State lawmakers seek greater control over what universities can teach
Channel: PBS NewsHour
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Read a transcript preview of “State lawmakers seek greater control over what universities can teach” from PBS NewsHour, uploaded on 2026-11-06.
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Language: English (creator captions)
[0:03] of power they haven't had in decades. One of the many questions facing
[0:07] Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa is whether Democrats will try reversing
[0:11] big changes made at public universities in recent years by state
[0:15] Republicans. Those laws which match some of President Trump's demands
[0:19] and also predate them, have put restrictions on what can be taught
[0:22] and more. Texas is not alone. More than 50% of all college students
[0:27] are enrolled in a state with at least one law.
[0:29] limiting what can be taught or how campuses can operate. Stephanie
[0:33] Tsi reports on the impact in Texas for our series Rethinking College.
[0:39] So what originally brought you to Texas A&M. A very good job. When
[0:43] philosophy professor Martin Peterson arrived at Texas A&M in 2014.
[0:49] He says he approached his job the way he always had. I've been teaching
[0:53] applied ethics for decades, and I was entirely free to design my
[0:58] own syllabus. After a couple of years, I started to teach another
[1:01] class, contemporary moral Issues, and that's the class that eventually
[1:06] led to some
[1:07] trouble. The
[1:08] trouble Began as Peterson prepared to teach that class in the spring
[1:12] semester. According to the course syllabus, contemporary moral issues
[1:17] challenges students to understand, articulate, and evaluate arguments
[1:21] from multiple points of view.
[1:24] And among