in compliance with God’s will as well as Abbott’s. So your syllabus better not be including questionable materials–like some of Plato’s perv musings. Texas has standards, you see. New York values, as Ted Cruz reminds us, will not do. So there.

Now, there is obviously a problem here, no. Texas and many Texans hold that they are a bulwark of Christianisty and of Christ Jesus. The issue isn’t whether the Greeks did Greek, although they assuredly did. I doubt anyone really cares. It’s an Adam and Eve thing, you know. God didn’t create Adam and Arnold, or Eve and Emily. The Bible tells us so. So shape up or ship out.

What, you ask, has any of this stuff to do with Augustine? Well, Augustine, a fourth century father of the Catholic Church, was heavily influenced by Plato. Book VIII of City of God is awash in Platonic thought. Indeed, Plato pretty much says when it comes to thinking about God and that sort of thing, well, all you really need to do is read Plato. The technical reasons for this need not concern us, and it’s not like I am the person who should be explaining them. The issue is that one of the most influential texts in the history of Christian thinking sort of, well, baptized Plato and drew on him for its notion of God himself. Can you really be a Christian and excise Plato? Well, no. Guess what? College Station, we have a problem. A big one.

Of course, you must be thinking, no one wants to be ridiculed. As Texans say, considered all hat and no cattle. You know what? They don’t care. One of the great things about not sharing the values of the wider culture is you can ignore it. In this patch of God’s little acre, you alone matter. So what if some pinhead liberal (Salvucci) snickers? What’s he know? You are the King of Alamo Heights or Olmos Park or some other overprivileged enclave, and the only thing that matters is what you and your inbred circle of friends think. You are the Big Fish in the Little Pond. This is why Ted Cruz is such an arrogant jerk. He epitomizes the attitude. And if you don’t like it, he’ll just go off to Cancun. This is why Greg Abbott dumps immigrants by the busload in Northern cities. Is he an asshole? You bet. Does he care? Not a bit. He is the King of Texas (well, actually the Lieutenant Governor is, but details, details).

And this attitude is, alas, shared by more than a few Texas institutions. I never could quite understand why Trinity’s reruiting pitch was that you will never be taught by a graduate students. We’re too good for that. Really? The grad students in Econ at Berkeley were some of the smartest, most creative people I ever met. One of them, Louis Johnston literally signed on as a coauthor of Ben Bernanke and Robert Frank’s economics textbook. You think they knew something? Another, Jeff Dayton-Johnson, is Vice President for Academic Affairs & Dean of the Institute at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. I mean really. You wouldn’t want them teaching your kids? You should be so lucky.

You just sound out of it when you say this kind of stuff. And in the final analysis, that sums up Texas. Out of it. Do I sound harsh? Too bad.