Texas A&M has fired an instructor and removed a dean and department head from their administrative positions following a viral video of a student accusing the instructor of teaching “illegal” material on gender and sexuality.
In the video, initially posted by Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison (R) on social media, the instructor, who A&M confirmed to HuffPost is Melissa McCoul, and the student are not shown. McCoul can be heard telling the class something about “remarks on gender and sexuality.” The student, who appears to be filming the interaction, asks McCoul if it’s “legal” to be teaching that.
“According to our president, there’s only two genders,” the student says, referencing President Donald Trump’s executive order he signed on his first day in office.
The student continued, saying it “very much” went against her religious beliefs. McCoul told the student that if she’s uncomfortable, she has the right to leave.
In his social media post, Harrison called on Trump’s administration to investigate Texas A&M and for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to fire the officials involved.
University President Mark A. Welsh III said in a statement Tuesday that the College of Arts and Sciences dean and English Department head had been removed from their administrative positions, and the professor involved had been fired. The school confirmed to HuffPost that Mark Zoran, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Emily Johansen, head of the English Department, are tenured professors and will return to their faculty roles.
He continued, saying this summer he learned that a children’s literature course had content that “did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.”
He said that after he learned of the issue, he instructed college and department leadership to correct the content.
“However, I learned late yesterday that despite that directive, the college continued to teach content that was inconsistent with the published course description for another course this fall,” Welsh said. “As a result, I took the above administrative actions, and deans and department heads will conduct an audit of course offerings to ensure they align with the course descriptions.”
He continued, saying Texas A&M is a university that “honors academic freedom and academic responsibility” and “unequivocally abides by state and federal law.”
Before McCoul’s firing was announced, Abbott had encouraged the university to fire the instructor for acting contrary to Texas law.
Lindsie Rank, director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — a nonprofit that aims to defend the First Amendment — said in a statement to HuffPost that the firing is “alarming.”
“Professors teach at the mercy of those in power, not under the protection of academic freedom or the First Amendment,” Rank said.
This is not the first time Texas A&M, which has an enrollment of about 80,000 students, has sided with conservative ideology. In February, the university tried to ban all drag performances on campus until a federal judge stopped it, saying anyone who finds it “offensive has a simple remedy: don’t go.”