AUSTIN (KXAN) — Another Texas university appears to be undergoing changes amid a debate about what students and staff can say and do on campus. Angelo State University, or ASU, has given guidance about how employees can speak and teach about transgender people, according to reporting from San Angelo newspaper The Concho Observer.
While the new policy isn’t in ASU’s online policy portal, and people who spoke to the Observer said they were given only verbal guidance, reporting from the newspaper and the Houston-based Chron claims discussing transgender topics or suggesting the existence of anything other than two genders is not allowed. Faculty told the Observer they also cannot use students’ preferred names and must remove LGBTQ+ pride flags and symbols.
ASU says it’s following executive order, directives
KXAN reached out to the school Tuesday morning with questions and for a copy of the policy. Communications Director Brittney Miller responded:
“Angelo State University is a public institute of higher education and is therefore subject to both state and federal law, executive orders and directives from the President of the United States, and executive orders and directives from the Governor of Texas. As such, Angelo State fully complies with the letter of the law,” Miller said.
KXAN asked which laws the statement referred to and will update when we receive a response. However, in response to Chron, ASU pointed to three things: a President Trump executive order, an directive from Gov. Greg Abbott and House Bill 229, a bill that mandates that state and local agencies use a binary view of sex.
In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that directs federal agencies to recognize a binary gender system. It said, in part, “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.”
“An executive order’s authority must derive from an already existing statute or a constitutionally enumerated presidential power,” wrote Christopher Durocher, policy vice president of the American Constitution Society, in March. “Federal agencies and officials generally treat an executive order as presumptively lawful and will begin to effectuate the order.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hasn’t issued an executive order related to gender, but following Trump’s executive order, he sent a letter to the leaders of state agencies. It told them to reject “radical sexual orientation and gender identity ideologies” and to follow the President’s order.
Neither Texas nor the federal government has a law that would require universities to create a ban on speaking about gender.
Upheld by precedents set by the U.S. Supreme Court, the First Amendment prevents the government from making or enforcing laws that preemptively censor speech about certain topics. In his 1972 opinion in Police Dept. of City of Chicago v. Mosley, SCOTUS Justice Thurgood Marshall called such a restriction “forbidden censorship.”
Professors call out policies as push to ‘censor open inquiry’
The Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors (Texas AAUP-AFT) issued a press release Monday about ASU. The labor union called the decision part of an “ongoing statewide assault on free speech, due process, and academic freedom.”
“What is happening at ASU is part of a larger assault on higher education and marginalized communities across Texas and the nation,” said Texas AAUP-AFT President Dr. Brian Evans in the release. “Moreover, it is an overt attempt to erase individuals of diverse backgrounds and experiences by limiting not only what can be taught but also what ideas students can explore.”
Evans also called the policy change part of an “extremist push to censor open inquiry, debate, and discovery.”
Texas has seen several instances of state politicians calling for Texans to be fired for their statements, including the firing of an A&M professor after teaching a class on transgender representation in children’s literature. Texas A&M President Mark Welsh III resigned from his position amid outrage around how he handled that situation.
All of this is also happening in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, with politicians creating campus free speech committees in the Texas Legislature.
KXAN has reached out to the Texas Tech University system, of which ASU is a part, as well as the public university in our area, The University of Texas at Austin, for comment and will update this story if we receive a response.
The professors’ union said it’s aware of the “intense external pressure” university administrators face, but warned that some have faced personal liability for free speech violations in the past.
The ACLU echoed those concerns, writing in a statement, in part, “Like all public universities, ASU has a constitutional obligation to protect academic freedom on its campuses, which no other state or federal law or policy can override. The censorship of LGBTQIA+ topics destroys the free and open learning environments Texans demand and deserve in their institutes of higher education.”
Credit: Source link
