Many people across the political spectrum were alarmed when they learned administrators at Texas A&M had prevented a philosophy professor from teaching the works of Plato because it violated legislative regulations designed to eliminate “woke” curricula in the state’s institutions of higher learning. Many conservatives, while generally sympathetic to efforts to eliminate left-wing indoctrination in college and university curricula, agree that legislative interventions of this kind can blur lines between reasonable guidelines designed to eliminate indoctrination and outright censorship.  This episode, and some others like it, suggest that recent attempts by conservatives to push back on academic indoctrination have not been as well-thought-out as some may have hoped.

According to a 2025 report from PEN America, lawmakers in 15 states passed 21 bills designed to regulate or even censor courses taught at public colleges and universities.

“Censorship is, sadly, now an intractable reality on college and university campuses, with serious negative impacts for teaching, research, and student life,” Amy Reid, program director of Freedom to Learn at PEN America, explained.

But PEN America is guilty of throwing many different kinds of initiatives into the same “censorship” basket. Some of these legislative interventions may have reached inappropriately into the kinds of books or subjects that can be taught in the classroom. But others banned “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs or required a degree of intellectual diversity in campus hiring. That is not censorship, but a reasonable step to push back on DEI censorship and propaganda in higher education.

It is difficult, especially in higher education, for legislatures to control........

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