{"id":397910,"date":"2025-11-22T23:31:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T23:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/397910\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T23:31:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T23:31:32","slug":"texas-am-committee-finds-university-wrong-in-firing-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/397910\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas A&M committee finds university wrong in firing professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Texas A&M committee agreed that the university was wrong to fire a professor<\/a> earlier this year after a controversy over a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children\u2019s literature lesson about gender identity.<\/p>\n

The internal committee ruled that the university didn\u2019t follow proper procedures and didn\u2019t prove there was good cause to fire Melissa McCoul, who was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a>, had called for her termination after seeing the video.<\/p>\n

The committee unanimously voted earlier this week that \u201cthe summary dismissal of Dr. McCoul was not justified.\u201d The university said in a statement that interim President Tommy Williams has received the committee\u2019s nonbinding recommendation and will make a decision in the coming days or weeks after reviewing it.<\/p>\n

McCoul\u2019s lawyer, Amanda Reichek, said this dispute seems destined to wind up in court because the university appears to plan to continue fighting and the interim president is facing the same political pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. McCoul asserts that the flimsy reasons proffered by A&M for her termination are a pretext for the University\u2019s true motivation: capitulation to Governor Abbott\u2019s demands,\u201d Reichek said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The video showing a student questioning whether the class discussion was legal under President Trump\u2019s executive order on gender roiled the campus and led to sharp criticism of university president Mark Welsh, who later resigned<\/a>, but he didn\u2019t offer a reason and never mentioned the video in his resignation announcement.<\/p>\n

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The opening of the video posted by state Rep. Brian Harrison showed a slide titled \u201cGender Unicorn\u201d that highlighted different gender identities and expressions. Students in the class told the Texas Tribune that they were discussing a book called \u201cJude Saves the World\u201d about a middle schooler who is coming out as nonbinary. That was just one of several books included in the course that highlights LGBTQ+ issues.<\/p>\n

After a brief back-and-forth discussion about the legality of teaching those lessons, McCoul asked the student to leave the class. Harrison posted other recordings of the student\u2019s meeting with Welsh that show the university president defending McCoul\u2019s teaching.<\/p>\n

The Tribune reported that McCoul had taught the same course at A&M at least 12 times since 2018. University officials decided to end this particular summer class early after the confrontation, but McCoul returned to teach in the fall until after the videos were published online. <\/p>\n

Welsh had said when McCoul was fired that he learned she had continued teaching content in a children\u2019s literature course \u201cthat did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.\u201d He also said that the course content was not matching its catalog descriptions. But her lawyer disputed that, and said McCoul was never instructed to change her course content in any way, shape or form.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Texas A&M Regents decided that professors now need to receive approval<\/a> from the school president to discuss some race and gender topics. The new policy states that no academic course \u201cwill advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity\u201d unless approved in advance by a campus president.<\/p>\n

Various universities and their presidents around the country, including Harvard<\/a> and Columbia<\/a> have come under scrutiny from conservative critics and President Donald Trump administration over diversity, equity and inclusion practices<\/a> and their responses to campus protests.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas A&M committee agreed that the university was wrong to fire a professor earlier this year after…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":397911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[118459,118457,245,16720,69,407,25742,57,5026,181121,188575,118456,50,80,3060,358,188574,5028,61,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-397910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-amanda-reichek","10":"tag-brian-harrison","11":"tag-children","12":"tag-colleges-and-universities","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-gender","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-greg-abbott","18":"tag-local-news-for-apple","19":"tag-mark-welsh","20":"tag-melissa-mccoul","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-schools","24":"tag-texas","25":"tag-tommy-williams","26":"tag-tx-state-wire","27":"tag-u-s-news","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-unitedstates","30":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115595961668898022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}