Hype for the Future 139R: College Towns in Texas

Overview Within the State of Texas, notable college towns include the communities of College Station, Lubbock, and Denton—all associated with the distinctive locations of colleges and universities of greater significance within the State. While College Station is located within Brazos County and is home to Texas A&M University, Lubbock is a major city in Lubbock County and serves as home to the main campus of Texas Tech University. While the University of Texas at Austin is also a […]

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/03/19/hype-for-the-future-139r-college-towns-in-texas/

Hype for the Future 137H: Brazos County, Texas

Overview Brazos County is located within the southeastern portion of the State of Texas and is home to the communities of Bryan and College Station within the county limits. The City of Bryan serves as the county seat, though the City of College Station to the southeast is home to the largest public state or territorial university by enrollment in the United States—Texas A&M University “the Aggies.” Immediately off campus is the George, part of the Valencia Hotel Collection associated […]

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/03/17/hype-for-the-future-137h-brazos-county-texas/

Texas A&M fired a professor for teaching about gender identity. Now, she's suing

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/texas-am-melissa-mccoul-lawsuit

Texas A&M faculty, students rally against policy they deem censorship – Texas Standard

Courtesy AAUP

Texas A&M faculty, students rally against policy they deem censorship

A professor says he’s speaking up for others “deathly afraid” of losing their jobs or being targeted by state leadership.

https://atx.audio/4qc1gz8 – Listen to audio…

By Laura Rice, January 30, 2026, 12:50 pm, Education, Race & Identity, Texas Standard Original

Courtesy AAUP

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) estimated as many as 400 people attended a rally on the Texas A&M campus on Jan. 29.

Hundreds of students, faculty and alumni rallied at Texas A&M University on Thursday, many holding signs saying “Aggies for Academic Freedom” in response to what they characterize as the university’s censorship of course material.

In the fall, Texas A&M fired a lecturer for class material that included gender identity in children’s literature. Before the spring semester began, the A&M University System implemented a policy requiring campus presidents to sign off on courses that could be seen as advocating “race and gender ideology” – or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

» RELATED: From Plato to sociology: How Texas A&M’s new curriculum policy is impacting the start of the semester

The rally consisted of students and alumni alongside members of the TAMU American Association of University Professors and other faculty, staff and student groups. They’ve formed a coalition and are laying out demands to A&M including the removal of “censorship” on teaching topics and that the university reinstate all “improperly canceled” courses. They’re also requesting the fired literature lecturer, Melissa McCoul, be reinstated.

» RELATED: Texas A&M removes administrators, orders course review following viral video

Texas Standard reached out to Texas A&M to invite them onto the program. A spokesperson let us know the university is releasing the findings of its course review today (Friday, Jan. 30). The university also provided a statement which can be found in its entirety at the bottom of this story.

Leonard Bright is president of the Texas A&M University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Listen to Texas Standard’s interview with Bright in the audio player at the top of this story or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: Are you concerned you’re putting your job at risk by participating rallies and doing interviews like this?

Leonard Bright: Well, you know, it shouldn’t be being placed at risk. Part of my job is to discuss matters of public concern. That is literally written in our policies and in my contract.

But of course, I cannot be silly of the fact that there are those that would love to potentially use this as an opportunity to try to get me fired or dismissed. But those are not really my concerns.

I believe that in the importance of speaking up, being truthful and try to fight for this most important thing called academic freedom, but also a deep quality education. So I think that’s more important to me.

I don’t certainly want to lose my job, but at the same time, I want to be truthful, thoughtful, and do my job with the highest level of integrity.

One of your graduate-level courses was canceled this spring. The Houston Chronicle reports the dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service repeatedly asked you for more information about the content in question that you didn’t reply.

How do you respond to those reports?

Yeah, so what actually happened is that they were asking me to be dishonest.

They asked their questions. I answered them as thoroughly as I can. I mean, they wanted to know the extent to which I’m discussing issues of race, gender, and sexuality in a graduate-level course, for students who are going into public service.

And my answer was repeatedly “every day, in every reading.” I mean, this topic of race, gender and sexuality is sort of central to the issue of ethics, which is how we treat people, and people are their identity.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Texas A&M faculty, students rally against policy they deem censorship | Texas Standard

#AcademicFreedom #Aggies #Audio #Censorship #Fear #GenderIdentity #LeonardBright #LosingJobs #Race #TAMUAmericanAssociationOfUniversityProfessors #TexasAMFaculty #TexasAMStudents #TexasAMUniversity #TexasStandard #Transcript #Video

Texas A&M eliminates women’s and gender studies degree program

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/politics/texas-am-women-gender-studies

Trump-appointed Texas federal judge rules that drag is like blackface

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/texas-judge-drag-blackface

Texas A&M banned these Plato readings from my class. Here’s what everyone should know about his teachings. – MS NOW

Opinion

Texas A&M told me not to teach these Plato readings. That’s not how you make universities great again.

The Greek philosopher explicitly urged his students to seek the truth — even when it was uncomfortable or controversial. So should universities.

“Plato explicitly urged his students to seek the truth — even when it was uncomfortable or controversial.” Ben King / MS NOW; Getty Images

By Martin Peterson, Jan. 10, 2026, 6:00 AM EST

As a professor of philosophy and ethics, I am more accustomed to reading the news than being a part of it. But many media outlets have reported this week on a directive I was given to excise Plato lessons from a course syllabus. I offer this to provide insight into my experiences at Texas A&M both recently and more broadly. 

I have been to Athens many times, and on every visit I make a point of stopping by the site of Plato’s Academy, the world’s first university, founded around 387 BCE. Whereas other schools at the time primarily trained students in rhetoric and the art of winning debates, Plato explicitly urged his students to seek the truth — even when it was uncomfortable or controversial. It is precisely this attitude toward teaching and research that has made American universities the best in the world. We do not Make Universities Great Again by censoring the classics.

We do not Make Universities Great Again by censoring the classics.

The ban on teaching Plato’s “Symposium” at Texas A&M is, in a sense, understandable. If one accepts the university rule, adopted in November, that bans the teaching of “race and gender ideology,” Plato joins a long list of prominent thinkers whose ideas might be deemed corrupting to youth and therefore subject to censorship.

In the “Symposium,” Plato describes homosexuality as fully natural and suggests that there are more than two genders: “you should learn the nature of humanity … in times past our nature was not the same as it is now, but otherwise. For in the first place there were three kinds of human being and not two as nowadays, male and female. No, there was also a third kind, a combination of both genders.”

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Texas A&M banned these Plato readings from my class. Here’s what everyone should know about his teachings.

#BansTeachingPlato #GenderIdeology #HigherEducation #Humanity #MartinPeterson #MSNOW #MSNBC #Philosophy #Plato #Professor #RaceIdeology #Symposium #Teaching #Texas #TexasAMUniversity #WesternEducation

Instructor who gave U of Oklahoma student a zero on anti-trans paper removed from teaching

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/transgender-oklahoma-graduate-assistant-removed

The Christmas tree is a tradition older than Christmas – The Conversation

Public Christmas trees, like Rockefeller Center’s famous tree, didn’t start appearing in the U.S. until the 20th century. Nicholas Hunt / WireImage via Getty Images

Academic rigor, journalistic flair

Author

Author Troy Bickham Professor of History, Texas A&M University – Disclosure statement – Troy Bickham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Partners – Texas A&M University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. DOI – https://doi.org/10.64628/AAI.a54hmaav7 –

The Christmas tree is a tradition older than Christmas – The Conversation

Why, every Christmas, do so many people endure the mess of dried pine needles, the risk of a fire hazard and impossibly tangled strings of lights?

Strapping a fir tree to the hood of my car and worrying about the strength of the twine, I sometimes wonder if I should just buy an artificial tree and do away with all the hassle. Then my inner historian scolds me – I have to remind myself that I’m taking part in one of the world’s oldest religious traditions. To give up the tree would be to give up a ritual that predates Christmas itself.

A symbol of life in a time of darkness

Almost all agrarian societies independently venerated the Sun in their pantheon of gods at one time or another – there was the Sol of the Norse, the Aztec Huitzilopochtli, the Greek Helios.

The solstices, when the Sun is at its highest and lowest points in the sky, were major events. The winter solstice, when the sky is its darkest, has been a notable day of celebration in agrarian societies throughout human history. The Persian Shab-e Yalda, Dongzhi in China and the North American Hopi Soyal all independently mark the occasion.

The favored décor for ancient winter solstices? Evergreen plants.

Whether as palm branches gathered in Egypt in the celebration of Ra or wreaths for the Roman feast of Saturnalia, evergreens have long served as symbols of the perseverance of life during the bleakness of winter, and the promise of the Sun’s return.

Christmas slowly emerges

Christmas came much later. The date was not fixed on liturgical calendars until centuries after Jesus’ birth, and the English word Christmas – an abbreviation of “Christ’s Mass” – would not appear until over 1,000 years after the original event.

While Dec. 25 was ostensibly a Christian holiday, many Europeans simply carried over traditions from winter solstice celebrations, which were notoriously raucous affairs. For example, the 12 days of Christmas commemorated in the popular carol actually originated in ancient Germanic Yule celebrations.

The continued use of evergreens, most notably the Christmas tree, is the most visible remnant of those ancient solstice celebrations. Although Ernst Anschütz’s well-known 1824 carol dedicated to the tree is translated into English as “O Christmas Tree,” the title of the original German tune is simply “Tannenbaum,” meaning fir tree. There is no reference to Christmas in the carol, which Anschütz based on a much older Silesian folk love song. In keeping with old solstice celebrations, the song praises the tree’s faithful hardiness during the dark and cold winter.

Bacchanal backlash

German Protestants sought to replace ornate Nativity scenes with the simpler tree. Wikimedia Commons

Sixteenth-century German Protestants, eager to remove the iconography and relics of the Roman Catholic Church, gave the Christmas tree a huge boost when they used it to replace Nativity scenes. The religious reformer Martin Luther supposedly adopted the practice and added candles.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Christmas tree is a tradition older than Christmas

#Christmas #CreativeCommons #Memories #ProfessorOfHistory #TexasAMUniversity #TheConversation #Traditions #TroyBickham

Texas A&M bans teaching 'race or gender ideology' at universities

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/news/texas-am-gender-ideology-ban