How can you teach a philosophy class without mentioning Plato? Texas A&M University professor Martin Peterson is trying to figure that out.
Plato was a father of Western philosophy, famously a student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. He authored foundational texts on ethics, metaphysics and politics.
But because his “Symposium” debates the existence of more than two genders and explores homosexuality, it’s subject to a Texas A&M ban on the teaching of “race and gender ideology.” And the university banned Peterson from including it in his curriculum.
Many people deem Plato controversial, but Peterson said a number of other philosophers are controversial too, citing Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Immanuel Kant as examples.
Despite disagreements over Plato’s principles, Peterson finds the text vital to understanding philosophy.
“Plato’s ‘Symposium’ is one of the most important philosophical texts ever written,” he said, “and it’s been taught for thousands of years to students without doing any harm to anyone.”
Even though his curriculum has been censored, Peterson said he fears more for his students’ academic experience.
“They are being misled. They don’t get to read Plato’s text. They don’t understand how Plato was actually thinking about gender issues, in this case,” Peterson said. “I’m not the victim here. My students are the real victims.”
7 questions with Martin Peterson
In an opinion piece for MS NOW, you wrote that the ban on teaching Plato makes sense if you accept the university’s new rules and reasoning. What do you mean by that?
“ The university has adopted a new policy that bans content that talks about race and gender, and in a sense, in a technical sense, in an academic sense, it is correct. Plato does discuss gender issues in ‘Symposium,’ and therefore it has been banned.
“Not all of it, but some of the most important parts that I believe my students need to read, and I find that deeply problematic. A serious research university shouldn’t ban Plato. We don’t make universities great again by censoring the classics.”
What was your reaction when you were told you couldn’t teach “Symposium”?
“ I wasn’t entirely surprised that I would get some sort of reaction from a university, but I was genuinely surprised that they would ban Plato. I have taught this course in the past and talked about race and gender. It was originally funded by the [National Science Foundation]. I got some money from them to develop a course module on gender issues in engineering, and then I adopted it for this new course.
“But the idea that they would ban it completely when I added ‘Symposium’ by Plato, that is hard to understand. I am still deeply surprised.”
A lot of conservative academics say U.S. schools should return to teaching the classics, meaning Greek and Roman culture. Is there a hypocrisy to that statement?
“My guess is that people who make that claim — which I agree with, at least to some extent, we should focus on the classics, that’s a good idea — they don’t really know what Plato wrote. They are basically ignorant. They haven’t read Plato, and it’s, of course, good that people are now paying more attention to what Plato actually taught.
“It’s a little bit of an irony, of course, that all this is happening. But I hope that something good can come out of it, and in the end, I think we must be allowed to teach Plato in the philosophy department.”
Plato has been controversial because he wasn’t a proponent of democracy. Do you find it ironic that he’s been banned when he’s been supportive of authoritarian leaders?
“ One could imagine that people who wanted to change society and think that we’re heading the wrong direction and want to somehow control universities, I think they’d be talking more about Plato because Plato can be interpreted as supporting such claims.
“That just emphasizes how absurd the situation is, that of all possible philosophers you could censor, why censor Plato? He should be your favorite philosopher if you want to change the direction of higher education.”
What reaction have you seen on campus from students and your colleagues?
“I have never received so much support before in my life. I have received hundreds of emails, not just from other academics, but from former students. There’s a petition now that people are signing.
“I should say that I understand the provost and the president, they are doing their job. They have been tasked with implementing a deeply problematic policy. It’s the policy that’s the problem. No single administrator, I think, can be blamed for what’s happening. It’s a policy that needs to be revised.”
The policy comes from the Texas A&M Board of Regents. Do you fear repercussions from them or the university’s leadership?
“ I am speaking as a citizen. I’m speaking for myself, not for the university, and so far, no one has criticized anything I’ve said. We, of course, disagree, but they have not threatened to fire me, and I don’t expect them to do that.
“They are decent people. I respect their opinions. They have one view about what we ought to do. I have a very different view, and I think that most academics, regardless of their political affiliation, they agree that universities should be free to teach Plato and individual professors should be free to decide what readings from Plato to assign.
“We don’t really want an authoritarian system in which the Board of Regents tells us what Plato texts are okay to teach, and what texts must be censored.”
The Trump administration has attacked institutions of higher education, cut research funding and launched investigations into universities. What is the academic climate we’re in now?
“This might just be the beginning. And of course, American universities are still the best in the world, and they are the best in the world because we’re able to attract talent from all around the world and don’t censor their professors. But there is a risk that we will not be able to attract any talent anymore. People don’t want to teach at our institutions because we’re being censored and that’s deeply, deeply problematic in my opinion.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Thomas Danielian produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Grace Griffin produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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