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The Texas A&M Purge Takes a Page From Authoritarian Playbooks
Four academics have been demoted, fired or ousted following a dispute over gender in a children’s literature class.
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Photographer: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via Getty ImagesAcross the globe, there’s a clear playbook for how authoritarians suppress academic freedom. The firing of an English professor, two university administrators, and the resignation of Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh last week took a page right out of it.
The playbook involves identifying some “enemy” as a cultural threat — as Hungary’s Viktor Orban did when he eliminated gender studies programs, or as Turkey’s former president Recep Tayyip Erdogan did when he purged universities of academics with pro-democracy leanings.