A professor at Texas A&M University was allegedly told to stop teaching Plato in an introductory philosophy course because of the school’s new policy banning the teaching of “gender ideology.”

Prof. Martin Peterson shared emails with the website Daily Nous detailing orders he received from administration to “remove the modules based on race ideology and gender ideology and the Plato readings that may include these.” These are readings from Plato’s Symposium, specifically from Aristophanes’ story about the origin of love and Diotima’s ladder of love, which include discussions of love between people of the same sex.

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The Daily Nous says that Peterson was contacted in December to review his syllabus for his Contemporary Moral Problems class and that “the College leadership team” discussed the inclusion of the offending Plato text.

An email from Philosophy Department Chair Kristi Sweet refers to the school’s Board of Regents’ policy banning courses that “Advocate race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” without “prior written approval of the member CEO.” Her email says that some upper-level classes can discuss sexual orientation or gender identity if they can prove the “necessary educational purpose,” but the Contemporary Moral Problems class is introductory, so it gets no such exemption.

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The rules she is referring to were passed unanimously in November by the Board of Regents and restrict discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in university classrooms, ban professors from straying from their approved syllabi, create a database for AI to crawl through in search of banned content, and set up a hotline for students “to report what they consider inaccurate or misleading course content.”

The new rules, which were immediately criticized for censoring professors and limiting academic freedom, came just after there was a controversy involving an education professor at Texas A&M who discussed gender fluidity in books with her students. A student confronted the professor, saying that the books “promote something that is against our president’s laws, as well as against my religious beliefs,” and posted videos of her protests in a 23-part social media thread, drawing attention from Republican lawmakers in the state.

“CAUGHT ON TAPE,” Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison (R) posted on social media at the time. “TEXAS A&M STUDENT KICKED OUT OF CLASS AFTER OBJECTING TO TRANSGENDER INDOCTRINATION… and A&M President defends ‘LGBTQ Studies.’”

At the time, the professor’s discussion didn’t violate any university rules, but it may now violate the Board of Regents’ new rules.

Prof. Peterson wrote back to the department chair and said that his academic freedom is being violated by the new rules that ban certain Plato texts from being taught in college-level philosophy classes. He noted that the readings were connected to a lecture on sexual morality, that “these topics are commonly covered in this type of course nationwide,” and that they are included in the assigned textbook for the course.

“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,” he wrote. “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. Texas A&M is a public institution bound by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has noted that academic freedom is ‘a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.'”

Artistophanes’ myth about the origin of love posits that humans used to have two heads, two sets of arms, and two sets of legs. They rolled around doing cartwheels with two halves and had three sexes: those that were male on both sides, those that were female on both sides, and those that were male and female.

These people were too powerful and tried to climb Olympus, so Zeus split them in two, creating modern humans. They now search for their other half to feel whole again. This is meant to be an explanation for why people feel love today and why some people are gay and others are straight, although it may have been intended as an absurd joke for ancient readers.

The Ladder of Love comes from Socrates’ speech in the Symposium and uses a ladder as a symbol for different types of love, where the lowest rung is physical attraction to a particular beautiful body and the highest is love of beauty itself, “an everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which neither flowers nor fades.”

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