The University of Texas is banning “controversial topics.”
What might that have covered, at different times?
- The admission of Missouri to the country
- The poll tax
- The Electoral College
- The connection between lung cancer and smoking
- The Civil War
- Capitalism
- The Gulf of Mexico
- President Trump
- Equal pay for women
- The germ theory of infection
- Monetarism
- The shape of the Earth
And that’s just a start.
Of course, anything can become controversial simply by virtue of somebody objecting. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to do this—heaven forbid—but hypothetically, someone could loudly object to discussions of capitalism, traditional gender roles, law enforcement or even the Trump administration, thereby making them “controversial” and out of bounds. After all, objections can come from the left as well as the right. A few well-orchestrated rounds of public objection could highlight the absurdity of the law pretty quickly.
Not that anyone would do such a thing.
Taken literally, the rule quickly becomes self-defeating. For example, I can’t imagine teaching a history class about the Civil War without mentioning race. (Student: “What was the war about?” Prof: “States’ rights.” Student: “Rights to do what?” Prof: “Um …”) Even naming the thing is controversial: When my brother took a history class at William and Mary in the early ’90s, his professor insisted on referring to the Civil War as “the War of Northern Aggression.” One cannot legibly explain conflicts without mentioning what the conflicts were about.
Admittedly, the rule includes a reference to being “germane” to the subject matter of a class. In my experience observing classes, this is the most common area of judgment calls. It can be a fine line between an icebreaker or a metaphor and plain self-indulgence. A professor who spends at least 15 minutes per class talking about their favorite football team may not be especially controversial, but they probably aren’t being germane. But the “germane” standard, aside from being subjective, doesn’t seem to apply to certain points of view. For example, I could imagine a perfectly coherent argument to the effect that “gender ideology” is a description of the idea that there are only two genders, and that their roles are preordained. But that objection, as well-founded as it is in both science and history, doesn’t seem to be what the legislators have in mind.
One of the more endearing tenets of Western liberalism—that is, the tradition that the legislators think they’re defending—is the assumption of reciprocity. (I’m using the term “liberalism” here in the sense that scholars do; it refers to a system of laws based on individual rights, and it goes back hundreds of years, long before either the Democratic or Republican Parties existed.) Rules that protect me also protect you, and vice versa. Historically, that has been more aspirational than accurate, but it’s a good aspiration, and we’re better the closer we get to it. It presumes that everyone is entitled to a baseline of dignity and that nobody is special.
The clear intent of the Texas law is to drop that foundational assumption, and to encode in law that certain groups are right, by virtue of being who they are, and others are wrong. In other words, some people are special and the rules don’t apply to them. There’s a long history of that, too, though apparently bringing it up would be controversial.
Hmm.
