Pictured is Melissa McCoul. If you click this link, you may be able to take a look at a summary of her education and experience. McCoul has a PhD in English from the University of Notre Dame, has taught a number of different classes at Texas A&M, and has a significant list of published articles. If you don't find that information when you click the link, that's because it could well have been removed from the Texas A&M website, as another reference to her clearly was. In short, Dr. McCoul, who was employed as an instrtuctor at Texas A&M, was fired when a student complained that she was teaching "gender ideology," in contradiction to what our current president has to say about this topic.
To get the story, you can click this link, which will take you to an article in The New Republic. The following link will take you to an article on the same topic, published in the September 11, 2025, edition of The New York Times. Here is an excerpt from the article in The Times, which made me want to write this blog posting (emphasis added):
College professors have ... been targeted by their state legislatures. According to a July PEN America report, more than 70 bills and policies aiming to censor higher education have been introduced across 26 states in 2025. These bills aim to restrict concepts some lawmakers disfavor like race, sex and gender.
In a video posted ... by Brian Harrison, a Republican state lawmaker and Texas A&M alum, a student begins filming an image projected at the front of the classroom of a “gender unicorn,” a teaching tool to explain the differences between gender identity and gender expression.
“I’m not entirely sure this is legal to be teaching because, according to our president, there’s only two genders,” the student says. “[The president] said that he would be freezing agencies’ funding programs that promote gender ideology. And this also very much goes against not only myself but a lot of people’s religious beliefs, and so I am not going to participate in this because it’s not legal.”
If you do watch the student's video, you will find that she also refers to "our president's laws," which indicates to me that the student could well benefit from a course in history or political science. If the student did take such a course, I feel pretty confident that it would make clear to her (even in Texas) that the president doesn't make the laws, but is charged with "executing" the laws that are made by Congress.
What our current president thinks about gender-related issues does not limit what we can discuss, or think about, or believe, as we consider that topic. It is not "illegal" to have ideas, or to discuss ideas, that are different from the ideas of the current president. If we were to live in a country in which the current president's beliefs about any and all topics that are of interest and importance to us could not be contradicted, or discussed, we would not be living in the United States of America that is described in our Constitution.
Let's hope that the courts make this very clear to everyone involved in this sorry incident - and to all of us. So many seem to need a refresher course!
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